And yea, it seems to be common occurance in all small formerly agrarian towns. I've heard similar stories occur in towns with a heavy migrant presence in Ningxia, Southern Romania, and Honduras. The life of a Garbeister/Guest Worker/Blue Collar Migrant I guess.
It demonstrates the folly of everybody’s status driven home buying in most any city around the world. I think the underlying behaviour is is not limited to migrants: it is just that the migrants so clearly demonstrate how deeply irrational we all are. [edit: Stereotypically] we think of the migrants wasting money on empty houses as crazy people, without identifying with them as being exactly the same as ourselves.
In fact the folly is more of a problem in developed countries because homeowners usually borrow as much money as they can to compete with others to buy a home: yet somehow a huge mortgage is not seen as irrational.
Disclaimer: I have a mortgage and on paper I have done very well on house appreciation over the last few years. I believe that renting is shorting the property market because we each require 1 unit of shelter. I admit I have been long the property investment market (even worse: mortgages are highly geared investments, and you can only get mortgages similar to variable mortgages in New Zealand).
Maybe I am digging a hole here, but we are in the context of a BBC article about obscenely wealthy old mansions in Tamil Nadu, and also a British documentary by the BBC that feels condescending towards the people it presents, and perhaps an alien depiction of the relatively wealthy migrants. The doco mentions selling a hectare of field for USD400000, and a quote for building a block of flats at USD700000.