The headline on CNN Travel read, “This US couple bought a house in France for $36,000”, so of course we had to read that story. Author Tamara Hardingham-Gill recounted how California residents, Robin and Jim, were visiting friends in Cajarc (about 2.5 hours north of Carcassonne) when they began fantasizing about living in France. By chance, a cousin of the town’s mayor was selling her 800-year-old house for $36,000, an affordable figure for which Jim said they could either buy a new car or a house in France. After spending $12,000 on renovations they now have a comfortable home where they spend their summers enjoying a simpler life and less consumerism than they find in California. I wondered if bargains like this were still available.

The first we’d heard of buying a house for 1€ was years ago when the TV program “House Hunters International” featured homes in declining villages in Italy that had experienced earthquakes. In an effort to attract new residents, buildings were offered for the price of a liter of milk to buyers willing to move to a village and renovate the home. Depending on the locale, other requirements might include finishing the work within a certain time period, hiring local workers, spending at least a set amount of money, and residing in the home yourself. According to the website called “1eurohouses” there are properties like that all across Italy and even some railway stations and lighthouses for anyone wanting something unique.

You can buy a baguette in France for about 1€ but the idea of getting a house for that price hasn’t really caught on here as compared to Italy. However, there are bigger projects with slightly higher costs that could give you multiple dwellings and the TV program “Help, We Bought a Village” can show you how others have done that. Landscape gardening husbands, Paul and Yip, paid 25,000€ for an abandoned village in Normandy and took on the project that included a row of cottages (only one of which was habitable), two barns, a stable, and a huge stone bread oven in a setting of two acres. Other couples with larger budgets have taken on even bigger challenges.

For those with deeper pockets and the desire to live in a castle, the French TV channel M6 has “Le Château de mes Rêves” (The Castle of my Dreams) that follows a dozen families restoring châteaux across France. The least expensive purchase price I could find for one of their featured properties was 500,000€; however, with an online real estate search I saw prices starting at 30,000€. I’ll put a link below to the site called “bien’ici” where you can click on “Voir Les Annonces” for all of their listings and then choose “Château” for the “type de bien”.  

Meanwhile, back here in the real world where folks like those in the first paragraph above just want a comfortable house to live in at an affordable price, there are indeed options. Our neighborhood real estate agency (photos marked “Keops” are from their website) lists houses in the Carcassonne area from 30,000€ to 1.4 million. On another site you’d have a choice of a dozen apartments for around 50,000€. Even before moving to France, at that latter price–cheaper still,10 years ago–we had considered buying an apartment just to already have a fixed address in town, although we settled on initially renting a house for our first year.

The US couple mentioned above who have a home in Cajarc used words such as “beauty, local market, narrow streets, and simplicity” in describing their village life. Their neighbors were “curious about them, immediately accepted, and adopted.” Happily we can say exactly the same about life here.

Hint: While houses and châteaux for sale are included on real estate sales websites, I had to do a general Internet search to find villages in France. Successful search terms were “acheter un village” or  “un hameau” and “à vendre un village” or “un hameau”. Additional TV shows that might be of interest are “Escape to the Château DIY” and “Château DIY”.

Photo notes: The featured photo across the top of today’s post is Château d’Azay-le-Rideau (sorry, not for sale) and the tower in the first paragraph is on the grounds of Château de Lamostonie.

Real estate sites:

Bien’ici: https://www.bienici.com/

Seloger: https://www.seloger.com/