Second home in Lourmarin: the guide

A closed house in Lourmarin must be maintained, not merely kept. The thick walls of the old houses hold the damp of tight party walls, and a stone house badly prepared reopens cold after an empty winter. The real subjects remain water and the heating of the stone, the chimney sweeping, the pruning of the olive and cherry trees, and, around the mas, the compulsory brushwood clearing in exposed areas.

Remote management rests on loyal craftsmen, caretakers included: stone forgives no improvisation. Home Select builds this logic of absence into the selection: land status around a mas, off-mains drainage inspected by the SPANC for isolated houses, the listed-village rules for façades and roofs, and the permit deadlines that add to the works calendar.

Almost nothing is listed in Lourmarin: houses pass between families, through notaries and word of mouth, often never photographed. The right properties go fast, sometimes before being shown: vigilance and the network make the transaction. A serious buyer works with a search mandate, not with a list of viewings.

The year opens in spring, from March to June, for the houses to be lived in from the summer; July and August belong to the terraces, and the September return reopens the serious viewings. Late season, when the harvest comes down from the appellation’s vines, remains the finest window: the village breathes, and the owners have time to talk.

The clientele is mixed: Parisians with a second home, Aix residents 45 minutes away, foreigners faithful to Camus’s village, families switching to year-round life after a few summers. Avignon’s TGV is about an hour away, Marseille-Provence airport likewise: the house becomes livable at the rhythm of weekends, and the village is used to accents from elsewhere.

Home Select conducts the search from a distance: brief refined in a video call or by phone, video pre-viewings run with the seller’s agent, price checked against comparable sales, then a single trip for the decisive viewings. Home Select watches 1,700 listing sites, draws on a network of 15,000 partners and counts 30% of expatriate or international clients; it coordinates the notary through to the signature, power of attorney possible.