The Method
The Armchair Checklist
You can rule out nine houses in ten without leaving your kitchen table. Why burn five days and a tank of diesel driving to a semi on a main road with a barn that has to come down — when ten minutes of free checks would have told you to skip it?
This is the single most useful page on the site. Time, travel and fuel are exactly the money a cheap-house project can't afford to waste — so do the homework first, and only ever get in the van for the two or three places that have already survived every test. Here's the routine, in three stages.
Free desk-checks
All free, all in minutes — these kill most duds before you even email an agent.
1Satellite & Street View
Google Maps & geoportail.gouv.fr
Is it detached or a terrace? On a main road? In a village or stranded miles out? What's the setting really like?
Catches: semis, roadside, isolated or urban plots — on sight.2Géorisques — the ground
georisques.gouv.fr → type the address → report
The big one. Clay shrink-swell, flood, radon, old mining, nuclear zones. “Fort/Important” clay is usually a walk-away — here's why clay is a nightmare.
Catches: the clay, flood and pollution that make cheap houses money-pits.3Cadastre — the plot
cadastre.gouv.fr / geoportail.gouv.fr parcels
Is the land one single block? Is it the size the listing claims? Or is the “acre” three fields down the lane — or just the footprint and a verge?
Catches: split land, borrowed woodland, and “no land” dressed up.4Read the French for water & drains
eau de ville / tout-à-l'égout = mains (good). puits / fosse / assainissement à refaire = well / septic / to redo.
Catches: an expensive drainage surprise, before you fall for the photos.5The viager trap
Skip anything that says “viager” — a suspiciously cheap price often means the seller lives there for life and you pay a monthly annuity.
Catches: the “£20k bargain” you can't actually move into.6Distance checks
How far to a café or bakery, to shops, to your route home, and what's the cycling and walking like? A dead-quiet spot is lovely until it's a 40-minute drive for milk.
Catches: the isolation that looks romantic and lives lonely.Then email the agent
Only for the ones that survive Stage A — and let the agent do the legwork.
- Taxe foncière — last year's bill (your biggest holding cost)
- Who pays the agency fees — honoraires vendeur or acquéreur?
- Real recent photos — wall corners, internal cracks, floor level, and the roof timbers
- Roof — just the tiles, or the charpente (framework) too?
- Water — mains, or a well? (year-round? tested? declared? on your land?)
- Drains — mains sewer, septic, or to create? SPANC-compliant?
- Time on market — “depuis combien de temps en vente?” (your negotiating leverage)
- Diagnostics — DPE and amiante (asbestos), to flush out a costly roof
- Heritage — is it in a listed-monument ABF perimeter? (solar restrictions)
Only now, travel
By the time you get in the van, you're seeing two or three survivors, not touring hopefuls — and you view them all in one efficient trip. Stage A was free, Stage B was the agent's legwork; Stage C is the only bit that costs you time and fuel.
Patience, then pounce
The genuine bargains sell in days — everyone local can see one too. So do all of this in advance: know your non-negotiables, have your alerts running, and be able to run these checks in your sleep. Then the day a match lands, you move the same afternoon — not next week.
The checklist in action — houses we walked away from
Every one of these was killed by a check above, from the armchair, for free.
Chastellux (Yonne) — sold in days
A perfect £14k cottage with barn, stable, well and woodland. We did the homework — but it went before we could move.
Lesson · do the checks in advance, and pounceThollet (Vienne) — the clay & damp killed it
The best find on paper — two barns, 8,543 m² — but Géorisques rated the commune's clay “Important” with 7 subsidence declarations and a rising water table. See the full case study.
Caught by · Check 2, GéorisquesNeuilly (Nièvre) — the clay killed it
£15k, but Géorisques rated the commune high for clay — which explained the barn's cracks and tie-rod. Semi-detached, demolition barn, moving ground.
Caught by · Check 2, GéorisquesColmery (Nièvre) — the land wasn't there
A “¾-hectare farmstead” — until the cadastre showed the buildings on 517 m² and the “land” as a detached orchard elsewhere, plus a full re-roof and three houses.
Caught by · Check 3, the cadastreAlligny-Cosne (Nièvre) — clay, nuclear, and fake photos
A £5k “bargain”: clay Important, in a nuclear iodine zone, roof holed — and the glossy lead photos were AI-generated “finished” renders, not the real house.
Caught by · Checks 1 & 2 (and ignoring the AI photos)Now you know the drill
Pick your patch, set your alerts, and check every place from the armchair before you drive a single mile.
Where to buy — and where to avoid →Every tool here is free and public. The whole point: spend ten minutes at the kitchen table, not five days on the road — and keep your money for the roof.