Where to buy in Saint-Malo: the districts

Behind the ramparts, granite buildings rebuilt after the war to the earlier plan: character apartments, sometimes with a view of the open sea or of the ramparts, everything on foot, the walled town crossed in ten minutes. The product: the apartment, from the pied-à-terre to the high floor with a view. The buyer: the Parisian second-home owner who wants to do everything on foot, the lover of the rebuilt town. The traps: no parking at all, the rules of the protected sector, with façades, roofs and windows under the control of the Architecte des Bâtiments de France, and municipal rules that govern the use of dwellings. The budget: the most contested segment of the town, where scarcity commands more than floor area.

Le Sillon and Courtoisville are the sea wall, the great beach and the buildings that line it: the address of the clear sea view, sought after for second homes. Values rise with the floor and the exposure; ground floors and second rows offer a more accessible way into the same district. The buyer: someone who buys the view above all, and who must check it at high tide as at low tide, the tidal range reaching about thirteen metres at spring tides. The traps come from the sea wind, and the file reveals them.

East of the Sillon, Paramé and Rothéneuf line up the fabric of villas and seaside houses, as far as the coves of Rothéneuf and Le Minihic. The product: the house with a garden, the space the intra-muros cannot give, with the beach on foot or a few minutes away. The buyer: the family with a regularly used second home, the family from western France buying for the whole year, the Breton home after a Paris career who reopens the family house. The traps: the exposure of beachside houses to the sea wind, whose pointing, roofs and windows do not age as they do inland. The budget: below the seafront at equal floor area, the garden and the distance to the beach making the difference.

Saint-Servan and the Cité d’Aleth, the former commune to the south, with its Solidor tower and its port of Les Sablons: townhouses, buildings with a view over the Rance estuary, services on foot, schools and winter shops. This is the district of buyers who live here all year round, at more measured values than the seafront, and the one that carries most year-round moves: Saint-Malo holds through the whole year, with a lycée, a hospital, a commercial and leisure port and its TGV station, which sets it apart from many coastal markets. The trap here is to choose on the view alone: the daily journey and the district decide.

Between Saint-Malo, Cancale and the Rance, the Clos-Poulet is the shipowners’ countryside, ten minutes away: the mansions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the longères of the plateau. The product: the property, not the address in town. The buyer: rare and patient, someone looking for a malouinière who accepts that only a few sell each year, largely by private agreement, the owning family often coming before the agency. The traps: the old buildings, their roofs, their outbuildings and their drainage, to be inspected by the SPANC if it is not mains-connected; have the works costed before the offer. The budget: that of a country property, which compares poorly with the square metre of an apartment on the Sillon.

This market is approached through the network, the notaires and direct approach, with a search mandate: exactly the ground where a property finder changes the outcome. Home Select receives more than 100 off-market properties every day through its network of 15,000 partners, and runs the search from a distance: brief by video call, vetting on documents, video pre-viewings with the seller’s agent, price tested against comparable DVF sales, then a single trip for the decisive viewings, grouped together, out of season if possible and on a spring-tide day for the seafront. The rest, negotiation, securing the purchase and coordinating the notaire, is done without your coming back.