A villa with a pool in the South of France is a common aspiration - and can be a real slog
Britons do not need Brangelina's much-photographed sojourn on the Côte d'Azur to convince them of the joys of France - we've been munching their croissants and buying up their crumbling farmhouses for decades. Slowing price growth and a strong euro might have deterred property investors, but those in search of the classic British dream - a picturesque rural renovation project - are still crossing La Manche en masse. Last month, Moneycorp, the foreign exchange specialist, reported that monthly inquiries for France had risen by more than 34 per cent since February. It also estimates that property prices in France are still 30 per cent lower than in the UK.
Yet the process of buying and doing up overseas property is peppered with potential pitfalls - not that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are expected to attempt it any time soon. It's expensive, frustrating, time-consuming and risky, but, as one British buyer found, the result is well worth it. In 2004 Vivien Lawrence, an interior designer from North London, bought a house, above and right, with her husband, Peter, near Montpellier in Languedoc. "My husband had always wanted a holiday house abroad," Lawrence says, "and we'd looked at a few places in France with no luck. Then we came to stay with a friend in the area, went into an estate agent's and looked at nine houses in a day. This one - the seventh house - looked appalling but the minute we walked in we knew we had to take it on. We made an offer and it was accepted immediately."
The price, says Lawrence, was "less than a one-bedroom flat in London," but the scale of work necessary was intimidating: "The garden was a forest, the pool was slimy and yellow and the veranda had big ugly modern windows. Inside, there was a tiny reception room and four bedrooms connected by dark corridors. A badly structured mezzanine covered the old beams but we could just about see the wonderful old stone on the walls."
She gutted the house, revealing "a huge space: 1,400sqft, with 30ft high ceilings". The work took four years and cost "nearly twice as much as we paid for the house - but still less than you would spend on a similar project in England". They now have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a huge open-plan kitchen/living area opening on to a veranda, plus a pool and summerhouse to share with their five children and three grandchildren. "I'm a perfectionist so it's done to a very high standard," says Lawrence. "Finding furniture was tricky because I had specific ideas and didn't know where to look in the area. In the end most stuff came from London suppliers, even though it's all originally French."
The project was not without difficulties. "We were very lucky," says Lawrence. "We were warned we would be ripped off and perhaps we were - I did sometimes feel concerned I was being taken for a ride." Other concerns included "local resentment and envy because we were British and because the standard of the house is so much higher than anything else in the area" and the challenge of communicating design ideas, a problem with which Lawrence is familiar from her work. She cautions: "I do think that someone with no experience of interior design or of building projects would not be able to do what we have done - the builders would exploit the situation."
But she found the whole experience easier than expected. "We had no real stress and everyone here is delightful - they all speak a bit of English and are very welcoming. The area is lovely - lots of local bistros and small shops. It's out in the sticks and there are very few other Brits around." Hollywood may have its dreams, but this represents the fulfilment of a very British one.
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