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Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

Owning a property comes with property taxes. And will make you ineligible for a lot of the benefits.

And speaking of said benefits, it's a part time job keeping up with the paperwork.

And the Nordics are a cold place, you either need to own some forest or pay for firewood and/or electricity or heating oil. Forest property is quite expensive.

There's no way you could live in a cheap house in the Nordic countryside for "free" or even cheap.

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You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

Property taxes in remote locations are not very high. Neither are rents in dying villages. Living off the free 500 euros a month is certainly doable here in Finland, and, in fact, regrettably many people do it.

Keeping up with the paperwork, at least here in Finland, is also a very small amount of work. Like two hours once a month or something.

I think it's not an accident that we have quite a bit higher unemployment rate than the Anglosphere.

Finland is full of cottages and remote houses where the property tax is on the order of 100 € / year. The owners are mostly living far away, having inherited the remote house which perhaps has some sentimental family value but barely any resale value. I don’t think it would be terribly hard to find a place like this to rent for a bit of money and upkeep work.

Sweden doesn't have property taxes and you can find houses for 10k€.

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