Well, yeah it has been vacant all that time. But thing is, they live in a small fishing village. When my wife grew up there it was still small at 500-600 people, but they (and a nearby village) could support a small school, a couple stores, church. As with many rural places, any young people don't want to stay there, so the population has been declining for years, it's around 250 now. The school was torn down years ago, the church cut back to one service a month, there is one small corner store that tries to survive by doubling as a post office, even the only bar closed a few years back, so that's saying something. Anyway, long story short, when people die, the houses sit empty because they just can't sell when there are no buyers. The choice is A) tear it down B) let it sit and rot away. Sadly, the latter is done more often than not. On a rare occasion if the house is architecturally unique or on a nice piece of land, it will be bought by someone as a summer cottage, but that's definitely the exception not the rule.