January 26, 2024 will remain an important date for the two sisters, Émilie and Camille, and the latter’s companion, Mathieu. The three young people, aged 26 and 30, became owners of their first house. But not just any house: an abandoned country house in a small village in Indre-et-Loire, not far from the Royal City of Loches. “When my parents moved to the village in 2022, we quickly became interested in the house next door, which seemed abandoned. After some research, we learned that it had been uninhabited for 15 years and that the previous owner, who had died, had left it to an association working for disabled people.“, says Émilie, the youngest. During the summer of 2023, the family learned that the house was for sale and that a buyer – an employee of the association – had already positioned himself. The latter, however, ended up withdraw a few months later “given the scale of the work“, she explains. A sign of destiny that the three young people do not ignore. “We seized this opportunity and therefore became buyers of this charming little house of 70 square meters, surrounded by a garden of 730 square meters, which is an old orchard“, says the woman who now manages the Instagram account Le Verger des Anges.
Cost of acquisition: 37,000 euros, net seller. “The price of a car“, smiles Émilie, who works as an employee in the automobile sector. The latter participated up to 50% of the investment, the remaining 50% having been distributed, in equal parts, between the two members of the young couple formed by Camille and Mathieu, both employees in the IT sector, in the Sarthe department.By purchasing this house, our objective was to renovate it to make it a high-end furnished tourist accommodation, in the rococo style, while promoting our Châteaux de la Loire region.“, explains Émilie.
To hope to welcome the first tenants in spring 2025, the three young owners immediately set to work. “Our father is very handy: he has passed on his skills to us since we were little. The objective was therefore to renovate this house with him, almost entirely, during the weekend and the holidays.“, she says. Fortunately, the house does not require any structural work or roofing. “So far, we have only called on a professional to change the frames. We did the plumbing, electricity and insulation ourselves“, she explains. The work should be completed in a few weeks. It will have required an investment of around 25,000 euros.
To finance this project, Émilie, Camille and Mathieu were accompanied by their respective bankers, whom they managed to convince without any difficulty. “During the first year, we would like to reach 50 rental nights, which we will manage alongside our work. Then, from 2026, our objective is to reach a minimum of 100 nights, which would allow us to generate, in five years, the equivalent of the price of the house and the amount of the work.” explains Émilie, who would like, in the future, to make other real estate investments of this type and make it her career. The income generated by the seasonal rental of the house will also allow the family to move on to the second stage of the project: “install a masonry spa in the vaulted cellar in tuffeau stone“, she concludes.
