Almost everyone who buys in France starts with the same picture in their head. Stone walls, blue shutters, a wisteria over the door, a little land. It is a good picture, and plenty of people buy exactly that and never regret it.
But somewhere between the first viewing trip and the third, a lot of buyers quietly change their minds. Not because the old houses stopped being beautiful. Because they started adding up what it costs to live in one.
This is an honest look at both sides. We build new homes, so we have a view. You should still know what you are giving up either way.
What an old French house costs to run
This is where most of the difference sits, and it is bigger than people expect.
A typical older French rural property has little or no wall insulation, single or early double glazing, and heating that is either electric convectors or an oil boiler of a certain age. There is no mystery to why it costs what it costs. You are paying to heat the garden through the walls.
Our homes are built to the current French standard, RE2020, and carry a DPE energy rating of A. Typical heating costs run at €30 to €35 a month, all year round, for a family house. If you have owned a French property before, you will know that is not a normal number.
Over ten years that gap is not a rounding error. It is a kitchen, or a car, or several very good holidays.
The repairs you inherit
The asking price of an old house is only the part you can see.
A roof is twenty to forty thousand euros. Rewiring an old farmhouse, ten to twenty. Replacing a fosse septique that no longer meets standards, five to twelve. Then internal insulation and re-plastering, new windows, the damp in the north wall. Each of those is a real number, and survey culture in France is thinner than in Britain, so buyers tend to meet them afterwards rather than before.
Some of it you plan for. Some of it arrives in year three. A new build arrives with none of it, and with ten years of structural cover behind it.
What you can change, and what you cannot
Old French houses were built around how people lived a century ago. Small rooms, thick internal walls, low ceilings in places, a kitchen tucked at the back facing away from the light.
Some of that opens up easily enough. Structural walls, stairwells and new window openings in stone are harder and dearer than people imagine, and in many communes the planning rules limit what you may change externally.
With a new build, the layout is a conversation before anything is poured. Where the light falls, where the kitchen sits, how many bedrooms, garage integrated or separate, single storey or not. It costs nothing to move a wall on a drawing.
The legal protection that comes with a new build
British and Irish buyers tend to underrate this, because there is no real equivalent at home.
A new home in France is built under a CCMI, the Contrat de Construction de Maison Individuelle. The price is fixed and legally binding from the day you sign. You pay in stages, only as verified work is completed. A guarantor stands behind delivery at the agreed price and date. On top of that sits Dommages-Ouvrage insurance, which covers structural defects for ten years and pays to put them right without you having to prove first who was at fault.
Buying an existing house gives you none of that. The notaire checks the title and any charges on the property, which is real protection and should not be dismissed. But nobody guarantees the quality of work the previous owner had done. Undeclared extensions, work carried out without permission, and boundaries that do not quite match the plan are all things we see.
The part most people miss: what you can let, and what you can sell
France has begun legislating badly performing homes out of the rental market, and the timetable is already running.
Under the Loi Climat et Résilience, a home rated G can no longer be let as a main residence. That came into force on 1 January 2025. F follows on 1 January 2028, and E on 1 January 2034. Owners of F and G properties have also been barred from raising the rent since 2023 until the property is improved.
Consider what that means if you are buying something you might one day let, or sell to someone who wants to let it. A large share of France's older rural housing stock sits at E, F and G. Those homes have a deadline attached, and every year brings the next date closer.
We would be careful about promising that a new build will be worth more in five years. Nobody honestly knows, and a new house carries a premium the day you buy it, much as a new car does. But a home rated A is on the right side of every rule France has written in the last decade, and the pool of buyers who can do something with it only grows.
Where an old house still wins
We would not be much use to you if we pretended otherwise.
Character is real and it cannot be reproduced. A 200-year-old longère with beams and a bread oven has something a new house will not have for a very long time. Established gardens, mature trees and old stone walls take decades. Old houses sit in the middle of villages, near the boulangerie and the square, where new plots tend to sit on the edge. And an existing house is available now. You could be in it by Christmas, where a new build is a matter of months.
There is the entry price, too. An older property needing work can be bought cheaply, and if you have the skills, the time and the patience to do that work yourself over several years, the sums can come out well.
The mistake is not choosing the old house. The mistake is choosing it while assuming it will cost what the asking price says.
The short version
Running costs: the new build wins clearly, DPE A against the E, F or G much of the older stock sits at.
Repairs: the new build wins, everything new and covered for ten years against a queue of jobs of uncertain timing.
Layout: the new build wins if you want something specific. The old house wins if you fall in love with one exactly as it is.
Legal protection: the new build wins on the building itself, through the CCMI and Dommages-Ouvrage. On the land transfer both are equally protected, because the notaire handles that either way.
Charm and location: the old house often wins, and there is no point arguing with it.
What you can let out in ten years' time: the new build wins, and that gap widens every year.
Where to start
If you want to see what building actually costs, our house and land packages show real plots across Brittany, Normandy and the Vendée with a turnkey home, priced all in, and no land price hidden in the small print.
If you are still weighing it up, book a free thirty-minute call. We will give you an honest answer even when it is "buy the old one". We renovate as well as build, and we would rather you ended up in the right house.