Gamiko

In anticipation of our move to Spain this summer, I am scheming to get a country property as soon as possible as an offset to having to live in a city apartment with kids. It will also give us an outlet for gardening, woodworking, and outdoors interests and a place to keep the associated stuff. These places can be quite reasonable within a couple of hours of Madrid (i.e., nothing with “Costa” in its name).

Please help me understand: why are all these rural houses on such tiny specks of land? The typical rural lot that I have seen in online rural listings is the size of a typical city lot here in the US, notwithstanding the fact that there’s a lot of undeveloped land in Spain. Is there something different about how land is held in Spain? I don’t want to be in the remote countryside on a fourth of an acre! Is this somehow related to the curious fact that many farmers seem to live in a village and have their fields outside the village, rather than what I am used to, which is to live in a house in the middle of your farm? Similarly, is this related to the phenomenon of high rise apartments in villages that are in the middle of nowhere, and very distinct village boundaries rather than the gradual fade of development that is common to small towns in the US?

Thanks. I'm trying to understand.

missile

You seem to have a strange perception of rural Spain.

Gamiko

As I said, I am trying to understand. Maybe I also need to expand my search beyond the English language real estate websites. From what I have seen, however, country houses tend to be on small parcels. In the US, the further you get out of the city, the bigger the parcel, in general. You would also not typically see dense housing in small towns.

Rosemary

What tends to happen in my area is that the house and a small area around it is labelled as a parcel and each of the fields around it are classed as individual parcels. So if you want to buy a country house with a significant amount of land you would need to find one that also has the surrounding fields for sale.

For example a friend of mine owns a small house surrounded by fields but she has sold all of the fields to another person. If she sells the house in the future it will be alone on a small plot of land.

I hope that this is helpful.

Rosemary

Gamiko

Rosemary, thanks, that helps explain what I have been seeing. That's very different from what I am used to, where the land itself is usually the big draw.

Rosemary

Some people live and work in a town but also own one or two parcels of land with no country house. Many of the people who work their land may live in the town and also have a small place in the country which they use on a Sunday for their family get togethers. Look out for casetas/casitas because they come in many sizes, some may have electricity and water but are not suitable to live in due to a lack of facilities, others may be fully liveable. Some have large water deposits that the family use as a swimming pool. There are also quite a lot of country houses that were not built legally, it is a minefield so be very careful.

Rosemary

tuhler

You could do what we did..bought piece 1500 sq metres with building permission.then all the parcels next door(sizes from tiny to 1000sq mrts) until we reached the size we wanted..approx 6000 sq mtrs...went to town hall for info on who owned what...took about 6 months but well worth it...could have kept on buying had we wanted to

FranE

It is indeed very common for "farmers" to live in the town and work fields outside it. I believe it is called the "minifundismo" system. There will be agricultural co-operative in a nearby town where small farmers take their crop for processing, or selling in bulk or whatever, depending on the nature of the crop I suppose.

I'm generalising here, but the Spanish "system" is for people to stay together in urban centres (towns, villages) for infrastructure reasons. Outside of the urban areas it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to get electricity laid on, and there won't be any eg main drains or rubbish collection. As you say, Spain has vast areas of undeveloped land, and it would be expensive to have services available in the remote areas. Land seems to be very strictly "zoned" here, and the developer is responsible for laying on services, so they're not likely to want to build in remote areas with no nearby services to connect to (even assuming the land was zoned for building which would be unlikely for precisely those reasons).

The small minifudismos often have a building on them - ranging from no more than a storage shed to something the size of a house. These were originally for agricultural purposes but some of the larger ones have been improved and are used as weekend houses or (as in the case of our house) sold off separately from the fields they once served. Round our way there are many: those within the town boundary have electricity connected, but we're outside the boundary and have no services at all, we're entirely self sufficient.

It's also common in the UK for farms to have their own farmhouse, but it doesn't seem to be the way of things in Spain.

This is probably not an entirely accurate potted history of land use and farming methods in Spain - just what I've picked up from investigating the likely history of houses such as ours.

Loafing Along

It is parcially explained by the differences in inheritance laws, over time large families end up owning small slices of what may have been a large plot a century ago, as on death assets would have been divided equally among all heirs with at least two-thirds going to the children.
Andalucia and other regions in the south have a different structure, many huge estates that have stayed in family ownership but devoted to simple crops, olives being a prime example.

A friend of mine in the '80s devoted his spare cash to buying abandoned houses in the villages near to Madrid , I remember one particularly nice property had on the register twelve owners from the same family... tough task to sort it all out.
This article a bit out of date but definitely worth a read : https://www.spanishpropertyinsight.c...perty-spain-2/

Gamiko

I appreciate those responses. The picture is becoming more clear to me. In the US, we have no shortage of wide open spaces but during the Great Depression there was a rural electrification program. There still are a lot of houses off the grid, but I would say most older rural properties are on. New construction is a different story and can be expensive for a hook up in remote areas.

Horlics

https://www.kyero.com/en/property/41...sale-l-ampolla

There you go. You can even have the costa.