The average price per m² in Fargues-Saint-Hilaire is 3 181 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 15 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Fargues-Saint-Hilaire, on the hillsides east of Bordeaux.
On the first hillsides of the Entre-deux-Mers, east of Bordeaux, Fargues-Saint-Hilaire shows an apartment value of 3 181 €/m². The figure is best read as a benchmark, because the built fabric is made up almost entirely of houses: apartments are rare here and the few sales in apartment buildings carry little weight in the average. We base this data on the deeds signed before notaries and centralised in the DVF database, the French notarised sales database, never on asking prices. It is then for each owner to adjust for the condition of the property, its plot and the distance to the roads that lead to Bordeaux.
Prices from the DVF file (Demandes de valeurs foncières, published by the DGFiP), transactions actually recorded at the notary at municipality level. Cross-referenced with the Notaires de France - INSEE indices. Learn more about our methodology.
Demand in Fargues-Saint-Hilaire rests on a simple spring: offering a family house and a setting of vines and woodland twenty minutes from Bordeaux. In a stock made up almost entirely of detached houses, properties in good condition with land sell quickly, while older homes in need of updating find a buyer as soon as the price factors in the works. As few sales are signed each year, a single atypical transaction can move the average: it is better to read the price of a property against its plot, its aspect and its access to the main roads than against a general trend.
Over time, two forces pull in opposite directions. The scarcity of building land, on hillsides partly planted with vines and partly wooded, plus the continuing pressure of the conurbation, push values up. Against that, the energy rating weighs more and more: a well-insulated house sells without a discount, an energy-inefficient one is negotiated down. The backdrop remains Bordeaux employment, which feeds demand in the municipalities east of the metropolitan area without interruption.
Fargues-Saint-Hilaire sits in the middle of its area: its prices stay below those of Bordeaux, while moving closer to municipalities east of the conurbation such as Artigues-près-Bordeaux.
Fargues-Saint-Hilaire occupies the first hillsides of the Entre-deux-Mers, east of Bordeaux, in a landscape of plateaux and small valleys drained by the Pimpinne and its tributary the Canterane, which mark the boundary with Lignan. Its name comes from the Gascon word fargues, meaning forges, recalling former ironworking on this land. In the Middle Ages, two parishes shared the area: that of Saint-Jean, created by the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem, and that of Saint-Hilaire, whose church stood on the site of the present cemetery.
In the 14th century, a fortified square tower, ringed by ditches, was built on the heights south-west of the village to serve as a forward defensive post for the lord of Cambes. The municipality then developed around farming and the vine, before becoming known for its tile works and its stone cutting. Long clustered near the old cemetery, the village shifted when the church, cracked by the earthquake of 1759, was rebuilt on its present site in 1845.
The village, first called Fargues-Entre-deux-Mers, then Fargues and Fargues-de-Créon, took the name Fargues-Saint-Hilaire on 14 February 1886, in tribute to the 4th-century bishop of Poitiers. Today the municipality belongs to the communauté de communes des Coteaux Bordelais, an inter-municipal authority, and lives above all from its residential role. It offers the schools, the shops and the facilities of a hillside village, in a green setting of vines and woodland, a short distance from the Bordeaux conurbation.
Fargues-Saint-Hilaire brings together two former parishes and today has close to 3 543 inhabitants according to INSEE, the French statistics institute, a figure swelled over the decades by the spread of the Bordeaux conurbation. Buyers are for the most part working couples and families, employed in the Bordeaux job market, who come here looking for a plot and the quiet of the hillsides. As the housing stock is almost entirely made up of houses with gardens, demand is aimed at main residences and leaves little room for buy-to-let investment. The municipality belongs to the communauté de communes des Coteaux Bordelais, not to Bordeaux Métropole, but stays linked to the city centre and the ring road by road, which keeps a steady flow of buyers coming.
Reckon on 3 181 €/m² as the benchmark apartment value in Fargues-Saint-Hilaire. This average comes from DVF sales, the French notarised sales database, those completed before a notary, not from the prices displayed in agency windows. A given home can differ appreciably: a recent house with a large plot will fetch more, an older property in need of renovation less.
The village centre, clustered around the church and the shops, appeals for everyday life on foot. Further out, the housing estates and the houses set on the hillsides, alongside the vines and the woodland, attract families looking for land. Addresses close to the schools and to the roads towards Bordeaux are among the most coveted.
The municipality holds the eastern side of Bordeaux, on the hillsides of the Entre-deux-Mers, and reaches the city centre and the ring road by the departmental roads. It is mainly people working in the conurbation, wanting a greener setting, who settle here; interurban coach services complete the road links towards the city.
Here, you buy a house. Apartment buildings come down to a few addresses in the village and a handful of schemes, so much so that the apartment remains an exception on the local market. The house with land is the standard product, cut out for family life on the hillsides; an apartment can serve for a first purchase or a tight budget, but the overwhelming majority of sales involve detached homes.
Between built-up areas, vineyard plots and woodland, what can be built is tightly framed and development is steered towards the sectors opened up by the municipality. The closeness of Bordeaux feeds demand that can tighten the market on the most prized properties. The useful reflex before buying: call at the town hall to check the local planning document, to find out what the plot in question actually allows.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).