We seem to write a lot on this blog about where to settle in France and that’s for a couple of reasons. It’s the second most requested topic of information that we are asked for; budget is the first. Once you realize that you can afford to live here— “hey, those two guys are retired and they seem happy”—you next want to figure out where to go. There are, by the way, 34,955 French communes (villages, towns, cities) to choose from so there are lots of choices. Over in the right hand column you’ll find a tag marked “Where to live in France” that will take you to more than 20 posts that we’ve published on this subject. An online newspaper had an article that grouped several websites covering this question, so I thought it would be helpful to do the same here.

Let’s start with the sites we’ve featured on the blog. France doesn’t have a comprehensive multiple listing service (MLS or Zillow, for example) that we knew of in the US where one website would show you almost every house for sale in a city. The closest “all purpose” sites that we have are:

Bien’ici: https://www.bienici.com/

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

Both give you the opportunity to look for houses or apartments, and then detail the rooms, bathrooms, outdoor space, etc.

Once you have pinpointed in which city you might want to live, you can get a listing of the real estate agencies in that location by doing this Internet search:

“agence immobilier (city name)”

When I did that for Carcassonne, Google gave me 114 results in our area that I could display on a map and sort by distance from the city center. That’s especially helpful since residents often list their homes for sale with the closest agency so I could consult the websites of the agencies located in the neighborhoods that interested me.

When you want “just the facts” you might want to consult the government’s own statistical service, L’Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (INSEE): https://www.insee.fr/fr/accueil. That’s often the official source that many newspapers and websites use to offer their own, easier to understand version of the ratings. We have a blog post concerning Carcassonne’s ranking as #1 for ecology from the weekly news magazine L’Express: https://www.lexpress.fr/

While you might not find a website that will give you a comprehensive listing of what’s for sale, there is one that keeps track of average sales prices for houses and apartments all over the country. It’s called Meilleurs Agents https://www.meilleursagents.com/ and when we bought our house the price per square meter shown was, as they say, right on the money.

The newspaper Le Parisien https://www.leparisien.fr/ has articles about where in Paris and within the surrounding suburbs to live plus occasional reports about the best retirement spots or the cheapest communities all over France that we’ve included on the blog.

If living in a university town interests you, for the last 18 years the student organization L’Union Nationale des Etudiant∙e∙s de France https://unef.fr/  has published their listing of the cost of living in dozens of university towns across this country.

Newspaper Le Figaro https://www.lefigaro.fr/ publishes many articles on where to live including an annual list emphasizing the quality of life.

These are additional rating sites from the Connexion France article:

Bien Dans Ma Ville https://www.bien-dans-ma-ville.fr/ covers all 35,000 communes in France with categories that include safety, education, leisure activities, and daily life. For input they use both official statistics and reader input.

Ville de Rêve https://villedereve.fr/ like the site directly above, covers the entire country but seems to depend more on statistics than reader input for their classifications. 

Good Place To Live https://goodplaceto.live/ despite its name in English is French and uses government sources to rate a dozen points including transport, environment, health, and housing. The site is free but you can get a complete report that also covers weather risks, noise, and safety that costs 19€ per address.

Ville Idéale https://www.ville-ideale.fr/ gives details on 8100 cities, towns, and villages based on the reviews from 85,000 residents and/or visitors. Topics include local businesses, quality of life, culture, and safety.

Many of these surveys, rankings, and reviews include a category regarding health. Experts estimate it could take up to a decade to address the current doctor shortage in France. You can check out that situation yourself for any French location by looking on Doctolib https://www.doctolib.fr/. A search for Médecin généraliste will display all the general practitioners in a town and you can then see if any are accepting new patients.

While we believe that all of these ranking sources can be helpful, nothing is going to beat your own personal experience. How does a particular community feel to you once you actually go there to investigate the place in person? Are there bloggers already living in a town who can give you insights about what it’s like to live there? Do check out the websites mentioned above but keep in mind that “reader input” can be very subjective and might need to be taken with a grain of salt. Good luck with your search!

A viewpoint note: Sally sent us a link to a cartoon by David Sipress that appeared in The New Yorker. A father is reading a bedtime story to his daughter and he says, “And so, freaked out by the coming election, they moved to France and lived happily ever after.”

Photo notes: Across the top of today’s post is the view from La Pointe Courte in Sète and in the first paragraph is the main square in Carcassonne, Place Carnot.