Buying a maison de maître in France, in town, in a village or in the country

What is a maison de maître?

The maison de maître is the house of the master of the place: that of the owner of an estate, the notable of a village, the merchant of a trading city, the doctor or the notaire of a rural district. Built from the 18th century to the early 20th, it is recognised by its regular volume, most often a two-storey rectangle under a hipped roof, by its symmetrical façade, door in the centre and windows aligned, by its high ceilings and its reception rooms en enfilade, drawing room, dining room, study, opening onto a walled garden. The materials follow the region: golden stone in the Gironde, pink brick in Toulouse, brick and flint in Normandy, limestone and tile in the Languedoc.

The word has no legal definition and listings use it freely. Three signs make the true maison de maître: a composed architecture, designed rather than added to over time; original decoration, marble fireplaces, parquet floors, mouldings, a balustraded staircase; and an enclosed whole, garden, outbuildings, boundary wall. The hôtel particulier, an urban residence with a cour d’honneur, and the château, a country residence with its land, are its two neighbours; the character home is the family that brings them all together.

Where to buy a maison de maître in France?

The maison de maître exists in every region, but it sells above all where the trading cities and prosperous villages of the 18th and 19th centuries have kept their buildings: the Bordeaux region, the Toulouse area and the South-West, Normandy, the Languedoc, the Atlantic coast, and the countryside within two hours of a large city. Home Select looks for it first in six areas.

The Bordeaux region and the Gironde

Around Bordeaux, the maison de maître often merges with the chartreuse, a single-storey 18th-century residence, long and low, at the heart of a former wine estate, or with the merchant’s house of the stone-built faubourgs, Caudéran, Le Bouscat, Talence. The page on buying a maison de maître in Bordeaux describes these districts and the Entre-deux-Mers, and the page on the hôtel particulier in Bordeaux the residences of the centre.

Toulouse, Albi and the South-West

In Toulouse, the maison de maître is in pink brick, with a low-pitched roof of round tiles and sometimes a timber gallery: the Toulouse house of the faubourgs, Saint-Cyprien, Les Chalets, Guilheméry, and the maison de maître of the Lauragais hills. See buying a maison de maître in Toulouse. Towards Albi and the Tarn, brick mixes with stone, amid grounds planted with cedars.

Normandy: Étretat, the Alabaster Coast and the Pays de Caux

The Norman maison de maître is of brick and flint, or brick and stone, under a steep slate roof, behind a gate and a garden of beeches: the holiday house of Étretat and the Alabaster Coast, the maison de maître of the villages of the Pays de Caux, that of the clos-masures. The page on buying a maison de maître in Étretat describes this market; towards Honfleur and Deauville, the maison de maître stands next to the manor of the Pays d’Auge, in the Normandy area.

Nîmes, Uzès, Montpellier and the Languedoc

In the Languedoc, the maison de maître is the house of the wine or textile merchant, in limestone under a roof of round tiles: the faubourgs of Nîmes, the villages of the Uzège around Uzès, the wine villages between Montpellier and Béziers, where it dominates the village square with its grounds and its plane trees. There it stands beside the mas, described in the guide to the character home.

The Atlantic coast: La Rochelle, Royan and the Vendée

From La Rochelle to Royan, the maison de maître is that of shipowners and merchants, in white stone, often with a courtyard on the street and a garden at the back, and that of the villages of the Saintonge and the Vendée, in the Atlantic coast area. The islands have few; the maison de maître is sought rather on the mainland, within half an hour of the sea.

Brittany, the Loire Valley and Burgundy

Brittany has its granite maison de maître, in trading towns such as Vannes and Saint-Malo, next to the malouinière; the Loire Valley and Burgundy have their maisons de maître of tuffeau and stone, amid grounds, within two hours of Paris. Home Select runs the search there remotely, with its network of partners, for buyers moving out of the Paris region.

How much does a maison de maître cost?

No public statistic gives the price of a maison de maître. The DVF register of sales, published by the tax administration, files it among houses, without distinguishing the merchant’s house from the house on a housing estate. The median price for houses in a commune therefore gives a market benchmark; the top tenth of sales, where the large houses are found, is a better one.

The price of a maison de maître is formed on the address, the garden and its size, the volumes and the surviving decoration, the condition of the roof and the structure, the outbuildings, and the distance to a railway station or a large city. A house of 250 to 400 square metres, with a garden of a few thousand square metres, is compared with its peers, not with the median: comparable sales are sought in the same village or the same district, over several years.

The budget has three lines. The purchase price, first. Then the restoration, which an architect or a project manager costs before the offer: roof, façades, joinery, utilities, insulation. Finally the upkeep of every year: a large house and its garden cost money to keep, and the outbuildings, often neglected, cost even more. The library dossier on the renovation budget for an older property details these items.

What should you check in the structure of a maison de maître?

Roof, roof timbers and floors

The hipped roof of a maison de maître, slate in the north, tile in the south, is its first item of expense: its renewal runs to tens of thousands of euros, more with the zinc work and the dormers. The roof timbers are read from the attic, piece by piece: sagging, traces of insects, joints. The 19th-century floors, timber on joists, carry limited loads; cracks in the façade are read above all in regions of clay soils, where the shrinking and swelling of clay moves the foundations.

Damp and old walls

The stone or brick walls of an old house breathe: cement renders, sealed slabs and badly designed linings trap damp in them. Rising damp is read at the foot of the walls, infiltration under the roofs and behind the downpipes, ventilation in the cellars. Termites are checked for in the zones delimited by prefectoral order, lead in paint from before 1949, asbestos in any building from before 1997.

Utilities, heating and energy

Electricity, plumbing, heating and drainage have often been redone piecemeal. A house rated E, F or G is sold with an energy audit, which proposes scenarios of works; on a maison de maître, insulation is designed through the attic, the ground floors and the joinery, keeping the decoration of the façades and the reception rooms. The library dossier on the energy renovation of an older property details these choices.

• Roof, roof timbers and attic, seen from inside, with the date of the last renewal.
• Floors, beams and staircase: sagging, insects, permissible loads.
• Walls and cellars: rising damp, infiltration, renders, ventilation.
• Utilities: electricity, water, mains or private drainage, heating.
• Decoration: fireplaces, parquet floors, mouldings, staircase, joinery, and their condition.

Heritage protection and planning rules: what will you be able to change?

Few maisons de maître are listed as monuments historiques, but many stand near a monument, in a site patrimonial remarquable or in an old centre covered by façade regulations: works that alter the exterior appearance, joinery, renders, roof, fence, are then subject to the agreement of the architecte des Bâtiments de France. The local urban plan (PLU), for its part, says what the garden allows: a pool, an extension, an outbuilding converted into a home, a division of the plot.

Two pitfalls recur. The first is division: a maison de maître divided into apartments, or whose garden has been sold off in plots, loses the whole that made its value; before buying a whole house, check that its outbuildings and its garden are indeed in the lot sold. The second is the lawful status of works done: a conservatory, an extension or a converted outbuilding built without permission can sometimes be regularised, and sometimes not.

• The zoning of the local urban plan, the rules on height, footprint and fences, and the protections of the building.
• The permissions obtained for recent works, and the planning certificate for those you envisage.
• Easements: rights of way, views, pipes, party walls of the boundary walls.
• The perimeter of a historic monument or a site patrimonial remarquable, and its rules.