Building a New Home in France

Why this guide exists

Everything in it is written down somewhere in France. Almost none of it is written down in English, by anyone who actually builds.

The French information is excellent and impenetrable — written by notaires and insurers, for notaires and insurers. The English information is thin, cheerful and usually a few years out of date. So people arrive at the biggest decision of the project half-informed: they know a French new build is cheap to run, and they have no idea that the contract they are about to sign fixes the price by law, or that the notaire's fee on a building plot can differ by five percentage points depending on who is selling it.

This closes that gap. Thirty-two pages, twelve chapters, two worked budgets, a checklist to print and a glossary of every French word you will meet — written from thirty-six years and more than 1,200 completed projects in Brittany, Normandy and the Vendée.

What is inside

• Build or buy?What a new build genuinely gives you, and the three cases where an old stone house still wins.
• The landConstructible, serviced, surveyed — and why the plot price is never the plot cost.
• The CCMI, explained properlyFrance's fixed-price building contract, and the protections it hands you by law.
• What the notaire does, and what it costsThe two fee regimes on building land, and why the difference is worth thousands.
• The planning permissionPermis de construire, the display board, and the appeal window nobody mentions.
• RE2020 in plain EnglishEurope's strictest building standard, and what it means for your heating bill.
• The guaranteesDécennale, biennale, parfait achèvement and Dommages-Ouvrage, untangled.
• What “turnkey” includes — and what it never doesThe line between a finished house and a finished home.
• Paying for itThe statutory payment ladder, French mortgages for non-residents, and currency.
• The timeline, month by monthFrom first viewing to keys, with the parts that always take longer.
• The real budgetEvery line, including the ones people forget. Two worked examples.
• Ten mistakes that cost people moneyEach one we have watched happen.

Followed by a budget and document checklist, and a glossary of French construction and property terms.

It is free, and there is no catch

We are not going to ring you. We wrote the guide because the questions in it are the questions we answer every week, and because a buyer who understands the CCMI is a far easier buyer to build for than one who does not. If it turns out we can help you, you know where we are. If it turns out building is the wrong answer for you, the guide says that too — Chapter 1 sets out the three cases where an old stone house still wins.