The French do not “do” email unfortunately - irritating as it tends to be you aren’t going to change that.
Your best bet will be to visit, go into some estate agent offices, find someone who speaks English (unless your French is good) and talk them through your situation and what you are looking for. Then get the email address of a specific agent. After that they will probably respond to email but almost certainly not before.
It may have been a little easier for us buying in time of Covid, but we did get good responses from some agents. There was also one in the south who tried ‘bait & switch’ with the property I was interested in not actually being offered (but lots of others that were not interesting were).
@Jimi do you have to be near the coast? You might well find the sort of doer-upper you’re after in the centre/east of France, and the countryside is lovely too.
My son got his place valued last week as its got too small now with two children and all their toys. He needed to know how much he could get and what he would need to up his mortgage to but when the Immo who called to value the house told him his cut was going to be €17k he decided no way and would put it on the LBC as that is where he has found properties to visit many times before. Unfortunately he lives in a very desirable commune and houses for sale are like hen’s teeth as most seem to stay in the families and they can’t build any further ones because the water supply is too limited to supply more building. At least on LBC you can vet the buyers and actually talk to them truthfully, something people appreciate and not just a load of cobras in order to make a sale.
Shiba, what does LBC mean?
I would prefer to be close to the coast if possible, but price will dictate where I end up buying. If money were no object I would be living right on the very edge 
I’m driving to the coast later today. I will pass some invisible boundaries where the houses double in price, treble in price and quadruple in price. I can understand why some people are happy to pay to be on the coast but I don’t see why people are prepared to pay so much more to be perhaps 40 minutes closer.
I saw a photo of the cove where we used to swim on my ‘hometown’ in Cornwall’s FB page yesterday. It had two houses where school friends used to live. I wonder what they would have said back then if I’d said that before long your small homes with no nearby parking would be worth over £2,000,000. Luckily things aren’t quite that crazy in France.
London Broadcasting Company, no sorry Le Bon Coin, a buyer and seller website. 
I lived five mins from the beach previously and prices dictated that when I sold in 2022. However if you went a few miles further inland but still within half an hour to the sea, prices dropped considerably. This will apply to all of the country, the seaside is a very desirable place to live except in hotspots during July and August (I never went down tothe local port during those months, too many tourists and car parking a nightmare)
Not quite, some properties in my old commune have been priced at over the million euros mark for the first time ever and are not that particularly inviting with a lot of maintenance needed yearly, placed where the storms blow in from the sea and not in keeping with what locals can afford or even want to purchase.
Sorry its LeBonCoin, an online buying and selling nationwide site. Everyone looks at it, uses it and normally manage to sell or buy. I got my present property off it when we were looking for land and took it from there.
I always had a dream of being right on the coast (again) and being able to see the ocean from inside the house. Looking at changing wind and weather patterns we are now looking over 25km from coast. It was wonderful at 25 when I lived right on the ocean at Winthrop outside Boston seems less delightful now.
I was brought up on the coast. I never particularly appreciated it at the time, but I feel a pull towards the coast.
Yes, worth giving Leboncoin a try.
https://www.leboncoin.fr/all/offer
An amazing place that has everything to offer and by all means, not all rubbish.
TBH if I wanted a house with a view of the sea at a reasonable price I’d look at Italy rather than France, especially as there is a much higher ratio of coast to land mass. That may not be convenient if you speak French already, of course.
I had thought about Italy but during lockdown I watched a TV program about France and I was hooked. I have since been in Lot-et-Garonne and the Bordeaux area a couple of times and my mind was made up.
I had tried LBC before but couldn’t get registered there as I don’t have a French mobile number. I have just managed to get an account set up by using my Google email account.
This is an example of a house that can be bought in France for 1 euro. Google some more! -https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/18/one-euro-house-scheme-italy-france-europe-eligibility-20667907/
Only a fool with deep pockets would get involved in those cheap properties.
Very offensive comment which happens to be completely untrue. It is not clever to buy into a commonly held misconception.
I second Lot et Garonne. Beautiful area. We are searching there ourselves whilst selling our property in Brittany.