REAL LIFE


property encroached in what we would call in England, a flying-freehold type arrangement. It required too much work for me, but could have worked well for someone with more DIY skills. The second and third


properties were two apartments in the same block in Montluçon. The four-storey block seemed to date from the 1970s and was arranged around three communal staircases so that each section of the block had eight apartments; one to the left and right of the staircase on each floor. It didn’t feel like a huge soulless block, and each resident would only be sharing a staircase with seven households. The two apartments were


Montluçon in Allier is a


charming old industrial town on the banks of the River Cher


way to find out was to visit. So, I made a brief trip in May 2019, bracing myself for a factory- scarred rust-belt wasteland. What I found was a charming


town with a medieval ducal palace overlooking a fountain- lined boulevard, set on the banks of the majestic River Cher. At a practical level, it seemed well served with shops, supermarkets, restaurants and brasseries. There was a large retail park on one bank of the Cher and, more charmingly,


a curved boulevard that was full of busy commercial units on the other. There was little evidence of the high street decline that has blighted many British town centres in recent years. It was not at all the post- industrial ghost town I had feared it would be. I returned to England


encouraged to continue in my quest. I began searching for specific properties to view and returned a few weeks later. I viewed four properties on that


on the first and second floors. Because the block was on the side of a hill, they both offered attractive views across the town from their spacious balconies. Both had two bedrooms, an L-shaped lounge/


The view from one of the two apartments Charles viewed in Montluçon


trip. The first was a maisonette fronting a charming square with a 12th-century church in an old medieval village on a hilltop just across the border from Allier and into the neighbouring Puy-de-Dôme.


The maisonette Charles looked around in the village centre in 2019


A FLYING START It was a beautiful old village but remarkable for the fact that it seemed that almost every second building was empty. The property itself was on the market at €19,000. It looked from the outside like an end- of-terrace house with a little front courtyard but turned out to be a sort of maisonette with two rooms on the ground and second floors and only one on the first. The neighbouring


dining room with sliding doors to the balconies, a galley kitchen and a bathroom. They were in the region of


€30,000 and immediately habitable with a bit of what the agent called “refreshing”. I was pleased to note when I viewed the properties that the universal language of estate agents’ euphemisms had its French version – in this case, the word of the day was rafraîchissement. The fourth viewing was


an even larger two-bedroom apartment on the market for €19,000. However, it was on the ninth floor of a large block with a shabby entrance area and scruffy lift. Though the apartment itself was in good


4 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: May/June 2024 75


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