Where to buy in Cassis: the districts

A few streets between the place de la Barasse and the quays: fishermen’s houses rehabilitated in pastel shades, and apartments with a port view above the terraces. Shops, market and restaurants are all on foot, which remains rare on this shore. Large surfaces are impossible to find, properties are fiercely contested, and a share of the sales pass between families. The typical buyer looks for a pied-à-terre or a year-round house, the car almost redundant.

The traps are read in the fabric and in the use: summers stay lively until late, and an address on the port is also judged on an August evening, not only in February.

La Presqu’île is the tongue of land between the port and the calanque of Port-Miou: the most sought-after domain of Cassis, properties in the pines with a view over the roadstead and direct access to the water. Sales there are extremely rare and precious, and every private domain carries its rulebook: rights of way, prohibitions on extending, rules of appearance. That rulebook is not negotiated after the signature: it is read, and audited, before any offer.

Le Bestouan, on the road to the cape, lives around its beach: villas and houses a few steps from the water, the coastal path along the properties, a south exposure that makes them the most family-friendly addresses of the village. Two points are checked before the offer: the route of the coastal-path easement, which runs along the gardens, and the exposure to spray and the mistral of a building facing the open sea. A façade is also read in winter, in heavy weather, not only in July.

Above the village, between the vines of the appellation and the hills, the heights line up bastides with land and contemporary villas with a view over the bay, five minutes from the port and in absolute calm. It is a confidential market: a large plot promises nothing here, between agricultural zones and planting rights, the loi Littoral and the surroundings of the national park. The existing building is most of the value: have a planning certificate raised before valuing an extension or a swimming pool.

The buyer of the heights chooses silence, light and the wide view, and accepts the car for everything. It is also the choice of transmission: in Cassis, a house is kept, and sales are born more often of an inheritance than of a departure. Across the four districts, the relative budget follows the product more than the surface: two neighbouring houses may not belong to the same world. This is a market that is hunted through a network: Home Select draws on the more than 100 off-market properties its network of 15,000 partners brings every day, and qualifies each lead on paper then on video. Home Select charges only on success: 2.5% including VAT of the net purchase price with the Exclusive offer, with a minimum of €10,000 including VAT, or 1.5% including VAT of the net purchase price with the Confidential offer for projects of €2M and above; nothing is due before completion.