The Journal
What you learn from looking after seaside houses: the faults that keep coming back, the winters that cost a fortune, the decisions taken too late. Written from Le Teich, on no fixed schedule.
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A good arrival is prepared seven days ahead, not on the morning
The house is ready or it is not, and that is decided a week earlier. The recommissioning protocol we apply, and the list of things that spoil a first evening.
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The problem is not finding the tradesman. It is letting them in.
The quotation has been waiting three weeks, the appointment has moved twice, and somebody will have to be there on Tuesday at eight. Anatomy of a logistical problem that distance makes almost insoluble.
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Twelve questions to ask before entrusting your villa to anyone
The brochures all look alike. These twelve questions, asked out loud, separate in twenty minutes the providers who have a method from those who have a website.
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Concierge, caretaker, estate manager: three trades that get confused
We practise one of the three. Here is why, in many cases, it is not the one you need — and how to recognise the one that is.
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L'Herbe, Le Canon, Piraillan: owning a house in a protected village
Timber cabins, sand lanes, no vehicular streets and complex land tenure. The villages of the peninsula hold exceptional heritage value and a maintenance regime like nowhere else.
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The coastline is retreating. What that means when you own a house here.
Erosion at the point of Cap Ferret, the dune of Pilat advancing, marine flooding on the highest tides: the Bay moves. Since the 2021 Climate and Resilience Act, that movement has concrete legal effects.
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Living under the pines, after the summer of 2022
Thirty thousand hectares burned in the Gironde in one summer. Since then the rules have tightened, enforcement has intensified, and owners around the Bay have discovered obligations they did not know existed.
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You have just bought on the Bay. Here are the six months that count.
The deed is signed, the keys are in your hand, and the real taking of possession begins. What we do systematically in the first half-year, and why it shapes the next twenty.
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Five owners, one house, and nobody deciding
French indivision is a holding pattern. On a Bay house passed between siblings it almost always produces the same result: everyone pays, nobody arbitrates, and the property deteriorates at the pace of the disagreements.
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What a house is worth when you can prove its history
Two identical villas, same street, same year. One sells in six weeks at the asking price, the other lingers eight months and gives up twelve per cent. The difference was in a folder.
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The budget nobody makes: what a villa on the Bay really costs
People work out the purchase price, the notary's fees, sometimes the property tax. Almost never the line that weighs heaviest over twenty years: what the house consumes simply to remain what it is.
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Active or passive winterisation: the choice that shapes your winter
Around the Bay, winters are mild and long. That climate makes passive winterisation less obvious than people think, and active winterisation less expensive than it is said to be.
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What the westerly does to your roof, year after year
Everyone watches the named storms. It is the ordinary winds that wear roofs out: forty to fifty kilometres an hour, three days out of five, from November to March, on the same verge tiles.
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The garden is the first thing to give an absence away
Before the closed shutters, it is the vegetation that signals an empty house. And on the Bay, between sand, salt and pines, a garden left alone does not merely grow: it changes character.
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Pine processionary caterpillars: what an owner of pines must know and do
Classified as harmful to human health since 2022, they come down from the pines between January and April. Around the Bay, where the maritime pine is everywhere, the question is not whether you will have them but when.
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The air of the Bay works on your house, even when nobody is in it
Salt attacks metals, humidity moves the dew point, wind-blown sand abrades everything it touches. Three patient agents that need only your absence to do their work.
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A villa on the Bay, month by month: the full maintenance calendar
Twelve months, forty-two interventions, and one simple logic: every task has its season. The calendar we apply to the houses in our care, published as it stands.
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Water damage in an empty house, or how to multiply a bill by ten
A 2 mm leak in an occupied house means a mop. In an empty one it means a six-month project. Anatomy of a claim that should almost never happen.
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Closing up for winter: what almost everyone forgets
Twenty-seven actions, three hours of work, and nearly every winter claim avoided. The protocol we apply from Lège to Le Teich, with the mistakes we see repeated every year.
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One alert in twenty is real. That is the whole problem.
A system that cries wolf too often stops being read. It is the best-documented mechanism in industrial safety, and it is exactly what happens to over-instrumented villas.
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One power cut in January, and everything falls in sequence
The breaker trips on a Tuesday evening. Nobody knows. Within five days the frost protection, the ventilation, the monitoring and the pool have all stopped — and nothing raised an alert, because the alerting system was mains-powered too.
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Alarm, monitoring, concierge: who covers what, exactly
Three different trades, often confused, protecting three distinct things. Many owners pay twice for the same cover and leave the real risk exposed.
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Detecting a leak from six hundred kilometres: what sensors can and cannot do
Fifteen-euro pads, motorised valves, smart meters: the market is rich and the promises generous. Device by device, here is what works in an empty house and what does not.
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Letting your villa for a few weeks: what changed, and what awaits you
Compulsory registration number, reduced tax allowance, an energy performance requirement, greater powers for communes. Furnished tourist letting is no longer the flexible regime it once was.
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The unoccupancy clause, or how to be insured without really being insured
It runs to three lines, in the middle of the particular conditions, and it governs most of your cover. Most second-home owners discover it exists after a claim.
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What you pay every year for a house you use for six weeks
Property tax, second-home council tax, the surcharge voted by the commune, tourist tax if you let. Four lines, one mechanism, and a trend that will not reverse.