France has developed a slight expert problem Spend twenty minutes online researching a move to France and you will discover something remarkable: there are apparently several million experts on moving to France. Some moved here last year. Some bought a house twenty years ago. Some run Facebook groups. Some have beautiful Instagram accounts featuring markets, stone walls and suspiciously photogenic croissants. Some are estate agents. Some sell relocation services. Some simply

France is easier to move to when the whole family is actually moving When people start planning a move to France, they usually begin with the glamorous questions. Which region? Which town? What kind of house? Village or countryside? Pool or no pool? Walk to market or glorious isolation? All very understandable. I approve of all this daydreaming. In fact, I have built a modest professional life around helping people daydream slightly more intelligently. Then, somewhere in th

The giant blob problem “Move to France” sounds like one decision. In reality, it is a whole collection of decisions wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one. Where will you live? Will you buy or rent? What kind of life do you want? What can you afford? Do you need a visa? How close do you need to be to healthcare? What happens to your current home? How will you meet people? And what happens if you discover, six months in, that your dream village is rather less dreamy in

There is a particular stage in a French project where people become very good at preparing. They read. They research. They make spreadsheets. They compare regions. They save properties. They check tax rules, healthcare, airports, weather, train times and whether the Thursday market in a village they have never visited is any good. All of this is useful. Until it isn’t. Because sometimes preparation quietly turns into postponement. You are no longer gathering information bec

Travel agents were supposed to disappear A funny thing has happened to travel agents. They were supposed to disappear. Once we had Google, Booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor, YouTube, Instagram and several million people willing to tell us where they had the best pizza of their lives, what possible purpose could a travel agent still serve? And now, of course, we have AI, which can produce a three-week itinerary through Tuscany before you have finished your morning coffee. Exc

Apparently, people are doing exactly that A few years ago, asking a computer where you should move would have sounded slightly ridiculous. Today, people do it all the time. They tell ChatGPT or another AI tool their budget, age, family situation, climate preferences, language ability, need for an airport, desire for markets, healthcare, restaurants, schools or countryside, and then ask the obvious question: Where should I live in France? And actually, this makes quite a l

Yes, passive cooling should come first. Insulation, external shutters, trees, shading, appropriate glazing and sensible ventilation reduce energy use and often make a dramatic difference. But electricity in France is exceptionally low-carbon. In 2025, more than 95% of mainland French electricity production came from low-carbon sources, principally nuclear and renewables, according to RTE. So we are no longer dealing with quite the same environmental equation that existed wh

When people tell me they are “about a year away” from buying in France, they usually say it with a certain calmness. A year feels reassuringly distant. Plenty of time to think about regions, maybe visit a few places, look at some properties online and generally let the idea mature. I understand the feeling, but the problem is that a year disappears rather quickly once you remember that buying a property in France is only one part of the project. Before the house comes the que