COURBEFY, France - The village of Courbefy has rustic buildings with fireplaces and exposed beams, a horse stable, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.
Sound nice? It's for sale.
The saga of the abandoned hamlet is a story of flight from rural France, bad economic times, and real estate schemes gone awry. It has turned the mayor of the village next door into a minor celebrity whose office fields inquiries from places as far-flung as Qatar and China.
The village in Limousin, about 280 miles southwest of Paris, was put on the block last week because its latest owners, who had run it as a luxury hotel and restaurant, had long ago stopped paying their mortgage.
The entire hamlet carried an asking price of just $400,000 - about the cost of a studio apartment in Paris. But nobody bid.
So the village fell into the hands of Credit Agricole, which holds the mortgage. The bank hopes to put it up for auction again. This time the odds are more promising: Since word leaked out to the media that an authentic French village was up for sale, Courbefy has swarmed with potential buyers, joined by curious hangers-on.
"It's a real media phenomenon, it's crazy," said Bernard Guilhem, mayor of Saint Nicolas Courbefy, just down the hill from Courbefy.
Who wouldn't, after all, want to own a French village?
Well, Credit Agricole, for one. The bank, eager to unload the property, gave suitors a Thursday deadline to express serious interest by leaving a deposit of $440,000 - by law 10 percent higher than the original asking price. A new auction date would then be set.
More than 100 people have called Credit Agricole lawyer Paul Gerardin's office with queries. Guilhem has been overrun, variously serving as an amateur historian and real estate agent, showing potential buyers and journalists around.
Courbefy has gone through many incarnations. The village goes back at least to Gallo-Roman times, when a road connecting Limoges and Bordeaux passed through, according to Guilhem.
It was the site of a chateau occupied by Jeanne d'Albret, mother of King Henry IV. Its surroundings are dotted with three "miraculous springs" whose waters supposedly have healing powers.
Local lore has it that early in the Hundred Years' War between England and France, the residents of Limoges hired a mercenary to chase away the English who had settled at Courbefy.
Ironically, it could be the English who save Courbefy. Wealthy Britons in recent decades have flocked to this corner of France, mostly to the neighboring Dordogne region, where they have scooped up vacation homes and retirement properties.
The last couple to live in Courbefy left in the early 1970s, according to Rachel Mallefont, who grew up in Saint Nicolas Courbefy and went to school with children who lived en haut - up there, as the residents of Saint Nicolas call Courbefy.
It was not uncommon for villages to be abandoned in that era. In the 1970s, running water was brought to the last corners of France but many people left villages where hooking up to the grid was too difficult and expensive, according to Francis Cahuzac, president of the French Commission for the Protection of Historic and Rural Heritage.
Other villages were abandoned as farming became industrialized and small plots like those in Courbefy didn't lend themselves to mechanization.
Many of the hamlets have been repopulated, often taken up by foreign buyers. But others still languish in obscurity.
Courbefy followed the former path for many years, passing through several hands - many foreign - becoming variously a summer camp for children, a property to rent for vacations and conferences, a luxury hotel and restaurant. But folly seemed to lie at the end of every road.
Its latest incarnation began at the start of the last decade.
Sometime in 2008 or early 2009, the owners abandoned it, according to Guilhem, who says they may have been done in by an overly ambitious plan to renovate - a familiar tale of property bought at peak prices whose owners can't keep up with interest payments once crisis hits.
Guilhem hopes for something that produces a handful of jobs and breathes new life into the place.