Chris_B

Thanks Debra.   I have already seen an advert for land + three 3 bed houses + pool that falls within the budget, and thought that I should be able to get a reasonable living from that.  Am I allowed to paste links to property pages to use as an example?

From the posts above, and reading other threads/forums my belief is that €1000 pm is minimum to survive.  That is very useful information that I did not have this morning.  Many thanks for the feedback so far. It would be great if anyone could describe their experience, or give an indication, of whether you think property to the value €300,000 in the Pau region could provide accomodation + income in excess of  the minimum above.

Thanks for the warning.  I have been reading some of the older threads and have already gleaned some useful info.  I got the €1000 from thread http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/585309/ShowPost.aspx, and can see that normal does appear to have quite a wide spread!

My wife and I are considering a life in the foothills of the Pyrenees (probably just to the SW of Pau), and believe we are able to buy land with a number of properties to let (plus one to live in) for approx €300K.  We are fortunate enough to have this in cash, therefore a mortgage will not necessarily be required. Can the forum comment on whether such property would be able to sustain a 'normal' lifestyle, which I believe from reading other posts requires an income of €1000 pm? In addition, my wife has a degree in languages (Swedish and French) and is planning a TEFL course; while I have 15 years experience of telecommunications engineering, plus excellent PC/web design skills, and am generally quite practical around technology and DIY. Unfortunately I only have schoolboy French.  Are these skills in demand? We are both very keen and flexible as to how we could make this work.  Thanks in advance for the reality check!