Languedoc houses tend to be town houses, small rooms and little outside, or Maison de Maître style with big imposing rooms but rarely a decent outside which is quite different to most parts of France. Both of these tend to be in the old part of villages with villas being built on the perimeter in larger plots of land. The French go for newer villas in general, and from talking to others the French would wipe out any signs of old components; put new tiles over the originals, take out original windows for uPVC, cover all the stone walls inside and out etc. There are almost no rural properties other than vigneron complexes, everything is given over to vines with a few olive tree groves.
The older houses are built with two walls of smallish stones mortared/cemented together, between these more stones are put so you end up with walls about 80cm thick. Often an outer render is put on, these are often cracked but certainly not a sign that the house is in danger of collapse! Gardens are rare, many older houses have no outside (often have had a roof terrace made) and there is a separate area outside of the centre where allotment style patches of land are, often near a water supply.
Estate agents are quite different here, they take between 7% and 10% of the sale and spend hours with you. When we went to look at Cazelles with the builder etc we met at 4pm, after seeing the property we were taken back to where they lived (neighbouring village) to see their houses plus another they were doing up (oddly we knew her, a Belgian opera singer with a small holiday home) . We finished up at about 8pm! Another day we saw three properties with an agent, met at 9:30 and finished at 2pm. Went back with her to look at one of the houses again and that was another 3 hours!
With one exception these are all C19th properties varying from 160K € needing a complete refit to a 495K € mansion (although that price could have been negotiated down). On top of the purchase price there are more fees, the notaire who also looks after the land tax and sales tax, which total about 8.5% of the sale price.
Just click on the village name to see the pictures.
Aigne - an 1870 Maison Bourgeoise which has been split up. The part for sale had the central hall (28sqm) and staircase plus one side while the smaller side is a chambre d'hote! It had a lovely hall and Laguedocian staircase, large (36sqm rooms) but some bad 1970s work, unusual layout and little outside. It is also right in the middle of the village opposite the restaurant.
Bize big house - it is hard to know what is behind the front facade of a house. Some are small and other similar looking ones are like this one... 600sqm of floor plus a garden! Cheap but a very confusing layout and far too pricy to do up.
Capestang - we have looked at a couple of houses there.
House 1 was a very well built 1970s villa, it had one floor of about 180sqm then matching sized basement and grenier (attic). It was on a +2000sqm section and backed onto the canal du Midi. It needed a complete overhaul, was a villa and a little too expensive for the amount of living space.
House 2 had been done up, not really to our taste, and backed on to the original town wall. There is the last remaining tower of the original walls integrated into the property. It had a small outside and was a bit pricy.
Cazelles - we saw this house when driving around. Went back with the agent and again the following day with a mason and an electrician/plumber. It has been done up as a gîte on the ground floor (90sqm) but that is all. The remise (shed) beside it is 63sqm and a ladder up through there is the only way to get to the unused 90sqm over the gite. A 56sqm garage is beside it. It is in a hamlet of ~30 people and has huge potential... We spoke to the builder about putting in windows, staircase etc. Lower floor of the remise was to be kitchen/dining room with windows out to the north. Above it was to be the master bedroom with en-suite, dressing room etc. Not change much in the gîte (some walls are structural) other than move front door to where kitchen window is to make living room bigger. Things fell apart when trying to subdivide the huge space over the gîte and fit a staircase in.... We were given an acceptable quote for the work but suspected it would at least double to get what we wanted, and that would take +6 months. Also would not have had an original French features like floor tiles, doors or windows.
Cazouls-lès-Béziers - this was a private sale and had been done up. It was OK but a little bland but the big issue is that it is on the main road.
Cruzy - saw this house when driving off to a restaurant. It is gorgeous with interesting bits here and there, a deep 11m x 5m pool, very private with a wall on two sides and the river on another. The inner garden was fenced off to separate it from the rest of the 5000sqm of land it has! Did not like the village much and could not afford it, but good to see.
Ferrals-les-Corbières - a large and run down property. It was two houses knocked together and had been used to house transient grape pickers in the past. It had a huge amount of vigneron hardware from over the years in the huge remise, horse collars, wine press, etc. It had a good outside area but was rather ugly and needing a huge amount of money spent on it.
Luc-sur-Orbieu - an 1841 Bastide, built as part of a vigneron estate. The outside gives no hint as to what is inside! It is about 2.5 town houses plus a garage and a garden across the road. It was owned by a notaires family for many years then a Columbian artist couple (he is French) bought it to live in during the winter to escape the Columbian heat. Needless to say everything looks rather good. It is an unusual layout with two staircases, ateliers (artists studios) on the first floor and recent central heating. There is no attached garden, but across the road is a full section (270sqm) with water from a well and and electrical feed. We really liked this one.......
Saint-Laurent-de-la-Casbrerisse - an 1850 house that has been in the same family ever since. It is an amazing period piece with all the matching furniture. To give an idea of size it has 33 radiators and a stunning selection of floor tiles. Sadly on a main road, needing a lot of work and not really our style.