Brand new 4-bedroom house with two bathrooms, 2.5 km from the beaches — La Barre-de-Monts, Vendée

This is the most affordable way onto the Vendée coast that we currently have: a 426 m² plot at La Barre-de-Monts, two and a half kilometres from the beaches, with a brand new four-bedroom house on it and the whole thing priced at €262,800 all in.

The house is our four-bedroom design with two bathrooms, arranged over two floors with a garage. The ground floor has a bright open-plan living and dining room opening to the terrace and garden, a fitted kitchen, a bedroom with its own bathroom, a separate WC and a utility room — so there is a full suite downstairs if you want one. Three further bedrooms, a second bathroom and another WC are upstairs. The layout can be adapted to suit you.

About La Barre-de-Monts

La Barre-de-Monts sits at the top of the Vendée coast, where the long line of beaches and pine forest that runs south towards Saint-Jean-de-Monts begins. It is a quieter commune than its neighbours, which is much of its appeal, and it has something none of them have: Fromentine.

Fromentine is the little port at the northern edge of the commune, and it is the departure point for the boats to the Île d'Yeu — the most beautiful of the Atlantic islands, forty-five minutes out, with its whitewashed harbour, its clifftop paths and its old castle standing in the sea. The bridge to Noirmoutier lifts off from the same stretch of coast, and at low tide you can still cross to the island by the Passage du Gois, the four-kilometre causeway that disappears under the sea twice a day.

Behind the dunes lies the Forêt domaniale des Pays de Monts, a broad belt of maritime pine threaded with cycle paths that run for tens of kilometres along the coast, so you can reach the beach, the next village or the shops without ever putting a car on the road. The commune has its own shops, bakeries, restaurants and a market, and the Vendée's famous oysters and mussels come from the bays either side.

Challans, the market town of the northern Vendée, is around twenty minutes inland. Saint-Jean-de-Monts, with its full range of shops, its golf course and its thalasso spa, is about fifteen minutes south. Nantes and its international airport are a little over an hour away.