News

Barbara and Peter’s Story

When we look back now it’s amazing to see that in the course of just 18 months we have completely transformed our lives by relocating to France.

The daily grind of work has gone and we have bought into a new lifestyle by investing in a new home with swimming pool and just 20 minutes from some of the most unspoilt beaches in France.

The much lower cost of land compared with the UK has allowed us to take early retirement and create a stunning home in the Vendée on the edge of Champ St Père.

By building new we’ve been able to add our own design touches and enjoy the benefits of modern comforts such as underfloor heating – a very efficient form of energy.

This exciting transformation started the day we met Geoff Ball from Location France-Newbuild. He espoused the benefits of building new without pressuring us to sign up with any particular builder when we met him at a French Property Show in Taunton.

We then decided to do our own land/property search when we took a 20 day holiday in the Vendée. France was our first choice because we’ve always liked its culture on holidays in places such as Poitou Charentes, Languedoc Rousillon and Midi-Pyrénées.

The Vendee had particular appeal because of its superb beaches, warm climate with its beautiful light, and accessibility to the UK by ferry, tunnel or flight.

We looked at a number of older properties and newer ones but in the end new-build was the only real choice for us.

The idea of a property on a new small estate – lotissement – was attractive for us because we thought it would be a way of meeting French people also making a new life at the same time. We thought it would help us integrate and learn from the experiences of the “natives”.

We would also have a choice of plots and builder while the land would be serviced with mains drainage, water and electricity. Our choice of lotissement is in a lively village with lots of facilities such as a supermarket, school, restaurant, two bars, bank, boulangerie, pharmacy and hairdresser.

We had an input in the design of the house suggesting our en-suite, square-shaped bedroom should be redesigned to make it bigger than the others and to create a more interesting, irregular shape.

The builder also took up our idea of re-shaping the lounge so that instead of one we had two patio windows leading onto a large terrace alongside the pool. A third patio door leads onto the terrace from our bedroom without impinging on our privacy.

The electric shutters that come with a newbuild are a great boon in controlling the amount of light and heat that is allowed into the lounge as the sun moves around the house.

Our spacious open plan house is single storey and its shape fits perfectly on a corner lotissement plot and relates well to the garden and pool.

The house has very high insulation values, of terracotta brick construction, a product that achieves 5 times the ‘U’ value of a concrete block. The interior and exterior tiling is of very high quality. We had a good range of standard tiles to choose from and we could have paid extra for other designs. We were happy with the standard designs.

However, we did choose differently than the builder’s proposal of a PVC front door and manually operated bedroom shutters. We preferred the look and solidity of wood even though they will need more painting and maintenance.

Some of the building aspects were not always smooth but if mistakes were made we could usually get them corrected or reach and amicable compromise. There could be frustrating delays sometimes unavoidably caused by poor weather or technical problems.

A particularly nice aspect of building new is being able to choose a kitchen to match your style and your new home. We did alot of shopping around and finally chose a kitchen of nice clean modern lines with an induction hob and fitted appliances that suited our contemporary home. New build again afforded a clean palette from which to plan our large L-shaped kitchen.

The end result is that we have a higher quality home than we could ever have afforded in England.

It’s a home of great comfort and convenience that gives us a sense of security and pride that we have played a large part in its creation. There’s a double seal of shutters and windows backed by a solid front door.

We can programme the heating in all of our rooms to suit our personal thermal comfort. the heating can be programmed to switch to vacation setting when we go on holiday and start up in advance of our return.

There’s no maintenance although of course there is a garden to create. For us it has been a stimulating project to complement the house.

Of course there have been some teething problems, but fortunately we can say these have been minor and have been rectified.

We look forward to continuing to enjoy our new home, backed up by the knowledge that we have a 10 year insurance policy to cover the building works.

New build has certainly worked for us and ensured that we have more quickly been able to enjoy our new home and fresh start in France.