Cool (and resourceful)

This Converted Cave in France Cost $1.35

Faced with steep rents, young couples are renovating abandoned troglodyte homes in the French countryside, like this 11th-century structure nestled into the side of a mountain in the Loire Valley

Alexis Lamoureux was 23 when he returned to Amboise, an idyllic town once home to Leonardo da Vinci that sits on the banks of France’s Loire River. Forced to leave another village after the bar he was working in closed down, he began looking for a job and a place for him and his girlfriend, Lotte van Riel, to live.

Lamoureux heard about a troglodyte home that had once belonged to his great aunt and went to check it out. The abandoned space, left in ruin for the past 25 years, was a crude network of unstable rooms carved out of a large rock face. Littered with trash and having no electricity, running water or sewage system, it was a dream come true. Lamoureux headed straight to the government agency that handles abandoned dwellings and was excited to discover it was up for auction the very next week. He offered the princely sum of 1 euro, which the agency accepted.

No bank would loan the money to fix the place up, so he and his girlfriend worked their butts off for three years to make the money necessary. There's a nice gallery on the article's webpage of some of the rooms and the exterior.