French village for sale for £275,000 Courbefy, in the Limousin region, comes complete with 19 buildings and a swimming pool and at one time had a population of around 200, although it is now largely deserted. Prospective buyers have until Friday to put in a bid for the village, which is less than 30 miles from Limoges. In the 1990s, an attempt to turn Courbefy into a holiday village was abandoned because of the costs, and locals now say it is mainly home to "thieves, drunks and squatters." Jean-Pierre Chateau, who lives nearby told Le Figaro newspaper that the place was now a "ghost village." Buying an entire village is not an entirely unusual affair. In November the English village of Askham Richard, on the outskirts of York, complete with three farms, 14 residential properties and 54 acres of woodland, was put up for sale for £6.5 million.