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US$1 equals 1.1 euro A feeding frenzy has begun in the Languedoc. For two reasons primarily.  First (and perhaps most obvious) Provence has become too expensive. Buyers are looking elsewhere, especially to the Languedoc—which offers similar advantages of a sunny climate, excellent food, and a relaxed way of life, but, because it’s a poorer region, lower prices. Add to this that France’s famous TGV (high-speed) trains, which, since March, have been carrying passengers in comfort all the way from Paris to Montpellier in a mere three-and-a-half hours. Montpellier village houses are suddenly being snapped up as pied-à-terres by sun-starved weekending Parisians. After several decades of dormancy, suddenly Gignac, Meze, Pezenas, Caux, St. Thibery, Bessan, and other towns and villages in this region scattered within a few miles of the azure waters of the Mediterranean are the most sought-after in all France.

And they’re all looking to the Languedoc.

Market mania

Real estate agents are saying they’re short of properties…prices are shooting up…people who go away “to think about it” are losing out…

I have found to my dismay that it’s not sales hype. It’s true.

I had my own house on the market for almost eight months and despaired of ever selling it. Then, suddenly, at the beginning of March, everything changed. It sold to a woman who’d come over from England to look. Mine was the last house she looked at before leaving for the airport. She called the estate agent from England that evening and bought.

Yippee! I thought. And off I went to find the house of my dreams. 
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I went to estate agents, looked through their properties with a thrill of anticipation, and made appointments to view two houses in two nice villages. The evening before the first appointment the agent called to cancel, saying the house had sold that afternoon. I was disappointed, but never mind, there was always house number two. A half-hour later, I got a call from the other agent. That house had sold that afternoon also. On Saturday, I walked through the lively, sunny market in Pezenas to look in the windows of a large agency, saw a house I liked, and told them I’d like to arrange a viewing. We made an appointment for me to see the house on Monday. I was at the agency at 11 o’clock on the dot. The agent started to steer me into his office. When I resisted, saying I had an appointment to view, he told me the house had sold that morning.

Rob Thorne of Southern France told me of a client he had over from England. He showed him three village houses. The fellow bought all three, believing that in a year he will be able to sell them for a profit of at least 50%.

Take heart

If owning a French home near the Med is your dream, although the prices of property in the Languedoc are up perhaps 15% since last year, they are still bargains compared with seaside homes in the United States, Britain, Ireland…and Provence. And they offer good investment value.

What type of property, then, offers best value for money?

Your best buy as of writing is a maison de village or a maison de ville—a village house or a town house. 

Built on the old Languedocian pattern of three narrow stories, these homes are not spacious. However, you won’t have to spend a fortune to renovate them as you would an old farmhouse. Solidly built, and with water, sewage, and telephone lines already in, you won’t need to underpin the foundations or undertake major renovations.

My own house (the one I just sold), in the Old Quarter of one of these market towns in the far south, is around 350 years old. But those Languedocian builders of old sure knew a thing or two about building to last.

The walls are solid, and you can enjoy your quiet time without the clatter of Madame next door fixing lunch for a family of five. No listening to the neighbors argue unless everyone’s windows are open. 

These modest little vins ordinaires can be tiny—as small as 107 square feet on each of three floors. Certainly, these dimensions wouldn’t suit a foreign couple as a primary residence, but they make great little pieds-á-terres. 
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Besides, when you’ve traveled all the way to the south of France for your vacation, you’re not going to be lying around the house. You’ll be off to the beach, exploring old villages, having leisurely wine-soaked meals, and enjoying the pace.  And here’s the best part: You can still get a tiny village house on a narrow old street (therefore without much sunlight) for around $18,000. Slightly larger houses of around 330 square feet per story, depending on the interior, go for $45,000 to $60,000. If the house has already been renovated, you can count on the price being higher by around one-third. If it has either a tiny terrace or a tiny courtyard, add another $9,000.

As I said, I believe these properties offer good investment potential…because the centers of ancient towns constitute a finite inventory. Invest in a house in the center of a historic town, and you’ve got your little piece of history—that (I would argue) can go nowhere but up in value. The Ancient Quarter of Pezenas, for example, an area dating from 1200 to 1700, has around 500 houses and apartments. That’s it. You can’t build extensions, you can’t put in a terrace. Demand is always likely to be high for such properties—because no one’s building anymore of them.

Premium outdoor space

This brings me to another important point. Although places with an outdoor space cost more (on average $10,000), they are a good buy, precisely because the mairies of many towns and villages have begun to refuse permission for removal of part of the roof to create a terrace. Therefore, with an eye to resale value, a house with a terrace is worth the extra if you can afford it.

Larger village or town houses—from around 1,000 square feet of habitable space—will set you back $80,000 and $90,000 depending on the amount of space, interior condition (renovated or non-renovated), and existence or absence of a garage. Some have three or four bedrooms and two bathrooms (which, although functional, you will almost always have to renovate to American or British aesthetic standards).

What’s the difference between a maison de village and a maison de ville? One’s in a village and the other is in a town. That’s all. The prices are on a par. It’s a matter of taste. Towns are livelier, villages more peaceful. Most old villages are close to towns—maybe five or six miles away, so there’s plenty of coming and going. And towns offer generous free parking because they want villagers in their shops and restaurants and at their entertainment events.

But be warned. Now that the trend has been established, these maisons de ville and maisons de village are flying off the shelves. Helene Talbott of Agence Guy in Pezenas told me they already have a shortage of stock. So if you’re interested in a maison de ville/village in a popular area, better get cracking.

But how do these maisons de village compare with other properties, such as villas, modern townhouses, and apartments?

An established villa with a garden will cost in the region of $230,000 (although for this, you often get a pool). If you’re looking to buy close to a hotspot like Montpellier, tack on 25% to 30%. Here are a few examples of properties currently for sale: 

Ten minutes outside Montpellier, there’s an attractive villa with 2,282 square feet of habitable space and one-third acre of land. It’s contemporary and beautifully maintained and is selling for $490,000. 

At Cap d’Agde, a less desirable location, you can get a traditional four-bedroom villa with two bathrooms in one of the quieter areas with a fabulous view of the Mediterranean, plus a swimming pool, for $410,000. I would not buy at Cap d’Agde, no matter how lovely the house or how good the price. 
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You must check locations very carefully when you consider buying in France, because they vary widely. It all looks glamorous at first sight, but don’t let that brilliant Mediterranean sun blind you.

Cap d’Agde, for example, is Coney Island and Blackpool rolled into one nightmare experience. Plus it has the largest nudist beach in Europe…and large, established families of Gypsies who don’t subscribe to a peaceful life and to whose activities the police turn an inexplicable blind eye.

On the surface, Agde looks like an attractive town. It’s only when you are aware of the flotsam and jetsam that adjoining Cap d’Agde pulls through the town that the shine wears off. 

Villas to renovate

Villas to renovate are hard to come by—most having already been snapped up. If you can find one, you’ll pay around $90,000 plus.

A new villa in a housing estate will be more pricey because everything’s state-of-the-art and built-in. In effect you’ll be living in a new suburb. This isn’t necessarily bad. You may want to live closer to the action and the supermarkets than a village, but not too close to the hub of it all. 

Be aware that French developers are as greedy as any developers. Their homes tend to be pokey. New homes going up on the edge of a large market town WHAT TOWN?? have living areas of 1,100 square feet, plus garages, on land of 4,930 square feet, for $125,000. There’s one just outside a village (WHAT VILLAGE?) with 1,033 square feet of habitable space plus a garage for $115,000. These are not bad prices, and they usually include all legal fees. 

There are also new “garden estates” (these include garden apartments), and at least one notaire I talked to has noticed several people buying homes in a garden estate together. Four foreign families, for example, may buy four villas on the same estate, making it, in effect, a little enclave of their own. This seems to defeat the purpose of moving to France, but to each his own.

New apartments right on the Med

New apartments in Sete on the Med are going for $40,000 for a two-bedroom. Typical of new developments, they’re small, and I don’t think sound insulation was looming large in the developer’s mind when he chose his materials. 

On the other hand, you can still find older apartments with more space right in the center of Montpellier, the préfecture (capital) of the entire l’Hérault. Montpellier is an ancient university city (Nostradamus earned his medical degree here and its medical school is still highly regarded throughout France 900 years later) with a big-city chic. Here, you can find a four-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms and a balcony, to renovate, near the area of the train and bus station (at the moment not a great area), with sensational old, high-ceilinged space, for $60,000.
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Or, in a better area, you can pay that much for a small studio with a view. At the other end of the scale is the chic little town of Palavas les Flots. A marina, jaunty white yachts bobbing in the brilliant blue harbor, agreeable marina-side cafés, and chic cars vying for an illegal parking space… You’ll pay $69,000 for what a realtor calls “a petite three-bedroom duplex with a ‘gardenette’.” It boasts a mere 420 square feet of space. Another apartment I recently spotted in Palavas had two bedrooms and a glassed-in loggia. It measured a princely 441 square feet and cost $74,000. At least you’d never have to run to answer the phone. At these prices, you seldom get parking. Les Flots in Palavas is sweet and chic at the same time and adjoins sophisticated and worldly Montpellier. But you pay the price.

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This is why I say best buys in the Languedoc right now: maisons des villages ou villes. You can find them with up to 1,300 square feet, though the norm is around 900 or 1,000 square feet. A word of warning: If you suffer from arthritis or weak knee joints, these homes are not for you. The stairs in these tall narrow houses are steep. Also, because they don’t usually get much sun (though some do), they’re cold in the winter. Always ask about the heating.

What are the estate agents saying? And how do their opinions apply to your own situation?

Helene Talbott of Agence Guy, a Frenchwoman who lived 20 years in London, is completely bi-lingual and takes a typically practical French point of view. 

“If you’re looking for a holiday home in the Languedoc to which you’re eventually planning to retire, I don’t recommend an intermediate step. 

“In other words, if you’re planning to retire to a village or town house, fine. But if you’re looking at that as a foothold for vacations for now, but as a place that you’ll resell before you retire in order to purchase the home of your dreams, I advise against it, and so do my colleagues. We believe that the better properties will appreciate faster than the maisons des villages.”

A village house may be a really good buy right now, but when you go to sell it, it will have enjoyed a modest appreciation, yet still be a good buy for the next purchaser. In the meantime, the price of your dream property will have galloped ahead, Pegasus-like, maybe out of your reach.
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“The property market in the whole of l’Herault is buoyant,” Helen told me. “It’s all going up pretty fast—especially as we used to think of France as a dormant market—but what’s going up fastest is those ideal, desirable houses and big, well-finished or well-renovated apartments.”

Helene’s argument is good, but it should be weighed against the advantage of buying an interim property while you get to know the place. Unless you’ve been coming to France for years, you may not be able to judge what area will ultimately suit you without owning here for a while. If you decide the first area you chose doesn’t really measure up, it’s easier to resell a modest maison de village than a villa.

Rob Thorne of Southern France has a different point of view: “The village house is desirable in many ways for people seeking second homes because they can be safely (usually) locked up and left empty for six months at a time.”

Thorne continues: “Properties with outside space—a terrace, a small courtyard with room for a table and a couple of chairs—have, since last summer, been the stars of the Herault property market with prices rising to match. These in turn have started pulling up the prices of the ‘no outside space’ properties in the prettier villages and towns. The band wagon is definitely rolling."
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Bottom line, if you have any interest in French country life, buy now. If you change your mind about living in France and sell, you’ll have made money. If you decide to stay, you’ll have bought just at right time. The euro While many people expected the introduction of the euro to cause a dramatic increase in prices, this in fact hasn’t materialized. Yes, there has been some creeping upward of property prices as people have rounded up when making their franc-to-euro conversions. But the euro hasn’t made a major impact on the property market yet, despite citizens of the several Northern European countries that adopted the euro no longer having to worry about currency exchange rates. But on the Richter scale, the euro hasn’t really registered on the property market in the south of France.