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[alexia s.]

"Planning permission is a moveable feast, and guidelines can and do change from year to year according to the Town's Development Plan". Not just according to the Town's Development Plan: how much are you prepared to pay to bribe the mayor to change the zoning of your land? Everyone around here knows that this is the reality, although you'll never see it in print. So, hidden costs bump up the value considerably in parts of the south-east.
Then, there is the small matter of registering as a farmer if you do buy land without the right to build. Your local chamber of agriculture may well demand that you show a dipoma to prove that you have basic competence. Then there is the other small matter of showing that your land can support the minimum agricultural output required by the local chamber of agriculture: so many mushrooms, so many fruit trees, so many sheep etc etc. Nothing will stop you from growing your own fruit, of course, but you'll never be able to sell it unless you are registered with the local chamber of agriculture.
Since you will have various obligations as a land-owner, ranging from taxes to fire-clearing to ensuring that the land is safe for roamers & hunters, the demand from non-farmers for this land is very low.
A neighbour wants to sell us her small field: it is not zoned for construction but she refuses (like Marcus) to fix a price in line with its value as agricultural land. Since we refuse her offer to buy it at an inflated price the value of the land is difficult to establish.

[Ju]

Without wishing to state the obvious, planning permission is a permit to build a specific plan. One scheme may be approved where another would be denied. As we all know, Planning permission is a moveable feast, and guidelines can and do change from year to year according to the Town's Development Plan. This is a completely different issue from the owner's right to develop their vacant land, which is not subject to the whims of a particularly objectionable Mayor who will eventually leave Office anyway.

Joanna - I think you need to understand the French system of planning permision. One needs planning permission to put up ANY kind of perminant structure, even a garden shed. One needs a different kind of permission to put up a fence, and yet another kind to do any paintwork. It is not just the Mayor who has to agree it is also the local planning office.

Building land is highly sought after here, there are currently no plots available in our village, and only two in the neighbouring village. When land is available the cost is 40 - 45 Euros per metre squared (about £30). This would meen an acre would cost over £100,000. Not many people in rural France have that kind of money.

Ju

[Giddy Goat]

Joanna, I read your latest post on this subject late last night, and thought correctly, that if I waited until morning someone else (Marcus, Alexia and Ju)) would have replied, and dealt with the issue in France far more succinctly.

Our property is in the Gers, to the south of Marcus, and still relatively unheard of in tourism terms. It has become, like other rural areas in France, gradually depopulated, with the children of farmers perhaps being drawn more and more to the city lights, which offer more attractive, in modern day terms, and better paid employment opportunities, or that is their perception. Which is why our property was a derelict ruin of a famhouse, bought by the (US) vendors for the first verse of a song, turned round, and sold to us for the monetary equivalent of Wagners Ring Cycle! That seems to be the only corner of the property market hereabouts where larger scale profit can still be made, and is why areas like the Dordogne have become like Little Britain/Holland/Germany, and many other pretty regions with good weather will go the same way. Very sad for the locals, and not surprising if a certain ambivalence exists when they see their culture preserved, in the terms of historic old houses being reclaimed/restored, usually very well, but at such a price: the housing market driven up so that if French people do wish to live and work in their home territory, fewer and fewer find they are able to do so, and the ratio of French to foreigners, (bringing with them their own languages and cultures) slowly shrinking. Most foreigners come to France with the intention to integrate, but those who come to work (usually by setting up their own businesses, often directly or indirectly linked to tourism) probably take this rather more seriously than those who retire there, by and large. It's just a lot easier to socialise in ones own language, etc etc. Well, you can imagine the scenario, it's the same the world over. So tourism, and supporting that infrastructure, becomes the main source of employment for remaining locals, to which of course, they are obliged, with a certain heavy heart I suspect, to turn.

Development of land for residential purposes can, generally speaking, still only be granted on the outskirts of existing villages or hamlets, and not on some random tract of land in the middle of nowhere, backhanders to the mairie or no.

If I've rambled a bit, forgive me - it's in my nature!

[alexia s.]

"This would meen an acre would cost over £100,000"
You can see how valuable a change in zoning is to the owner of agricultural land! That capital gain is usually going to have to be shared with someone & it isn't the community........