The French Estate Agent

 

BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - What about the climate?

When people start looking for their dream home in France, the wish list tends to be fairly predictable.

A stone cottage beside a river. A chalet surrounded by pine trees. A villa on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean. A swimming pool, plenty of land and perhaps no neighbours anywhere in sight.

All perfectly understandable.

But I think there is another question we increasingly need to ask when buying a house in France:

What about the climate?

I recently looked at this subject in my video “BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - What about the climate?”, because after more than three decades working in French property, I think some of the things buyers need to consider are changing.

Not because France has suddenly become a dangerous place to live. Far from it.

But the weather is becoming less predictable, and that can have a very real effect on where we choose to live and even what type of property we choose to buy.

The dream property may need a rethink

For years, many overseas buyers have been attracted to properties precisely because of their surroundings.

A house buried deep in woodland sounds wonderfully peaceful.

A riverside property sounds idyllic.

A villa surrounded by Mediterranean scrub with uninterrupted views sounds magnificent.

And they still can be.

The difference is that today I think we need to look beyond the view and ask a few more questions.

What happens during a prolonged heatwave?

Where would a wildfire come from?

Where does the water go after torrential rain?

Is the property on clay?

Could that lovely river at the bottom of the garden look rather different in February?

These aren't necessarily reasons not to buy. They're reasons to investigate before you do.

Wildfires are no longer just a southern French problem

Wildfires naturally receive enormous media coverage, particularly when a major fire gets out of control.

When I made the video behind this article, France had been experiencing a succession of heatwaves and some extremely serious fires. In fact, I delayed releasing the video because fires around Bordeaux and Biscarrosse had become so severe that it didn't seem appropriate to publish it at the time.

What particularly struck me was that significant fires were no longer confined to the areas where we traditionally expected them.

That raises interesting questions for property buyers.

A secluded house completely surrounded by pine forest might have been my idea of heaven twenty years ago. Today, I would still consider it, but I'd look much more carefully at the surrounding vegetation, access for emergency vehicles, water availability and the defensible space around the house.

The same applies to houses surrounded by Mediterranean scrubland.

It isn't about ruling these properties out.

It's about understanding what you're buying.

Are we building houses too close together?

There's another side to the fire question.

In Brittany and elsewhere, planning policies have increasingly encouraged smaller building plots. New houses can now be remarkably close to one another.

There are good environmental and planning reasons for reducing urban sprawl, but there are consequences too.

If houses are close enough for you to virtually pass a cup of sugar through the window to your neighbour, they're also close enough for fire to spread more easily from one building to another.

At the opposite extreme, allowing houses to be constructed in woodland and natural areas creates its own problems unless adequate precautions are taken.

Perhaps the way we design developments needs to evolve alongside the climate.

Then there's water

France is certainly not running out of water tomorrow, but restrictions during hot summers have become familiar in many parts of the country.

They can affect filling swimming pools, watering gardens and other everyday uses.

In some particularly stressed areas, concerns over future water supplies have even affected planning and new construction.

That's worth thinking about if your French dream involves a large garden and swimming pool in one of the hottest parts of the country.

Again, I'm not suggesting abandoning the dream.

Just investigate the reality behind it.

That beautiful riverside cottage

I'm particularly conscious of flooding when I'm in Dordogne.

The Vézère is beautiful in summer. You can stand beside it on a warm sunny day and struggle to imagine the same spot underwater.

But I've seen it.

I've also seen how quickly the water can rise.

Montignac and Condat-sur-Vézère are good examples of places where the river can look completely different during the winter.

And rivers aren't the only potential source of flooding.

After weeks of very hot, dry weather, the ground can become baked hard. When torrential rain finally arrives, instead of soaking into the soil it can rush across the surface.

That can create flash flooding and, on slopes, potentially mudslides.

So when looking at a property, don't just ask whether there's a river nearby.

Look at the land itself.

What's behind the house? Where would water naturally flow? Is the house below a hillside? Have old drainage routes been blocked?

Sometimes the geography tells you as much as the paperwork.

Perhaps those old hedges were there for a reason

One thing I've increasingly come to appreciate is how much knowledge was built into the traditional French landscape.

Hedges, banks and dry-stone walls weren't necessarily placed where they were simply because somebody fancied putting them there.

They slowed water, retained soil and divided the landscape.

Removing them can change the way water moves across the land.

Sometimes the old ways weren't particularly sophisticated, but they had developed over generations of people observing what happened to their land.

There may be lessons there worth remembering.

Clay soil and cracking houses

Another issue buyers should understand is clay.

Large parts of France have clay soils, and clay reacts to changes in moisture.

During prolonged dry periods it can shrink. When moisture returns it expands again.

That movement can affect buildings above it.

Cracks aren't automatically evidence of a major structural problem. Anyone familiar with old French houses will have seen plenty of cracks that have been there for decades or even centuries.

But cracks in more modern properties, particularly significant diagonal cracking, deserve investigation.

The important thing is not to panic.

It's to ask questions.

The risk nobody thinks about: rockfall

One of the more unusual subjects I covered in the video was rockfall.

France has some spectacular villages built beneath limestone cliffs, particularly in areas such as Dordogne and the Loire Valley.

Those cliffs are part of what makes the landscape so extraordinary.

But rock moves.

Water penetrates cracks, frost expands them and eventually pieces can detach.

Sometimes those pieces are very large indeed.

La Roque-Gageac is one of the most famous examples of a Dordogne village built directly beneath a limestone cliff, and substantial stabilisation work has been necessary there over the years.

While filming my video, I also visited another location in Dordogne where an enormous block of limestone had fallen from a cliff close to houses and blocked the road for months.

By coincidence, while I was filming, a local woman stopped to speak to me. She lived in one of the nearby houses built against the cliff and told me she was moving because she was worried about exactly that risk.

Rockfall is rare.

But if you're buying directly underneath a cliff, it's probably worth asking about it.

Hail can be surprisingly destructive

Then we have hail.

Ordinary hailstones aren't much of an issue.

Golf-ball-sized hailstones are another matter entirely.

Large hail can damage cars, roof tiles, shutters and other parts of a property remarkably quickly.

Traditional French roofs are part of the character of the country, whether slate, terracotta tiles or the Roman-style tiles of southern France, and I'd hate to see the answer become corrugated metal everywhere.

But it does raise practical questions.

Perhaps garages and carports will become increasingly important features rather than optional luxuries.

Roof design may matter more too.

A fashionable flat roof looks rather less appealing when confronted with exceptionally heavy rain, snow or hail.

Don't forget the insurance

There's also a financial consequence to all of this.

Insurance companies price risk.

Areas with repeated claims for flooding, hail, drought-related movement and other natural events can become more expensive to insure.

So when viewing houses, asking what the current owner pays for buildings insurance isn't a silly question.

It gives you an idea of your future running costs and may also tell you something about how insurers perceive the local risk.

Read the ERP

Fortunately, buyers in France aren't completely on their own.

One document worth paying attention to is the État des Risques et Pollutions, usually referred to as the ERP.

It isn't exactly thrilling bedtime reading.

In fact, I suspect plenty of buyers barely glance at it.

But they should.

The ERP provides information about recognised risks affecting the area around a property. Past events obviously cannot tell us precisely what will happen in the future, but they can help us understand the environment we're buying into.

When spending hundreds of thousands of euros on a house, taking a little time to understand those risks seems fairly sensible.

So should climate change where you buy in France?

Possibly.

But that's very different from saying there are parts of France where nobody should buy.

Millions of people live perfectly happily in areas affected by clay soils, woodland, rivers, cliffs, drought and occasional extreme weather.

The point is simply that the definition of the "perfect property" may be evolving.

Twenty years ago, I might have looked at a secluded house surrounded by pine forest and thought:

Perfect.

Today I'd probably think:

Perfect... but where's the nearest firebreak?

I'd still look at the Mediterranean villa.

I'd still consider the riverside cottage.

I'd still love the house surrounded by woodland.

I'd just ask more questions before signing anything.

France hasn't suddenly stopped being France

After discussing fires, floods, drought, cracking houses, falling rocks and giant hailstones, I should probably make something clear.

I still love France.

It remains an extraordinary country in which to live, with beautiful countryside, wonderful food and wine, enormously varied landscapes and history around virtually every corner.

And I mean real history.

I own two fairly ordinary stone houses. Nothing particularly grand or historically important.

My house in Brittany dates from 1901, making it around 125 years old. The property in Dordogne is considerably older again.

That's simply normal in France.

It's part of what makes living here so fascinating.

So this isn't an argument against buying a house in France.

Quite the opposite.

It's an argument for choosing the right one.

Don't spend all your viewing worrying about whether you like the fitted kitchen, whether the wallpaper needs changing or whether there's enough room for your sofa.

Look outside.

Look at the land.

Look at the hill behind you, the river below you, the trees around you and even the soil underneath you.

And ask yourself one simple question:

Will this still be my dream house when the weather isn't quite so dreamy?

That's increasingly part of buying property in France.

And perhaps it should have been all along.

If you'd rather watch than read, the original video is “BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - What about the climate?” where I visit some of the locations mentioned above and show just how dramatically conditions can change.

And I'd be interested to know what you think. Has the changing climate altered what you'd look for in a property in France? Would you still choose the secluded woodland house, the riverside cottage or the villa overlooking the Mediterranean?

I'm Dan Newton, The French Estate Agent.