Build your own home in France

An alternative to looking for a “traditional” house or seeing endless clusters of modern housing estate “villas” is to build you own home on a plot of land.

In Languedoc at the moment every commune is obliged to plan to expand their building allowances and from June every local mayor will have much more power to grant planning. Apart from meaning that the mayors children and families are likely to make a few million euro quick profit, this will mean that a lot of “lottissments” of serviced building land will be coming on the market and prices will be stable for a while.

I get a lot of mail about building land and some about eco-housing - here is an exchange I had today…

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Firstly, so glad you are back with all of us! I had the dreadful feeling I had lost your email address so long with no news but as they say no news is good news in this case I am relived that you are once again up and running.

Well praises over I wonder if you have any suggestions on: costs re buying a small piece of land lowest price possible and having an eco wooden home built along with foundation, electric + water etc south of France naturally,
Look forward to hearing from you again and Bon Courage

Elizabeth

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Hello Elizabeth

Buying a piece of land with permission for any residential building to be put on it will cost from 25 to 150 euro per square meter, depending on the location. With services you need to add about 50 euro per square meter. Finding a single plot in anywhere other than a housing estate is near impossible for any area under 1000 square meters and only boring Tupperware boxes will be allowed anyway.

So you will need to budget from 50,000 euro to 250,000 euro for a decent plot and then find a mayor sympathetic to your dreams

The usual solution is to find an existing building which is habitable and which definitely has residential permission (get this in writing from the Mayor first) and then convert this. With a small plot the prices will be from 150,000 euro and the sky is the limit.

Best wishes

Tony