Of course prices of old houses in need of maintenance, far away from the nearest city, in regions with little to no jobs, next to the border with Eastern European countries, will be cheap.

Nobody wants to live there.

Try looking at homes in the suburbs of desirable cities with jobs and see 10x prices.

If we're just looking for random homes on the internet you can find better deals in villages in southern Europe but there's always at least one catch why cheap homes are cheap.

> Nobody wants to live there.

Nobody besides everyone I know... I (nor my friends or family) would never want to live in or close to a city. Let alone in a suburb; if in a city then the center.

But you are right; still, to pay a 2m mortgage, you do not need to be a millionaire. And for 2m I see nice stuff in Vienna.

> catch why cheap homes are cheap.

I live in such a home in southern eu and for me there is no catch. Huge garden, swimming pool, large villa for 130k. Always sunny, nature, no polution. Just not close (40min drive; probably faster than a lot of suburb-center commutes though) to a city, that’s a benefit, not a catch.

Yeah, you don't need to be a millionaire for a 2m mortgage but you need at least a six figure salary which is nearly unattainable here, especially as an expat.

Yeah, you have swimming pools, but if you live in the cheap areas in Austria that you pointed out you compromise with underfunded infrastructure and public services(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids without good teachers, almost no doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.).

Do you know why? Because all good doctors and teachers move to or next to cities with opportunities, not in the middle of nowhere. That's why nobody wants to live there.

True, not for a lot of people on HN but yeah, then you are at the 10% or less indeed.

> on infrastructure and public arrives(shit internet, shit infrastructure, shit schools for your kids, no good doctors, too far from the nearest hospital with specialists, etc.)

Those things are more relevant for some than others but also true; if any of that matters enough to someone to live in a small concrete box and still work 40 hours a week then sure, go for it. I value other things like quiet, space, no stress, nature over any of the above.

Plus, how will you fund your mortgage if you chose to live in a rural area with no tech jobs? Employers here don't accept remote work outside of government mandated quarantine.

That is the same in NL and DE, however, I have never worked in an office and I have been professionally coding for 30 years, mostly for Dutch companies. The ‘secret’ (it is not a secret and it works in Austria too) is to start a limited (or specifically not a 'freelance') company; 30 years ago I borrowed 20k guilders to open it (which used to cost 18k alone) and have cards, leaflets and style for letterheads etc made. Companies hire companies, especially if it looks professional. The company always had 1 employee for 30 years and I never had issues allowing to work wherever; even for large corps like ING, Kluwer and so on.

Also, a guy I hire on upwork sometimes made well over a million in the past years via that site, sitting in his house in ukraine. Without a company or anything like that; in modern times it is not so hard as it was.

You have a cool story and thanks for sharing it but how much of that is survivorship bias? Also, out of professional curiosity, how many clients did you get in Austria.

> how much of that is survivorship bias?

No idea; it's only anecdotal obviously. But not unheard of; it used to be quite normal in Germany to have small (1-2 person) GMBH's to get rather large contracts for big corps and if you have a 'real company' suddenly no-one expects you to rock up monday morning at 9. In the Netherlands it still works well, as it does in Portugal and Spain; other markets I do not know.

> how many clients did you get in Austria

1 around 17 years ago. But, at least from friends and limited experience, so excuse my personal ignorance, I understand that Austrian business is not very different from eastern germany business and I have (also had) quite a lot of clients there. I have more in the western part, but the eastern part is different in etiquette and I had the same, I guess conservative' feel 17 years ago with the Austrian company (trying to find what they are/were called).

But how did you get your customers to just let you be remote from the get go?

Here it would be impossible as, due to the culture, trust is made only through in person meetings. Nobody will just pay company for services without face-to-face meetings and on-prem presence.

There are many consultancy bureaus that don't visit. You need to have a face to face (end 80s/beginning 90s there were telephone calls, but indeed you would not get it cross the line like that) meeting(s). I still do that now. But after you discussed basically the ideas, you can go home to build the software. They don't accept that from freelancers sometimes in NL or DE either, but from 'serious companies' they do. I have not had any case where I had to sit in the office; sure, visit once per few months, but that's it. And driving/train-ing/plane-ing that is a small price to pay (company pays ofcourse).