If anyone is looking for houses in quiet locations I can recommend mountain bothies in Scotland - these are open houses (they are completely free to use) in some amazing locations:

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

Power and internet access are slightly problematical but to read and think they are great.

Remarkable! Thank you. And that site is very well written:

If all this sounds rather rough, you are beginning to get the picture. Your comforts have to be carried in.

What a neat idea!

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/bothy-code.asp

I'm going to be your neighbor! Just have to convince my wife.

But serious: I've got family living 1 km away from your place and they always notice cars passing by because it rarely happens.

> Just have to convince my wife.

You're getting dangerously close to figuring out why it is up for sale ;)

If I had the money, I would buy this. A friend of a friend just offered to give me a house. They have several in depopulated areas that are basically worthless for sale and decaying if no one lives there. Some areas are so deserted, there could be hacker villages. I wonder if this is my midlife crisis…

How much are the houses on sale for if you don't mind my asking?

And is there any significant risk posed as a result of depopulation eg increased crime rates, lack of good infrastructure etc?

I'm currently looking for a cheap purchase if it makes economical and lifestyle sense.

What is this YC EU headquarters you are talking about?

Did you not see the announcement?

If I didn't know better, that could totally be a farmhouse in rural Saskatchewan.

Beautiful.

If this was located in the southwest of Germany, I would probably buy it.

Wow, if I had the money, I would totally buy that place...

One of the ideas I had to do with it is convert it into a start-up kick-off resort, alternatively a hacker space. But it's far away from where I live now (200+Km). Selling it is quite painful, I put tons of work into that place, here are all the pictures of the renovations:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/buildings/neatspot/dscf1316.jpg...

Driving there once every month to maintain it is quite a bit of overhead, and my s.o. is a city girl, hence the sale.

also doesn't hurt that it only costs 1/10 the (ridiculous) price of a normal house in Palo Alto.

nice, whats the internet connection in a place like that like ? :)

50 Mbit down, 5 Mbit up, 75 euros / month.

wow, that should work well :)