Building your own house.

Buying a new house in England is relatively simple. You arrive at your local Barratts development, decide on the house you would like. After a visit to the on site show room the kitchen, curtains, carpets and floor tiles are chosen and within three months the house is yours.

The process in France is not quite so straightforward (or as quick !!). Generally, housing developers do not build houses and then sell them after they are built, most houses are build on demand to your exact specification.

The first stop is the local Marie, where you can see a plan of all the available building land in the commune. Usually all the services ( water, mains drainage and electricity) will already be at the site. You then choose your plot, and pay somewhere between 15 and 20 euros per metre squared.

The next task is to decide on a building contractor. Some have 40 or so houses that have all be approved by the relevant planning authorities. This is the easiest and cheapest way to get a new build, but beware any changes you want to the ‘standard’ plan will cost you dear !.

Alternatively there are lots of other companies willing to design and build bespoke houses to your exact requirements.

New build houses take between 12 – 18 months to build, it must be fun to watch each stage of your house being built.

The amount of building land now available is increasing annually ( much to the delight of the local farmers who are seeing their practically worthless and now largely unused fields dramatically increasing in value !!) and these new build houses are springing up everywhere so this idea of building your own home has definitely caught on !.