I have a chum who lives on a wonderfully hot, sunny mediterranean isle.  A jewel of a place and her villa is some 40 km above the main town, in the lower mountain regeion.  There are many attractive properties scattered around – a few near enough to each other to constitutue being called a village and other remotely set into the side of the mountains.  Each one is owned by a family somewhere – usually a grandaughter of one of the village elders.  The rather smart rule there is that property and land is passed down through the female side of families.  However, in order to stop whole swathes of land being sold off to developers for the next crop of second homes and holiday villas, the older generation leaveland to three or four daughters, knowing the complex inheritence rules put them off trying to disentangle it all.   A good agent and solicitor over there are a must.