The municipality of Götene wanted to make a “coup” to attract attention and promote housing construction. Potential buyers from all over the world rushed to buy the offers.
Buildings in Stockholm’s Old Town (illustrative photo) (AFP / JONATHAN NACKSTRAND)
A municipality in western Sweden had to temporarily suspend the sale of land after being inundated with requests for its offer at 10 euro cents per square meter, the mayor told AFP on Monday July 1.
“We launched this campaign in mid-April. It was a bit of a crazy idea, but also a joke to be honest.
It was a marketing operation,” laughs Johan Mansson, mayor of the municipality of Götene where some 5,000 inhabitants live.
Scattered across the commune, thirty plots of land – which had not found buyers for several decades and had fallen into oblivion – were put up for sale at a modest price:
one Swedish crown per square meter, or less than ten euro cents.
The idea? To build more housing in a low-density area and grow the region, says the mayor. The plots range in size from 7 to 1,200 square meters.
By purchasing a plot of land, the buyer commits to building a house on it within two years. This involves several additional costs: the building permit (30,000 crowns), the connection fee for water management (170,000), electricity (40,000) and the internet connection (30,000).
“Worldwide hit”
A few weeks after the start of the campaign, Götene managed to sell three plots. “A great success for a small town for us,” remembers Johan Mansson. “But we could never have imagined what awaited us.”
A report by a local TV channel in late June triggered a snowball effect. Several Swedish media outlets picked up the story, a video was posted on TikTok, and millions of people discovered Götene and its cheap land.
A few days later, it turned into “a global hit”, explains the mayor, since two English-speaking media picked up the story. The town has since been inundated with emails and phone calls from potential buyers. So much so that Götene had to temporarily suspend the sale, to have time to study all the proposals.
“We have interested people from Europe, Asia – mainly India and Pakistan – but also the United States, Australia and even South America,”
lists Mr. Mansson. With this campaign, “we succeeded in putting Götene on the world map.”
Business will resume on August 7, with an auction of the land.
