IMAGINE you could buy a house anywhere in the world; where would you escape to? A Cypriot shack in the Troodos mountains? A French manoir in the Dordogne? Or an old German dance hall on the Rhine?

OK, so perhaps the last option wouldn't figure in your Top Ten. But picture this: a whole lot of house for very little cash, efficient hospitals, good schools and roads -wine, but not a drop of Liebfraumilch in quaffing distance, and beautiful scenery to boot. You might be thinking again.

"Stuff works here," says Paul Sampson, 28, who upped sticks and moved to Germany five years ago with his wife, Claire. They liked it so much that they set up their own management consultancy and have just bought a five- bedroom house, with half an acre of land, two barns and a paddock, near Wiesbaden in Hunsruck. All in all, it's big enough to live in comfortably, welcome weekly consignments of guests, and run their business from. If they should ever happen upon a spare moment, they can convert the enormous loft and barns, or even keep goats. All for Euro 150,000 (Pounds 100,000).

"We knew we wanted an old-style house but we also wanted bright, good-sized rooms," he says. Home before this was a rented flat in Wiesbaden, west of Frankfurt. But when they discovered they were expecting their first child their priorities changed. Claire found it hard to picture herself scaling the stairs to the fourth floor when nine months pregnant, and even less so with a young baby and shopping.

"Buying in Wiesbaden would have been too expensive for the size of house we wanted, so that was out of the question," Paul adds. Eventually they stuck a pin in the map and it landed on Pleizenhausen, a small village (population 300) in the Hunsruck region, 30 miles south of Koblenz.

Perched between the Rhine and the Mosel rivers, the Hunsruck boasts fairytale landscapes peppered with castles and fortresses, and hills carpeted with vineyards and dark forests that stretch down to the rivers. Tourists flock to experience national parks, lakes, locally produced Riesling and beers, as much as to live out fable and legend. But in Germany a Deutschlander's home is not his castle. It is a country of renters -only 41 per cent of Germans are homeowners compared with Britain's 69 per cent. "Most of our friends are professionals, but none of them owns their own home."

This didn't put the Sampsons off. "We had started to think about buying about a year ago and, when we found out that I was expecting, it seemed the natural thing to do," Claire says. Paul felt the purchase would be a canny move: "The market is weak. House prices are low, as is home ownership -but the area has had a real boost from tourism and a new airport."

The property they fell in love with was an old Bavarian-style bar, which once upon a time was the village dance hall. The interior had potential but needed plenty of imagination: it had last been done up more than 30 years ago when brown and orange were de rigeur.

After a straightforward sale, they set about the dirty work of renovating. "We invited friends over for skip-filling weekends, and Jurgen, a builder friend, oversaw the whole thing," says Claire. They stripped the house from top to bottom, peeling back layers of interior design history, in the form of lino, until they hit gold: a beautiful larch floor. Four weeks and about Euro 30,000 later, they had a new home.

The Sampsons aren't in the slightest homesick. "Paul and I have moved around a lot but never before have we felt so welcome, so quickly," Claire says. "After Ella was born we woke up to find a 6ft wooden stork outside our front door which in local tradition had been welcoming newborns for the past 25 years."

Generations of families live in the 900-year-old village of Pleizenhausen. Paul and Claire's arrival had a few curtains twitching -some of the 300 locals can't shake the habit of their dancing days and pop in unannounced from time to time to say hello.

The couple's plans stretched beyond renovation. Not only had they found a home but they had also spotted a gap in the market. They saw business potential in helping people to buy property in the area. Tourism in Hunsruck is growing every year and Frankfurt's Hahn airport is a landing pad for no-frills carriers, transformed from a grotty airbase to a swanky airport. More demand for second homes means that local property prices are plumping up. The couple are are so certain that this is a sign of good things to come that they have just launched a property website, www.german-property-services.com, with the agent who sold them their home. Claire is upbeat: "Here you can get a small cottage from Pounds 20,000 and use it for holidays or even rent it out."

So what's the moral of the story? Well, next time you're dreaming of that shack in the Troodos mountains, think again. Give Germany a try - who knows, you might even end up one of the locals knocking on the Sampsons' door.

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