There’s a saying that’s common amongst British ex-pats who’ve renovated properties on the other side of the English Channel.
‘Nothing is cheap in France except wine and houses.’
For many, it’s a truth that’s only fully appreciated after the ink has dried on the deeds of the home they’ve snapped up, often at a bargain price.
The other kernel of wisdom ex-pats also share with those thinking about a better life on French soil? It’s a one-way ticket.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to be rich – and most will freely admit it’s a move motivated by the chance to enjoy a better quality of life for less money – then you’re likely stuck there if the fairytale sours.
Buying into the dream: More than 20,000 Brits make the move to France every year… but while houses are often cheaper, renovations can be both expensive and gruelling to carry out
While many of the more than 20,000 Brits decamping to France every year go on to live the life – and retirement – they’ve dreamed about, others warn that the realities are often heavily glossed over.
Life savings and pension pots will certainly buy you a home with land that would be well beyond reach on UK shores – but transforming it into a house that you can live comfortably in is often beset with hidden costs.
Many decide to take on the work themselves to keep prices down but relentless, and often physical, labour can see cracks appearing in long-term relationships that are far more sizeable than the physical ones they’re trying to repair in their new homes.
The Daily Mail has spoken to three people prepared to be candid about how renovating a home in France – and the ‘constant’ maintenance that followed – saw their once-loving marriages crumble.
‘My husband would make the builders a cup of tea and then leave – I’m now working seven-days-a-week at 64 to keep afloat’
Stephanie Lack, 64, has lived in north western France for nearly 20 years. Earlier this year, her husband of ten years left, after being unable to cope with the responsibility of a property that requires constant maintenance
Stephanie pictured with her late husband Bob after they bought their four-bedroom home on a hectare of land in Saint-Aubin-Fosse-Louvain 18 years ago
Stephanie Lack, 64, moved to France 18 years ago from England’s south coast with the hope of getting improved cancer care for her Bob, her late husband.
After his death, she continued with their dream of running the successful kennel and cattery business, Les Creature Comforts, he’d helped her to build – and later married again, this time to a fellow British ex-pat named David who she met in France.
Stephanie tells the Daily Mail she’s seen so many people’s attempt to ‘live the dream’ fall apart – and she now counts herself amongst those who face an uncertain future after David walked out earlier this year, seemingly unable to cope with the demands – and drudgery – of upkeeping an ageing house on a hectare of land.
Hard-working and resilient, Stephanie is currently working seven-days-a-week and says her hopes for a secure retirement have been upended – she’ll have to downsize or face working into her 70s.
When Stephanie and Bob first bought the sizeable property, which is in Saint-Aubin-Fosse-Louvain, in north-western France, they faced a complete renovation. The previous French owner had ‘lived like a caveman’ in it, she says.
‘It wasn’t at a standard where you’d say “right, we can live here”. We had to install the bathrooms ourselves, do all the tiling, putting in windows that didn’t let the rain in, putting a floor down – it wasn’t really habitable.’
The property Stephanie bought in 2018 was ‘barely habitable’ and needed complete renovation
The home as it looks now – but Stephanie says she’s forked out far more than the property’s worth on renovations and maintenance
After Bob died, she was over-the-moon when father-of-two David, who’d moved to France after taking early retirement, came into her life.
He quickly moved in and they renovated a hay loft together… but just four years into the ten-year marriage cracks were already starting to appear, she says.
‘I wanted something really special, because I wanted to make it feel like our home, rather than the home I’d shared with my late husband. We redid the whole kitchen, we redecorated, we did it all… and it was absolutely exhausting because we were also working.
‘David’s heart definitely wasn’t in the business and that caused a lot of trouble, because he always referred to it as “your business”.
‘He’s a very intelligent, strong-minded man, but he didn’t take accountability for anything. I had to organise all the builders and get things fixed – he would make them a cup of tea and that would be his involvement.
‘The pressure of constant shelling out money just to maintain this property. Every time there’s a storm – and we get a lot in this part of France, there’s always damage.
Stephanie says she’s found life easier in some ways since David left, explaining: ‘You don’t have that annoying thing of someone not pulling their weight around you’
She says David’s seeming inability to cope with what needed doing on a property saw him becoming increasingly distant.
‘He stepped away from doing anything at all with the business or the house two years ago. Sometimes it’s easier being on your own – you don’t have that annoying thing of someone not pulling their weight around you.
‘Earlier this year, he packed up my car and went off to Spain for three months. I only knew where he was because I got a speeding fine delivered here.’
Stephanie says she will eventually have to sell the property: ‘I need to sell my house, while it’s still standing, because it’s too big but I also need to work – my French pension is useless, around 250 euros (£218) a month.’
With just a part-share in a two-bedroom flat in England, she says she’ll stay in France because the healthcare is far superior to in the UK and she has good friends.
‘The property is worth far less than I have spent on it, thanks to Brexit, and I can never afford to move back to the UK.
‘To be honest though, I absolutely love being on my own. I’ve bounced back from this and I’ve got a great network of friends now – all women on our own and a couple of men who are both gay. We all get each other.’
‘It was like living in Steptoe’s Yard…I went from being “a wife and a lover” to being a “builder’s mate and gardener”‘
Dawn*, 70, from Berkshire, says when her partner of 25 years, Richard, suggested they start a new life together in France 11 years ago, she went along with it ‘whole heartedly’.
The couple bought a grand four-storey house – that needed an overhaul – in the Dordogne, with aspirations that they would get to enjoy the twilight of their lives in a spacious home set in six acres of land in a beautiful part of France.
‘He thought it would take two years to complete, I was more realistic and thought five years. After more than ten years of living in Steptoe’s Yard – with brick dust and lathe and plaster ceilings and walls down, we were still, at most, only halfway there.’
The life she had planned evaporated, she says, with her partner expecting her to work ‘seven-days-a-week’ on the property, with no holidays.
Over the decade that Dawn, who used to work for a merchant bank in central London, was in France, she says she went from being ‘a wife and a lover’ to being a ‘builder’s mate and gardener’.
They barely explored any of the rest of France, instead using time off to make the seven-hour journey back to the UK to see family and friends.
British ex-pat Dawn* left her partner earlier this year after years of working on the large property they bought in France because of the pressure renovating put on their relationship (Stock photo)
The large plot meant Dawn and her husband didn’t have neighbours, meaning for vast periods of time, it was just the two of them – and the giant project they’d taken on.
With an orchard, a vegetable plot and a horse paddock, mowing became a full-time job, she says.
‘The region gets lot of rain and you get a lot of sun, everything grows! When you go out and mow, by the time you finish mowing it all, it’s growing again. It’s a full-time job and hard, physical work.’
Last year, the couple’s relationship had deteriorated so dramatically that Dawn says she was left fearing for her husband’s mental health and her own safety.
‘One night, we had been to a party and were returning home around midnight on icy roads.
‘Neither of us had drunk but he started driving way too fast. I dared to ask him to slow down and he exploded, screaming at me that he was going to stop the car and throw me out.’
She explains that the incident ‘left me traumatised but the next day was as if nothing had happened’.
But it was a turning point and she began to consider whether she could sell the property she still owned in the UK.
She clarifies that her husband, who’s four years’ older than her, was never physically abusive towards her.
The pressure of renovations, she says, transformed the personality of the man she loved, she claims, from being ‘an extremely kind, very gentlemanly person’ into ‘a very aggressive, angry, mentally abusive person’.
Her name remains on the deeds of the property and many of her possessions are still in the home she thought she would see out her days in.
This month, she’ll attempt to return to collect her things and try to move on for good.
She says becoming a grandmother also influenced her decision to leave the ‘volatile’ marriage, saying missing out on seeing them growing up felt like there was now ‘a bit of elastic, pulling me back’.
Dawn says she’s angry that her husband is reaping the efforts of 11 years of her money and time, while she’s forced to carve out a new life for herself in her early 70s.
‘I am now on my own after having worked my socks off for all those years. All for nothing.
‘He has the house, our friends and I have to start all over again in a new place and try and make new friends, which is not easy the older you get.’
*Names have been changed
‘I do sometimes think to myself, “The woman I love is now back in the UK – what am I doing here?”‘
Mat Laing and his ex-wife Karen achieved their dream of early retirement in France – but five years of renovating the home they bought saw their relationship flounder
Retired mortgage adviser Mat Laing, 57, and his ex-wife Karen, both from England’s South East, moved to France in 2018, dreaming of an ‘early retirement with a Mediterranean lifestyle’.
The couple watched TV programmes such as A Place In The Sun and Escape To The Chateau and eventually decided that Spain was ‘too hot’, Italy’s homes for sale seemed too problematic and thus, France was the best option.
Mat tells the Daily Mail: ‘We thought: What are we doing here? Let’s retire. If we sell both our houses, buy a cheap enough property, we should be able to live until our pensions kick in. And Brexit pushed us along…’
After a false start house-hunting in the Dordogne – ‘too cliquey’, they chose the Charente region where their cash would go further and they found the ex-pat community a little more down-to-earth.
Mat carried much of the work himself to keep costs down – and admits he was ‘extremely angry’ when Karen said she no longer wanted the life they’d spent five years building
The couple snapped up a 1970s house for around 150,000 euros (£128,000).
Says Mat: ‘Like most Brits, we were a bit seduced by how far our money would go.
‘We got three bedrooms, two bathrooms – a detached house with two acres of land. The sale of my three-bed council house was more than enough to make our dreams come true in that part of France.’
It was ‘completely habitable’ but they embarked upon a renovation project that took five years.
‘Every floor, every wall, every ceiling, inside, outside, two acres of gardens – all landscaped. I finally got to the end, I’d just finished doing a 500-square-metre driveway and my wife said: “I want to go home”.’
If I had gone back too, I’d have been a 55-year-old man going back to working five days-a-week, with some 25-year-old telling me what to do…’
Mat says the myth that many Brits fall prey to is that everything costs less on the French side of the Channel: ‘The only thing that is cheaper in France than the UK, are houses, and wine.
‘Everything else is more expensive, from cars to the internet.’
It meant that he often tackled the renovation himself – laying the driveway for around £4,000 instead of the £30,000 quoted – but Karen felt increasingly isolated by the constant work.
‘She was very much involved; she painted, she sanded wooden shutters, she did lots of garden work with me. We worked well as a team.’
Five years of arduous graft in an often lonely environment was not the only reason their relationship fell apart but it was a big factor, says Mat.
Was there a small part of him that wanted to follow his wife back to the UK?
‘Yes, but what was I going to do? I’d be a 55-year-old man going back to working five days-a-week in somewhere like B&Q and Tesco, with some 25-year-old telling me what to do.’
They couple embarked upon a full revamp of the house – but because costs were so high, they took on much of the work themselves. Right: The bathroom after the renovation
He says it’s important to know that when you move to France ‘it’s a one-way ticket’.
Mat’s since bought another renovation project and the couple reluctantly divorced, mainly for tax and financial status reasons.
‘I found myself sitting inside a building site, another major renovation project, because I had a much smaller budget after we separated, thinking “the woman I love is in England”.’
‘We speak on the phone once or twice a week. At first I was extremely angry, because we’d got to the point [with the renovating] where we could finally enjoy it and do everything we’d dreamed of – but she felt she had to go back to England.
‘Her mum had become ill and she said: “As much as I love you, Mat, you’re not enough for me, I need other things”.
‘Should I have gone back with her? Well, yeah, maybe I should have. But I couldn’t visualise a life that would have been any good for me back in the UK.
‘When we talk, I say to her, “You know, it’s empty, and none of it means anything anymore, because when we were doing it before, we were doing it together”.’
You must be logged in to post a comment Login