We have lived in France 18 years and are now planning (we hope) the next stage of our life here.
I’d be grateful for any thoughts / suggestions / experience of anything similar so we can (hopefully) avoid the pitfalls.
When we moved here we bought a farmhouse and a ruined farm cottage, all on the same land. * Since then, we bought an adjacent field - All three are at the end of a chemin rural that only leads to our land.
We restored the farm cottage to a high standard (double glazing / underfloor heating) and have used it as a gite over the years. We are hoping this will now become our home, provided we can have an extension built. We have an architect coming to look at it, but I’ve a pretty good idea what I’d like and I’ve already discussed this with our local mayor who is in favour.
We propose selling our main house along with the garden in front of it, swimming pool and large woodstore/barn.
We would keep the field and the land around the cottage and the drive up past the house to the access onto the chemin. We propose widening the access onto the chemin so that the house and the cottage each would have its own access.
I realise we need to speak to an architect to draw up the plans for the cottage and a geometre to mark out the bornes. And I appreciate that it will be the local sub-prefecture who will give approval (or not) for the permis de construire.
My uncertainty is who approves that we want to split the land and make it two separate properties, each with their own entrances off the chemin? It’s possible this could be an issue as we are on agricultural land that has its own 10 year plan.
Also, assuming we can go ahead, who will decide how each property is identified / mapped / numbered?
Hope this makes sense. Grateful for any thoughts.
Edit: * the land we bought as a single sale in fact is a whole series of separate cadastral numbers. The cottage and the house are on separate plots so far as the cadastral plans go, so I’m hoping it will be relatively easy to split them again.
Just a thought
Our 10 Year Plan is about to change in 2026, becoming much stricter, so everyone is being urged to get any requests for buildings/changes/whatever presented to the Mairie asap… otherwise they risk missing the boat.
I’m almost certain you’ll need to apply to create any new openings onto the roads… ask your Mairie now and get things moving if necessary.
re splitting the plot
We split a plot and sold-off just 1 piece… The Geometre came, discussed, measured, marked new boundaries etc etc and notified whomever needed to be notified. The amended Plan Cadastre shows the 2 plots.
The Notaire dealt with the Sale of the 1 plot we didn’t want.
Each commune is on its own timetable. And will be driven more by local and regional priorities than national ones.
There are major revisions and minor revisions too. This is the sort of thing a minot revision considers, but best to see what you marie says about future plans
@Corona
PLUi (as Jane says).
It’s the intercommunal “10-Year Plan for the Future”… which covers quite a wide area around us.
We’ve all had letters in our letterboxes and there’ve been Public Meetings.
I doubt many of the Brits bothered the read the letter and I know that very few attended the Public Meetings… so I’m trying to wake 'em up to what is about to happen. As it stands, our own small commune will find itself unable to do more or less anything.
Ask at your Mairie, they’ll know when your own PLUi is likely to change.
A Geometre will do the necessary splitting & renumbering of parcels.
Regarding a house number it might be best to talk to the planning authority or local service technique.
The recent change of address that we’ve had put upon us is there to provide every place with a number based on distance from a nearby main road - like you we are at the end of a dead end.
With this method any infilling is easily numbered with no need for bis, ter etc.
Our chemin leads up to a small D road and our number is based on the distance on this D road each property is from the nearest main junction. So our house is 2300 - ie 2300m from the junction. Our cottage is exactly the same - so we will need a bis or something. Who will decide?
The local mairie has first right to purchase property that comes up for sale in the commune. SAFER are the land side of sales and have rights to purchase etc.
Yes, it’s managed by SAFER. We have 2 hectares but we will only be selling a small parcel of that - the main house and a small part of the garden.
Sorry Shiba, you beat me to it!
No, they won’t do that. They’ll fudge the calculation & one place or another will become 2302, or 2298, or whatever.
In our arrangement the property next door’s boundary meets ours in the middle of our chemin i.e. the property line across the chemin is the same. We’re 1191 & they’re 1188
We recieved 2 beautiful enamel numbered plates for our house, 108 and 112. We questioned why and told one was for our barn which is exactly that ie not for habitation.
Our Mairie said we could choose either number for our address!
We had to put the number on each building, so clearly visible.
As it was explained to me:
the idea being that if you are taken ill in the barn and need the pompiers to rescue you in that building, when phoning the services, they’ll ask for the number of the building… tell 'em the number of the barn and they’ll head straight there. give them the number of the house and you might die in the barn while they search the house…
According to the numbering our house and barn are 4 metres appart whereas in reality I have to walk 20 metres across our courtyard from the house to the barn.
The only access to the barn is through our entrance gates next to our house.
If I have the misfortune to call the pompiers I will make sure this is explained to them
having peeked at the official guidelines for Department 30
it’s either the entrance to the land or the entrance to the building
Chaque numéro doit être attribué au point d’entrée des adresses, aussi appelé point d’accès numérique (PAN), qui désigne l’emplacement permettant l’accès à un bâtiment ou un ensemble de bâtiments à partir d’une voie.
Celui-ci peut correspondre à la porte d’entrée ou au portail du bâtiment ou au point de passage du domaine public vers le domaine privé :
