Lot-et-Garonne Property For Sale

Lot et Garonne property offers buyers a fabulous climate and an embarrassment of choice between medieval fortified towns (known as ‘bastides’), picturesque villages and remote rural idylls.

If you plan on catering to the tourist trade then buy your Lot et Garonne property in the north of the department where it borders the Dordogne. The same honey-stoned properties with their turrets and pigeonniers are much cheaper here than over the border. Property hotspots include the hilltop Bastide town of Montflanquin – one of the prestigious 'most beautiful villages of France' – and the charming Bastide town of Villeréal – don’t miss its Monday evening markets (or the opportunity to nip ‘over the border’ to see Monpazier).

The historical village of Lauzun is just over the border from the Dordogne Bastide town of Eymet yet there is currently no B&B accommodation! In the very north east corner of the department you’ll find the chateaux of Bonaguil, Gavaudun and Fumel on the ‘circuit des chateaux’.

Buying in or near these tourist hotspots can be a shrewd investment as long spring and autumn seasons, added to a summer already longer and hotter than that of the Dordogne, mean that B&B and gite owners have more months per year to make a return on their investment.

To the south the landscape melts into gently rolling fields more typical of Gascony (the Gers) and the architecture similarly gives way to the long slanting roofs typical of the area.

This is the agricultural heartland of Aquitaine: irrigated by the two great rivers from which the department takes its name Lot et Garonne can also lay claim to be France’s fruit bowl with its vast orchards of plum, peach and nectarines and fields of melon.

Residents enjoy an unrivalled quality of life. Here you don’t live to work, you work (just enough) to live - whether it’s enjoying the outdoor spectacle of the weekly market in each of the Bastide towns (with stalls groaning beneath the weight of the cornucopia of local produce) or whether it’s partaking in the wealth of outdoor activities on offer such as kayaking, horse-riding, fishing, cycling and walking.

The department is suitable both for buyers who want to slow down and put their feet up and for the more energetic who may want to carve out a niche business and share their love of the great outdoors with paying guests.

There are good transport links with the A62 motorway bisecting the department as it runs through the capital Agen on its way between Bordeaux and Toulouse, the railway – soon to be upgraded to high-speed TGV – takes the same route.

International flights are available from both Toulouse and Bordeaux with Paris just a 3h 25 minute TGV journey away! Bergerac airport is a mere 25km north of the department with budget flights to and from the UK.