Timber-framed buildings may be rare in rural Charente, but Jess and Tom Kyle stay true to their ambition of building a Passivhaus-inspired home in the sunshine. The village is one of those idyllic hilltop villages us Brits are always falling in love with. It has a friendly and busy local bar with a boules pitch opposite, houses that appear to tumble down the hillside and a beautiful old church on the top.
While wandering around the village one day, we came across a number of buildings next to a vineyard. On one of the buildings there was a sign that said A vendre with a telephone number. I laughed as Tom took the number down because, although we often talked about how we wanted to buy a house in France, we had never got any further than looking at estate agent adverts. A few years later, Tom saw an advert for a French property show in London.
Our minds and imaginations took us in all sorts of directions and we were very unrealistic in thinking out what we could do. While we were there searching through hundreds of available properties we noticed that there was a lot of land available in France. As an architect, Tom has always wanted to design and build his own home. The thought of doing this in France was an exciting prospect. It was also one that appeared to carry less risk than trying to build in the UK, because self-build is more common in France.
This means that when you buy the land, you already know that you can build a house. You just need to apply for the permis de construire which covers the size, shape, appearance etc.
Building plots are also more readily available to self-builders than they are in the UK. So if you are going to design and build your own house, France has a more established and less risky self-build market than the UK. While at The France Show we booked a few viewings and also started to look at plots online.
