Some years ago, after selling their bed-and-breakfast in San Diego County, Jason Lee Beckwith and his wife began looking for hospitality property elsewhere. Their search moved progressively outward: Palomar Mountain, Joshua Tree, Portugal, Spain. In Grenada, Beckwith became briefly interested in some dwellings built into a cave on the side of a cliff, “but it just didn’t stick.”
Then one day, he stumbled upon an article about an abandoned village in Spain that was up for sale — complete with a church, school, bar and even a swimming pool. He describes this as the moment his life split into “before I knew it and after I knew it.”
In 2024, Beckwith made his first down payment on that property.
Throughout Europe, there are thousands of quaint, attractive villages that are functionally deserted, depopulated over decades by residents in search of employment elsewhere. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, the problem of rural “desertification” has grown so dire it has become a political issue. In those countries, one can easily find an entire village for sale, some for well under $1 million.
Some of the villages are sold outright by a single entity or family owner. Others under fragmented ownership must be acquired property by property, which can require tracking down distant heirs.
Wealthy buyers and tourism entrepreneurs have transformed them into isolated getaways — and at least a handful have become popular destinations for corporate retreats.
Beckwith’s village, Salto de Castro, sits along a river near the Portuguese border and will cost him 310,000 euros (about $367,000) to acquire. Built in 1946 by an energy company for its workers and long abandoned, it is now a “city in ruins, just rubble and walls,” he says. The Californian estimates that the renovation will cost €7 million.
“It’s been a roller coaster, honestly,” he says. “Good or bad, I’ve been enjoying the ride.”
Elvira Fafian, whose website Aldeas Abandonadas (“Abandoned Villages”) specializes in unusual Spanish real estate sales, has seen a steady increase in foreign buyers seeking out “hamlets, villages, and rural complexes,” she says, noting that 70 percent of sales are intended for “business and tourism use.”
Timur Negru, whose company AffordiHome connects foreign buyers with European properties, has been fielding a surge in Americans interested in acquiring villages in recent months. He chalks up the attraction of the village to three recent trends: easy internet access in remote areas through platforms like Starlink; the push away from overwhelmed tourist destinations like Florence or Barcelona; and the steep real estate prices in America spurring buyers to look further afield. His clients range from venture capitalist-backed entrepreneurs to small investment funds.
In 2021, Johannes Hoyos, a German entrepreneur, noticed that many such villages were available to rent nearly outright. He and his brother imagined a clever niche. “We said, ‘Let’s try to build a company around this idea of bringing people into villages.’” Today their company, Campfire, has organized village retreats for teams from companies including Dell, Google and Netflix, mostly in southern Europe. As some C.E.O.s seek slow disconnection from daily distractions over flashy resort packages, they and others see abandoned European villages as the next hot spot for corporate retreats.
“Remote work made monthlong stays normal,” says Negru. “Teams want quarterly off-sites that aren’t generic hotels.”
Matteo Cerri, whose company, ITS Italy, is working to refurbish two dozen villages for use as corporate retreats and other tourism ventures, has also seen an uptick in interest from both renters and buyers. “It mostly works in terms of connections,” he says. “A guy knows a guy at, say, Y Combinator, who wants to spend 10 days in a village.”
