You can buy this deserted South Dakota town for just $250,000

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swett town for sale

Courtesy Coldwell Banker

The Swett Tavern, now closed down.

Want to be the mayor of your own ghost town?

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Sixteen months after the South Dakota town of Swett went on the market for $399,000 - a price that lured many buyers, but none who could follow through - Swett is back on the market.

This time, the asking price is just $250,000.

Local real estate agent Stacie Montgomery handles the listing - a 6.16-acre property that comes with an empty house (thought to be haunted) and a defunct bar called the Swett Tavern.

But the town isn't back on the market because people lacked interest in 2014, as Montgomery tells the Rapid City Journal.

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In fact, it became something of an international sensation.

"I got my first media call at 11 that morning from FOX's New York bureau and the phone did not stop ringing for two weeks," she told the Journal. "I was getting calls in the middle of the night, answering emails at 2 in the morning, and got several verbal offers and three written offers."

But due to some of the prospects' faulty finances (among other things), the offers she received fell through.

Now, 16 months after the first go around, the Nebraska bank that handles the property has cleaned up parts of the ghost town, removing a beat-up truck and three large trailers.

swett town for sale

Courtesy Coldwell Banker

Montgomery tells the Rapid City Journal that the prospective buyers for Swett are mostly people who want to live off the grid, hunters, production companies looking to film reality shows, and people who just like the idea of having their own town.

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Swett has some company in the realm of outrageously cheap real estate listings.

In the Sicilian town of Gangi, the local government has offered to give away free homes to anyone who agrees to restore the dilapidated structures back to good health.

The stunt was designed to attract tourists since much of the local population vanished over the last several years, mostly because of immigration to the US and parts of South America.

The "free" homes came with more than $17,000 in hidden fees, however.

South Dakota has some history with last-ditch sales, like when a Philippines-based church bought 46 acres of land and properties in Scenic, South Dakota, for $700,000 in 2011.

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Now that Christmas is coming up, maybe Swett can be the gift for the person who has everything.

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