Buy a House for Renovation in France

I get a large volume of mail about buying property for renovation – it was once possible to buy a derelict ruin for a few hundred euro and make it into a home – I have not seen anything like this now for over ten years – miracles are always possible but realistically you pay the market price for property.

Here is a mail exchange I had today where I am trying to put some real figures on the costs of buying and renovating.

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Hi Tony,

I have just stumbled across your website as I am interested in purchasing a property for holiday/family use. We visited France in 06 for a month and it just gelled especially in the South so we are exploring the possibility of buying in the next 1-2 years.

I am interested in what can be got that may only require paint & paper plus say fitted kitchen and bathroom at the most. My question is that for this property for example…
medieval_house_to_renovate
…what would you expect to spend above the 55k for it to become reasonably habitable?

I am mainly interested in the Languedoc or maybe the Midi Pyrenees areas as they appear to offer the better climate and are in excellent proximity to good wine.

From a miserable NZ winter, Kind regards

Alan

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Hello Alan,

In Languedoc, to buy a basic shell of a house ready to live in will cost a minimum of 1400 euro per square meter of living space – the average price of a home in Languedoc is 2200 euro per square meter. A large garden or special location will increase the cost of course.

As a comparison, to build new, not taking into account the cost of land, will cost from 900 euro a square meter – this is for a very basic simple property with no frills.

So the house in Pouzols at 55000 euro for 65 square meters suggests that it would sell for 90000 euro in good condition. The trick is getting the renovation work done for 25000 euro (allowing 10000 for all legal costs and taxes), in my opinion I could personally renovate this property in ten weeks work and using 20000 euro of materials, but 10 weeks work (350 hours) would cost from 7000 euro in labour – so the arithmetic is very tight.

Renovation of this property is just about possible in my estimation if a person was to do much of the work, but is not sufficient to allow for contractors to do this.

From what I am saying you can deduce that a small family property with no land or outside space which is habitable will cost a minimum of 90000 euro.

You are correct about the wine, I am delighted to say, and the weather is good.

Please let me know if this is useful, or if you need more ideas.

Best wishes

Tony