Entire Communist-era German retirement village going for a bargain price

Got some spare cash lying around? An entire village in Germany is going on the market this weekend for the princely sum of €125,000.

Alwine, north of Dresden in the former Soviet satellite of East Germany, is on the market for the second time in two decades.

The village has a population of just 20 people, most of whom are retired with the exception of a single family.

Much of the village is old and in disrepair, with little or no work taking place there since the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the time of German reunification in 1990 the village population had peaked at around 50 but when the coal plant that owned the village shut down the following year, the younger inhabitants moved west and never returned.

A private investor purchased it for one Deutschmark in 2000 but did little to improve the tiny village.

Residents have decided not to buy their own land but instead allow for a private buyer, with the hope of working with them to restore the village.

Andreas Claus, the mayor of the Uebigau-Wahrenbrück district that contains Alwine, said he would invite whoever buys the village "to see how we can try to develop something here in collaboration with the people and not against them".