Béziers

[NormanH]

I supposed to be on the up! It must be true...it's in the Torygraph[:D]

Béziers – for many years the second cousin to Montpellier or Agde –

is a town on the up. It may look a bit of a building site at the moment,

but major improvements are already evident.

Robert Ménard, the mayor, has been instrumental in renovating the

city's and creating new pedestrian areas. There are more boutique hotels

and small shops, plus the Polygone shopping centre.

On the other side of the Orb river, Les Neuf Écluses de Fonséranes

has also had a makeover. These nine locks now have restaurants, cafés

and an interactive 3D museum, with views across to Béziers' splendid

cathedral of Saint-Nazaire.

"The face lift has complemented the incredible changes being

undertaken in Béziers' historic city centre," says Phil Rees of Home

Hunts. A three-bedroom penthouse in Béziers for €299,000 would cost

€470,000 in Montpellier, while a €199,000 four-bedroom town house would

be €545,000 in Agde.

"Now is the time to buy in Béziers as prices are low," says Claudia

Goetting of Leggett. "It will be a fantastic investment for the future.

You can see the changes everywhere."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/abroad/hunt-better-value-south-france/

Weird though. I have  townhouse with 2 flats and 3/4 bedrooms...and it won't sell for 45,000€ let alone 199,000€ [:P]

[alittlebitfrench]

You don't live in a penthouse then Norman ? Call it a Penthouse and it will be worth more !!!!

Talking of which, what is a penthouse in France ?

Ohh legetts. They make me laugh. If you see the word legetts I would just leg-it. They call flats penthouses so they can mark them up by 100k and sell them to numbty Brits.

I have never been to Béziers. My only knowledge of the place is reading about it the local newspaper whilst sat on a beach in La Grande Motte. It is a bit hot for crime from what I understand.

The south of France is very different type of France. Nice for a holiday, but to live ??? Hmmm....no. Not my cuppa tea.

[Gardian]

Would you elaborate ALBF?

I’m not being defensive - just interested in your reasons for down here not being somewhere you’d want to live.

[alittlebitfrench]

I just find that people who live in/from the South to be very hot headed and very hard. Being a laid back character, I would not fit in. OH is the same. I go to the South nearly every year on holiday but two weeks is enough. My BP starts to rise.

Lyon is the furthest South I have lived and that was enough. The contrast between Paris and Lyon is huge.

In the Loire Valley people are just cool and go with the flow. I like that.

[NormanH]

I wouldn't really call Béziers French. It is a Mediterranean town with all the mix of peoples and cultures  that that suggests. It iis very different from places further inland away  from the coast and climate.

[woolybanana]

Given what you have just said, Norman, define French geographically (not France).

[NormanH]

I can only think of Not-French...which would certainly be the whole Mediterranean coastal strip which shades in to Catalunya just north of Perpignan, and probably something else towards Nice.

On the Atlantic coast there is the Pay basque, then of course Brittany in the North west and Alsace Lorraine in the North east.

The Loire valley I reckon is in France though.[:D]

[Gardian]

Hmmm ..... certainly “hot-headed and hard” aren’t traits that I would attribute to most of the folk around here. Laid back to the point of being virtually horizontal, would IMO better sum them up. In saying that, I’m talking about the indigenous people.

When I’ve wanted to have a moan about something, I’m usually urged by our neighbour to keep quiet. “You can’t rock the boat!”. “Why not?”. “Well, you just shouldn’t”. He thinks (and tries to give the impression) that he’s forceful and assertive, but in truth he’s all mouth & trousers.

When I think about the people we know reasonably well, I come up with quite a cosmopolitan mix. Apart from half a dozen or so ‘locals’, people from Alsace, the Savoie, Normandy, Paris, Belgium, Germany (our superb GP), Italy (2nd génération), Spain (again 2nd generation), Maghreb (mostly 3rd generation) and yes ....... a sprinkling of Brits.

Not sure what that proves, other than that (provided you can live with the heat in the Summer) quite a mixed bag of people find this neck of the woods an ‘alright’ area to live in.