Les Alpilles, a sound investment

Radia Amar - 22 January 2024

Enjoying a reputation extending well beyond our borders, villages in the Alpilles combine charm, a fine art of living, and authenticity. Qualities that are all highly-prized by a clientele both French and foreign.

A real picture-postcard of Provence, the region of Les Alpilles offers a privileged backcloth for living, easily accessible by train or plane. Buyers are not mistaken. More and more of them are settling here in semi-main homes. Reached from Paris in 3 hours on the TGV, the gem of the Alpilles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, enjoys a faultless reputation, along with its famous neighbours, Maussane and Eygalières.

A wine-producing and tourist area, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence lies north of the mountain chain of Les Alpilles, about 10 km north of Les Baux-de-Provence, between Avignon, Cavaillon and Arles. A commune with around 11,000 inhabitants, it forms part of the Regional Nature Park of Les Alpilles, and its heritage, both natural and man-made, benefits from a well-established reputation. Many French and a good number of north Europeans acquire charming holiday homes here, appreciating, in addition to its charms, its climate, lifestyle, and proximity to Avignon’s TGV station.

Saint-Rémy is full of enticing boutiques, a good number of renowned restaurants, art-galleries and home decor stores proposing tasteful furniture and objects designed to enhance classic or contemporary villas. Each year, from May to October, the commune stages its “Route des Artistes” : a big contemporary art market in which a good many artists and craftsmen take over the town centre for several days at a time throughout the season, for the greater enjoyment of tourists and holidaymakers. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is unquestionably a very sound value, whatever the economic situation. Taken over in May 2023 by Christophe Dauberte, the Stéphane Plaza agency created in 2018 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence covers all of the Alpilles and the Luberon. Focusing on sales, property and rental management, and transactions for commercial premises, this dynamic structure is boosted by the reputation of its famous founder.

It proposes all kinds of properties intended as both main homes for the local clientele, and second homes, especially for buyers in search of a house or pied-à-terre in Saint-Rémy.

“Thanks to its international aura, Saint-Rémy posts stable prices. We are, however, seeing a slight decline in other areas in the Alpilles and around Cavaillon,” says Christophe Dauberte, confident about his market which remains a blue-chip investment despite the global slowdown.

“At the start of this year, we are upscaling our activity in properties requiring renovation. Accompanied by local craftsmen, diagnostic technicians and experts, we assist our clients in their energy-related renovations. It is one aspect of our much-appreciated local expertise,” explains this former specialist in the bank sector who, despite the winter calm, is as enthusiastic as ever, as witnessed by numerous sales, recent and on-going, orchestrated by his agency.

For example, a villa of 200 m2 with a garden of 900 m2 and an annex, a short walk to the centre of Saint-Rémy, sold in December for 890,000 € to a local client who is making it his permanent new home. Another example, in a residential area in Chateaurenard, where a young couple of Parisians transferred to the region acquired a traditional house of 135 m2 with a garden of 860 m2 and a pool, priced at 460,000 €.