upworthy

rent

Culture

California man buys a small island in Finland for $31k instead of down payment on a house

Russell and his girlfriend recently finished building their own log cabin on the island.

Couple buys small island because it was cheaper than a house

The cost of living is getting quite ridiculous. Pretty soon people will feel like they need to take a loan out just to buy basic groceries. But there's one area that has people struggling beyond compare and that's the extreme cost of not only rent but purchasing a home. Many people are being completely priced out of the market causing people to rent longer than they'd like while some are having to move back in with their parents.

Due to the rising price of housing in American specifically, more people are choosing to relocate outside of the country in hopes to maintain a better quality of life on less money. There are entire Reddit channels dedicated to expat living and Americans looking to become expats.

Oliver Russell, 24 was slightly ahead of the curve with his exit from the United States. Though he is American, he's also half Finnish giving him dual citizenship with ties to the country through friends and family that he visited often.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Russell grew up in Laguna Beach, California but after moving Colorado, he was denied in-state tuition which made affording business school nearly impossible. That's when he decided to take advantage of the free college education Finland offers for it's citizens, he had always dreamed of moving to Helsinki anyway.

It just so happened after getting settled into his second homeland, he met a girl. Helena Tomaszewska, 20 is Dutch and once the two got serious about dating the started looking at getting a summer home, which is standard in Finland. But during their search for the perfect home, the two discovered houses were expensive. The down payment alone seemed like entirely too much money for the young couple.

"In Finland, the summer cottage life is a huge part of the culture and I would come out here every summer. I loved the summer cottage life and wanted one of my own," Russell tells SWNS.

ocean, life, islands, life hack, life hacks, abandoned island, finland, california A man relaxes in a chair in front of the oceanImage via Canva

They continued their search, checking out different real estate websites for something in their price range. Just when it seemed like the pair was having a run of bad luck locating an affordable property for to serve as their summer home, Russell came across an island. Yes, an island. By the time the new Finnish resident came across the island, it had been on the market for 10 years and lucky for them it was within their budget.

The couple only paid $31k for the 2.5 acre island.

Unlucky for them, the island was completely overgrown with trees, bushes and moss. No one had lived there for more than 10 years so if they were going to build their summer home there, they had a lot of work cut out for them. That big detail didn't deter them one bit. The two young adults got to work.

"Our plan is to build a log cabin completely by ourselves with no experience and transform it into a fully functioning summer cottage," the man shares in a video that shows him chopping down trees and shaving bark off of logs.

finland, island, life hacks, life hack, california A couple walks along the beach on an islandImage via Canva

Russell and Tomaszewska purchased the island in March 2024 and have made several trips to ready the land for a permanent structure.

Russell tells Lad Bible, "We made a frame out of logs that we felled from trees and I got some decking from a hardware store. We then built an outhouse and I am now trying to build a shower structure so we can wash while we're on the island. We wanted to get the base camp set up so we have a comfortable place to stay while the big building happens next year."

There's a requirement for the island, and it's that a certain portion of it needs to be a sauna. It's unclear if this is a requirement by the Finnish government or a deal between Russell and his girlfriend.

As of late summer 2025, Russell reports that the cabin is done and they are moving on to their other plans for the rest of the island.

The build is pretty impressive for a couple of students without much experience and only an electric chainsaw!

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Living on an island with no neighbors really cuts down on the chances of unexpected visitors. But a trip to town get a gallon of milk or toilet paper would require a boat ride so hopefully they're also including a large storage area.

How about you, would you live on a deserted island?

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

California has a housing crisis. Rent is so astronomical, one San Francisco company is offering bunk bedsfor $1,200 a month; Google even pledged$1 billion to help tackle the issue in the Bay Area. But the person who might fix it for good? Kanye West.

The music mogul first announced his plan to build low-income housing on Twitter late last year.

"We're starting a Yeezy architecture arm called Yeezy home. We're looking for architects and industrial designers who want to make the world better," West tweeted.


But this isn't just any low-income housing. It has a twist. A very big, "Star Wars"-themed twist.

The homes are currently being built in an undisclosed California location, though West recently met with investors in San Francisco. Renderings of the home were posted on Instagram by fashion designer Jalil Peraza. The posts have since been deleted, but we're certain they're going to mimic a certain galaxy far, far away.

There is literally no such thing as 'sex with underage women.'

The prefabricate structures are going to resemble Luke Skywalker's childhood home on Tatooine from "A New Hope" and might also be used as a place for homeless to live, according to the New York Post.


West showed off the homes in a recent interview with Forbes, which describes them as "a trio of structures that look like the skeletons of wooden spaceships. They're the physical prototypes of his concept, each oblong and dozens of feet tall."

"West has been working with a team to design prefabricated structures that sport the same austere aesthetic, with the goal of deploying them as low-income housing units," Zack O'Malley Greenburg wrote in Forbes. "He tells me they could be used as living spaces for the homeless, perhaps sunk into the ground with light filtering in through the top."

Trump just bizarrely claimed Arnold Schwarzenegger had 'died.' An unfazed Arnold flexed back.

The fact that the houses mimic Skywalker's home isn't too out of left field. West has slipped "Star Wars"references into his songs, and even says his house in Hidden Hills has "wabi-sabi vibes."

While there seems to be an impulse to not take West seriously — he's been called "crazy" more than anyone should — these houses sound alot better than paying $1,200 for the same sleeping arrangement as summer camp.