Buy a Château at a Bargain and Star in Your Own TV Show!

Who does not dream of being the Lord of the Castle? House Hunters International does! We’ve been given the project of finding someone who is on the hunt for a château in France to purchase — someone willing to be the subject of one of America’s most popular TV shows (HGTV is the network) so that together we can tell the story of the castle hunt and take the audience from one amazing manor to another…all in the countryside of France!

Sound romantic? And fun? Yes, it would be! And not as expensive for the purchaser as you might think.  

Just recently, we wrote about the Château Sainte Marie du Mont fractional ownership castle in the historic medieval village of Sainte Marie du Mont in Normandy. Owning a four week per year share is as little as 25,000€ per Share — a total purchase of 100,000€.

You can also buy your own château for very little money — a lot less than an apartment in Paris!

A six-bedroom château in Saint-Antonin Noble Val, Midi-Pyrénées with 1262m2 of land is for sale for as little as 395,000€. A distinguished stone-built castle full of character, complete with a rampart-lined garden, two reception rooms, six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, two big terraces, the property has an outside covered seating area within a fortress tower, ample storage space and the opportunity to develop the lower armory and cistern area. For the same price in Paris, you’d be lucky to find a 40m2 one-bedroom apartment in one of the outer districts!

In Pau at a reduced price of 530,000€ is a 12-room château with eight bedrooms, three living rooms and a surface area of 450m2 and 6,100m2 of land. This budget in Paris won’t get you much more than 50m2.

But maybe your ultimate dream is to own a château in the Loire Valley. For under one million euros, at 950,000€, again at a reduced price, you can buy an immaculately presented château dating back to 1904 in a walled park for security and privacy with a leisure complex (pool, spa, sauna, gym and steam room). It boasts of a period stained glass conservatory, an impressive staircase leading up to the two further floors as well as access to the basement leisure complex. The “professional” kitchen is well equipped with a charming “bistro” style breakfast area as well as direct access to the dining room. The lounge has large double doors which draw back to provide an impressive through room linking in the formal dining hall leading into the billiard room with views over the pool and park. There are oak parquet flooring and high ceilings throughout. Take the same funds and in central Paris you can purchase a two-bedroom apartment of about 85 to 90m2.

Or if you see yourself as Marie-Antoinette and money is no object, then you might like this 17th-century château in the heart of Versailles for sale at 43,000,000€, close to the palace and just 20 kilometers from Paris. It’s an historic estate with 32 hectares and 1,200m2 inside, all luxuriously restored including two additional 17th-century pavilions, stables and additional outbuildings. All of this set around a main canal of three hectares dating back to 1686 in the heart of a walled English park of 32 hectares.

What does 43,000,000€ buy you in Paris? About three to five of the city’s most expensive apartments. According to Destination Luxury a 6,458m2 apartment in Montmartre built in the 1930s will go for a little more than $16,500,000. In the 16th arrondissement, $11,400,000 buys you a 19th-century 385m2 apartment with a balcony. On Avenue Foch, the same square meter size apartment with four bedroom suites and two kitchens plus a garage is a bargain at $8,000,000. Facing the Jardins des Tuileries, $10,000,000 buys you 368m2 with two bedrooms. But if you go just a bit north to the Place des Victoires, you’ll find 1,000m2 with 10 bedrooms on three levels with a 40m2 terrace and a landscaped courtyard. For this one you might need the entire 43,000,000€ budget as the price is only given upon request. Want to venture a guess?

Meanwhile, be prepared for a lifetime of tender loving care to any château project. An American friend who purchased a 15th-Century in the Dordogne that was in ruins in the late 1990s for about the same price as I bought my 70m2 apartment in Paris about the same time, invested five times that to restore it to a 21st-century splendor, along with a lot of TLC, taking a mere year to complete. About 10 years later, she sold it for about three times her total investment. Overall, not bad considering the years of enjoyment she had. (Consider that renovation grants can be had to help you cover the renovation and repair expenses if your château has been registered as a historical landmark. It’s administratively cumbersome, but perhaps well worth it.)

Today sadly, châteaux are ‘a dime a dozen,’ thanks to the exodus of the wealthy from France because of tax hikes by the current Socialist administration. While it may have been their incentive to sell, it’s your incentive to buy as big bargains can be had.

Let us help you find the French château of your dreams and be the star of an episode of House Hunters International, too! (Contact me at [email protected])

A bientôt ,

Adrian Leeds
The Adrian Leeds Group

Respond to Adrian: [email protected]

P.S. The Adrian Leeds Group will be hosting another free  financial seminar with Brian Dunhill on April 21, 2016. I will be his guest speaker on “Financing a French Property.” Keep an eye on our Events & Conferences page for more details coming soon!