Case Study · Still in the Running
Coubjours: The £28k Contender on the Corrèze Border
The biggest price cut on the whole search — a stone house with a wood stove, a garage and open views, on high, well-drained border country. Unlike the last one, this passed the ground check. Here's the full workup, warts and all.
Coubjours, Dordogne (24) · on the Corrèze border · ≈ 800 km / 8 hrs from Calais
After walking away from Thollet on the ground, this is the one that came through the same checks and stayed on the list — so it's worth the same full workup.
What it is
A house that starts with some comfort
A 75 m² stone house from 1940 on the edge of a hamlet:
• Entrance/kitchen, a loggia opening to the garden, a living room with a wood stove already in, a shower room and separate WC, and a part-convertible attic upstairs.
• A garage, and a 1,600 m² garden with a clear open view over the countryside.
• Renovation to plan — but it's habitable-shaped, not a shell.
• £28,336 — cut from £39,499, a £11,163 drop: the biggest price cut on the whole search.
A wood stove and a garage already in, an open view, a decent plot, and a seller who's clearly dropped the price to move it. That's a promising start.
Where it sits
Coubjours is in the far north-east of the Dordogne, right on the Corrèze border — rolling, wooded, well-drained upland country on the Périgord–Limousin edge. From the air it's ridges, copses and open fields, with hamlets scattered along the lanes. That elevation and drainage is the key difference from Thollet's flat valley bottom: far less of a damp risk, and it's where the open views come from.
It's close to Hautefort (its landmark château, ~15 km), Objat (~20 km, in Corrèze), and Brive (~30 km, with a TGV station and an airport). The trade-off is distance: ~800 km / 8 hours from Calais — the deep south-west, the furthest patch we cover.
The ground check
The routine that killed Thollet — Géorisques, run on the commune.
Clay: manageable here
The commune rates Important overall, but the sampled addresses come back “Modéré” (moderate) — the workable band, not the Important trap that sank Thollet. And it's on high, well-drained ground rather than a wet valley bottom. Four drought-subsidence declarations, versus Thollet's seven.
⚠️ The one to plan for: radon “Important”
This is granite country, and it shows: Géorisques rates radon “Important” (high). Radon is a natural radioactive gas that seeps up from granite bedrock and can build up indoors. It's common across the whole Limousin/Périgord border and it's manageable by design — a well-ventilated under-floor void, sealing the ground floor, and a bit of airflow. You just have to plan and budget for it, not discover it later.
Also on the commune: some forest-fire exposure (it's wooded) and low seismic risk. Nothing that rules it out — the ground here is a plan-around, not a walk-away.
The verdict
Still in the running. Manageable ground, a dry rolling setting with real views, a garage and wood stove already in, a decent 1,600 m² plot, and the biggest price cut on the search — a motivated seller with room to haggle. Weigh two things: the radon (fixable with ventilation) and the distance (800 km — a haul for weekend graft, though Brive airport softens it). Next step is to get the exact address and pin the plot's clay precisely, then price the radon fix into an offer.
How we judge every place
Coubjours passed the free ground check; Thollet didn't. Same routine, every time, before a single mile.
See the search log →One of the places still on our list — see them all in the search log. More on the ground: why clay is a nightmare.