Buying a house in a faraway country as an escape plan: doubts and figures
A forum user floats the idea of buying a house in a distant country as an escape plan: Bulgaria from €30,000, Kenya with no public healthcare, and doubts over whether it's a real plan B.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Buying a house in a faraway country as an escape plan: doubts and figures
Buying a second home by the beach to rent out in summer and use in August has become an act of faith. Tourist rentals have become normalized, squatting is a worry, and the numbers no longer add up. So part of Spain's savings has started looking further afield: a little house in a peaceful, cheap country with no extradition treaties and a direct flight for when things go wrong. The plan sounds like a movie. The numbers, once laid on the table, sound like something else.
The original proposal came from an investor who admitted having never set foot in his dream destination. He wanted a nice neighborhood in a small city, nothing flashy, to use "very occasionally" and as an escape plan if things went "MUCHO" wrong. Kenya, Bulgaria, Namibia, El Salvador, Georgia, Sao Tome, the Philippines, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, Greece and New Zealand all made the list. The conversation quickly drifted to what it always drifts to: the real price, legal security, and whether you can survive without a translator.
What a house in Kenya or Bulgaria really costs
The first destination with concrete figures was Bulgaria. A participant with friends in the country claimed that in villages on the outskirts of mid-sized cities, with good transport links, houses with land sell for 30,000 euros. The catch: an impossible language, still being inside the European Union, and the presence of Roma communities in some areas. The second destination was Kenya, presented as a booming country above the African standard, with language and cost advantages, but with a nonexistent public healthcare system and a private one that is "affordable, not cheap."
The most optimistic calculation assumes 30,000 euros covers the property itself. The pessimistic scenario adds flights, visas, local paperwork, private security and the cost of keeping an empty house 6,000 kilometers away. Nobody has broken down that second block in the exchange, and that's where the trap lies.
The plan B that isn't a plan B
The most repeated objection wasn't the price, but the logic. Buying a house abroad isn't an escape plan: it's an anchor. Those who have genuinely had to flee put it bluntly: airports close, trains get cancelled, and the only thing that works is a car or an off-road motorbike. By that standard, a real plan B cannot be outside continental Europe. A plan C — disappearing — allows for Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand.
Some argue the sensible thing is to own nothing and move as the wind blows. The counterargument weighs against it: if you arrive with money, finding accommodation is the easy part; having it beforehand is the hard part. The discussion stalls exactly there, between liquidity and ownership.
The village of 30 inhabitants that already works as a refuge
Against the exotic destinations came the domestic option, with numbers to match. A renovated 140-square-meter house with a 250-square-meter garden in a village of 30 inhabitants in Castilla y León cost 55,000 euros. Armored door, bars on the windows, three-meter walls and a farming family across the street keeping watch for 100 euros a month. A provincial hospital 15 minutes away. No bar, no shops and, according to its owner, no squatters: nobody wants to live there.
The comparison is uncomfortable for the exotic plan. The same money that buys a house in a Bulgarian village buys a renovated house two hours from a Spanish capital, with public healthcare, a shared language and a same-day flight back. The downside is the climate and the loneliness.
Documents, passports and movie-style disappearances
The conversation drifted into murkier territory. It was mentioned that in some Latin American countries, 1,000 euros to an official would get you a passport, ID card and birth certificate under whatever name you choose. There was also talk of changing your name in the registry without being a citizen, registering as a resident in one country while living in another, and of the Cyrillic alphabet as an advantage for vanishing from the system. These are unverified claims thrown out in a forum, and should be treated as what they are: rumors.
The detail that throws you off is that the author of the plan himself admitted never having been to his candidate destinations. The adventure, he said, "it's all just an adventure, a hobby." For a hobby, 30,000 euros plus recurring costs is an expensive hobby.
The conversation ends without consensus and with an uncomfortable fact: the Eastern European countries cited as an affordable refuge have already become more expensive due to the arrival of Austrian and German buyers. The cheap paradise, once everyone discovers it, stops being cheap. And whoever arrives last pays the price of the first.
Buying a second home by the beach to rent out in summer and use in August has become an act of faith. Tourist rentals have become normalized, squatting is a worry, and the numbers no longer add up. So part of Spain's savings has started looking further afield: a little house in a peaceful, cheap country with no extradition treaties and a direct flight for when things go wrong. The plan sounds like a movie. The numbers, once laid on the table, sound like something else.
The original proposal came from an investor who admitted having never set foot in his dream destination. He wanted a nice neighborhood in a small city, nothing flashy, to use "very occasionally" and as an escape plan if things went "MUCHO" wrong. Kenya, Bulgaria, Namibia, El Salvador, Georgia, Sao Tome, the Philippines, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, Greece and New Zealand all made the list. The conversation quickly drifted to what it always drifts to: the real price, legal security, and whether you can survive without a translator.
What a house in Kenya or Bulgaria really costs
The first destination with concrete figures was Bulgaria. A participant with friends in the country claimed that in villages on the outskirts of mid-sized cities, with good transport links, houses with land sell for 30,000 euros. The catch: an impossible language, still being inside the European Union, and the presence of Roma communities in some areas. The second destination was Kenya, presented as a booming country above the African standard, with language and cost advantages, but with a nonexistent public healthcare system and a private one that is "affordable, not cheap."
The most optimistic calculation assumes 30,000 euros covers the property itself. The pessimistic scenario adds flights, visas, local paperwork, private security and the cost of keeping an empty house 6,000 kilometers away. Nobody has broken down that second block in the exchange, and that's where the trap lies.
The plan B that isn't a plan B
The most repeated objection wasn't the price, but the logic. Buying a house abroad isn't an escape plan: it's an anchor. Those who have genuinely had to flee put it bluntly: airports close, trains get cancelled, and the only thing that works is a car or an off-road motorbike. By that standard, a real plan B cannot be outside continental Europe. A plan C — disappearing — allows for Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand.
Some argue the sensible thing is to own nothing and move as the wind blows. The counterargument weighs against it: if you arrive with money, finding accommodation is the easy part; having it beforehand is the hard part. The discussion stalls exactly there, between liquidity and ownership.
The village of 30 inhabitants that already works as a refuge
Against the exotic destinations came the domestic option, with numbers to match. A renovated 140-square-meter house with a 250-square-meter garden in a village of 30 inhabitants in Castilla y León cost 55,000 euros. Armored door, bars on the windows, three-meter walls and a farming family across the street keeping watch for 100 euros a month. A provincial hospital 15 minutes away. No bar, no shops and, according to its owner, no squatters: nobody wants to live there.
The comparison is uncomfortable for the exotic plan. The same money that buys a house in a Bulgarian village buys a renovated house two hours from a Spanish capital, with public healthcare, a shared language and a same-day flight back. The downside is the climate and the loneliness.
Documents, passports and movie-style disappearances
The conversation drifted into murkier territory. It was mentioned that in some Latin American countries, 1,000 euros to an official would get you a passport, ID card and birth certificate under whatever name you choose. There was also talk of changing your name in the registry without being a citizen, registering as a resident in one country while living in another, and of the Cyrillic alphabet as an advantage for vanishing from the system. These are unverified claims thrown out in a forum, and should be treated as what they are: rumors.
The detail that throws you off is that the author of the plan himself admitted never having been to his candidate destinations. The adventure, he said, "it's all just an adventure, a hobby." For a hobby, 30,000 euros plus recurring costs is an expensive hobby.
The conversation ends without consensus and with an uncomfortable fact: the Eastern European countries cited as an affordable refuge have already become more expensive due to the arrival of Austrian and German buyers. The cheap paradise, once everyone discovers it, stops being cheap. And whoever arrives last pays the price of the first.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (99 replies).
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