Tuesday 7th December 2021
Such was the influx of British nationals snapping up property in the Dordogne from the 1960s the department acquired the epithet ‘Dordogneshire’.
It’s a tag that is likely to stick around for a long time, for thousands of British nationals continue to either live or own a second home there, and many others are following in their footsteps.
Nevertheless, it may well be that in future years it will have to compete with Charente(shire) or Creuse(shire), as these two departments have, over the past three years, been the most popular choice for British buyers.
The Charente department, in the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, was the favoured destination in 2019, and 2021, and came only second to Creuse (also Nouvelle Aquitaine) in 2020, which has been in the top three destinations for the past four years.
This year, nearly a quarter of all search enquiries made on our property portal and those of our partner sites have been for a property to buy in the Charente department.
That is an unprecedented level of dominance over other departments. In most years there is a more even distribution of enquiries across around half-a-dozen or so departments. Only in 2020, when Creuse received 16% of all enquiries has the field been spread so widely.
The rural charm of Charente and Creuse is not too difficult to understand, but another factor that they both have in common is cheap house prices. Creuse has the lowest average prices of any other department in France, and the same is the case for parts of Charente, up and around the Confolens area, near the border with Limousin, where many British buyers have settled. Both the Creuse and the Charente Limousin are on the border of the Massif central mountain area.
The average house price in the Dordogne is €1,250m2, substantially higher than of those in Charente and Creuse. In a survey of several hundred of those who made search enquiries for these departments, we found that although many buyers would like to buy in the Dordogne, they had chosen another department due to the comparatively higher prices in the Dordogne.
Other departments that regularly feature in the top-ten choice of destinations are Haute-Vienne, Deux-Sèvres, Aude, Lot-et-Garonne, Gers and Côtes d'Armor, all departments where prices are more moderate and part of the 'France profonde', where rural life is central to the local culture.
The department of Mayenne has risen significantly in the league table in recent years, no doubt benefiting from the popularity of the 'Escape to the Chateau' programme on UK television, featuring Dick and Angel Strawbridge, who live in the department.
The most recent census figures available provided the French government show that the number of British nationals resident in Charente in 2016 was 6,220, up from 372 in 1990, an increase of 1,500% over the period. In Creuse, there were only 64 British nationals in 1990, which rose to 2,107 in 2016, an increase of 3,000! The equivalent figures for Dordogne are 1,492 and 7,198, an increase of 382%, making it the department with the largest number of British nationals outside of Paris.
There have been similar spectacular increases in Deux-Sèvres and Haute-Vienne, both neighbouring departments. All these figures suggest the drift away from the Dordogne has been happening for some time.
The least popular departments in France, as might be anticipated, were mainly concentrated in the north and east of France, in the regions of the Hauts-de-France (formerly Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie) and Grand Est (formerly Lorraine, Champagne-Ardenne and Alsace).
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