Buying Property in France

If you're anything like me, one of your first instincts when visiting a new place is to peek into real estate windows or dive into online listings to get a feel for the local property market. For me, it became a bit of an obsession during my walks around town—spotting properties for sale, recognizing familiar listings, and knowing exactly where they were located. It’s funny how you can start to feel at home in a place when the properties begin to feel like old friends.

After the endless lockdowns of Covid, with a desperate need to escape after being cooped up for what felt like forever, I set out to find a place overseas where my son could train in snowboarding during the Australian summer. It’s hard to believe we managed anything like this before the internet, right? Somehow, I stumbled across a coach based in a charming little village renowned for its cheese production, which magically transformed into a ski resort each winter. Ironically, this village is actually part of the second-largest ski area in the world—Portes du Soleil.

From the moment we arrived, it was love at first sight. The mountains were jaw-dropping, the snowboarding was incredible, and the food? Unbelievably good. One trip turned into two, then three, then four. As the end of my son’s final year of school approached, he was itching to head back to Europe to train and race for a few months. So, the big question loomed: where would he stay? On a previous trip, his coach had rented him an apartment, but with property prices rising rapidly, finding one was becoming a challenge.

Now, I’ll admit, I’d have loved to own a luxurious chalet, but my budget certainly didn’t stretch that far. So, I set my sights on finding something affordable—ideally something that wouldn’t cost much more than what we’d pay for a season’s rent each year. As property prices soared everywhere, ski resort towns were particularly hit, with costs higher than other areas in the country, sometimes when investing in property we need to buy what we can afford to get into the market and what we really want later. What we needed was a small studio—something that could comfortably fit four people: one or two full-time, with room for a few shorter-term visitors.

Stay tuned for more stories about our property hunt and the adventures of buying a home in France.