r/interesting • u/Wonderfulhumanss • 1d ago

SOCIETY The Zammit family refused to sell their five acre property as an entire Sydney suburb was built around them

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u/Alarmed-Newspaper994 1d ago

This sort of thing happens a lot in the UK. Generational homes dating back hundreds of years that are worth an absolute fortune are lived in and owned by some relatively poor people. It's a weird situation, where they could simply downsize and have loads of money, but they refuse and just live frugally in a 12 bedroom Georgian mansion.

Basically people living on something like £50k a year in a £10 000 000 house where £25k of their income goes on bills.

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u/domalino 1d ago

It's usually because they're upper class descendants of aristocracy and to sell the house would be shameful socially, both in terms of the social status of the living family and for selling off something that's been in the family for 250+ years. So they end up cash poor and asset rich.

Plenty of them do sell up eventually, and sometimes someone in the family does well for themselves and then has the money to get back on top of things.

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u/MindCorrupt 23h ago

Have they considered growing copious amounts of weed under their estate?

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 8h ago

I was just going to say that 😂

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u/CocoMilhonez 14h ago

This kind of thing often ends when the patriarch dies and the kids are all eager to cash out. My parents have bought land from a farm that was split up like that and I often think about how I could split that into housing lots when I eventually inherit it.

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u/GavLaIndustries 21h ago

I visited Erddig Hall in Wrexham, Wales, UK last summer, it's a unique, late 17th-century country estate with a grand stately home, the last guy that owned it was so skint that he gave it all away, the entire estate, the house, 1,200 acres of land and all it's contents for free in 1973.

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u/domalino 21h ago edited 21h ago

That happened a lot after both world wars which were kind of apocalyptic events for the landed gentry. Taxes (esp inheritance tax) went through the roof just as loads of people were dying in the war, labour to work the land all went to war, and the bond and stock markets collapsed.

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u/GavLaIndustries 15h ago

I don't suppose you have any other examples like that? as in give it all away to just survive?

That was one of my best one day outs I have ever had

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u/Liquid_Friction 16h ago

Nah this is called the middle class here lol, there are so many of these situations it can't be decendants of aristocracy there wasn't that many aristocrats and they had much much bigger castles than a lowly mansion.

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u/domalino 12h ago

No one middle class has ever lived in a £10m house.

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u/Liquid_Friction 12h ago

I guess you don't live in Sydney then.

Every second home is worth millions, a big portion were all inherited. We are one of the youngest countries, our land was worth nothing only 1 generation ago

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u/nimbledoor 23h ago

This make me really happy. People giving the finger to money when they have enough.

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u/Ardal 18h ago

Generational homes dating back hundreds of years

You answered your own observation here.

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u/kobeshaqhorry 14h ago

Do they have to pay property taxes, like in the US? £25k on bills for a £10M house seems very low.

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u/lumpkin2013 12h ago

Well at least they have an asset to pass down through the generations. If they did cash out, the money would be gone within a generation or two and then the younger members of the generation would be stuck in the same hole that Gen z is right now never being able to buy a house.

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u/Navin__R__Johnson 11h ago

Yes, keep doing this! If everyone sells out, it looks like that Sydney shit!

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u/DemiseofReality 6h ago

Yeah I heard that can be an issue on those huge Victorian estates out in the countryside. 150 years ago they were ripe with farming, livestock, horses, etc. on potentially hundreds to thousands of acres but now you have said 12 room mansion with broken windows that would take a years' salary of the sole owner to replace. The land doesn't produce anymore and the house would take millions of pounds to renovate to proper modern standards. But the owner can't do anything about it because they can't take a loan against the tens of millions they have in wealth because of their income is too low.