Want to relocate to France? With a declining population rate, the picturesque village of Ambert in Puy-de-Dôme, known for its medieval streets and cheesemakers, is offering houses for €1.
Expats often look to Paris or the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts for relocation, where you won’t get the best value for your money and you’ll find the crowds. Instead, you could try a small village in France that has launched an initiative to sell €1 houses to attract new residents and reinvigorate its community.
Ambert has a population of 6,500 and is located in the Puy-de-Dôme region of France, approximately 134 km west of Lyon, and 475 km east of Bordeaux, and La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast. The aim is to combat population decline, revitalize the local economy, and breathe new life into its streets.
The houses for €1 are part of a five-year plan aimed at halting population decline and encouraging people to relocate there. After a new class opened at the school and with several renovations underway, it might be working. However, there is still a long way to go. In some parts of the town, vacancy rates reach 60%.
France is often associated with having an ’empty’ middle, a strip of vast land that traverses the country diagonally (the ‘diagonale du vide’, the empty diagonal), which is less populated than its mountains or coastlines and has fewer infrastructure and services.
It’s not empty, though, and has many lovely towns and villages within. However, it’s where the population has shifted from rural to urban areas since the end of the 19th century. Many of these places have increasingly begun to offer stimulus to encourage newcomers.
It’s common to find these types of opportunities across Italy and sometimes Spain. Last summer, for example, one rural region in Spain offered remote workers the promise of a permanent, idyllic home and additional income, up to $16,000 if you relocated to Ambroz Valley, just a three-hour drive from the Spanish capital, Madrid, and a four-hour drive to Lisbon, Portugal.
Several other French villages have offered €1 houses in the past, notably in the northern Picardie region, where, in 2019, they were offering €5,000 to relocate there as well.
These houses never actually cost just one euro, as you would have to commit to restoring the home, including the façade, which increases the real cost by several thousand euros. The U.K.’s Independent newspaper recently noted that in Italy, “the cost of renovations is still relatively low compared to other countries – in the region of €20,000–50,000 depending on the size of the property.”
You wouldn’t need to be a French citizen, but you would need to be keen to live there, and a little French might go a long way when dealing with contractors.
However, aid is available to help with the cost of reconstruction in the form of grants and low-interest loans. Buyers are also required to commit to renovating the homes within a specific timeframe, ensuring the properties are restored and liveable. They also need actually to live there for at least three years.
Anyone interested in living in Ambert, France, and buying €1 houses, can contact the local town hall here.
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