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« Come and live in a dynamic region, much of which is less than two hours from Paris and where the lifestyle is hard to beat ! » This may be a sentence you’ve heard a lot if you’re considering moving here !

A new home from home

To make you dream of moving here, all we need do is boast of our 600km of coastline: the wild stretches, family-friendly beaches, all of the water sports on offer, majestic landscapes including the cliffs of Etretat, chic seaside resorts like Deauville and Cabourg, and quaint little fishing ports like Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, voted France’s most beautiful village in 2018.

 

To convince you to start your new life in Normandy, we could focus your attention on our green, undulating countryside, which looks stunning in all seasons, where you can go hiking, practise a wide range of sports and enjoy picnics. We could also show off our charming village parishes, our towns with all the facilities you could need, and our cities, open to the world and to innovation.

 

You may be surprised to discover the all the different ways you could live in Normandy, be it living and working in a town or in the countryside – it’s just up to you to find the work-life balance that suits you best!

 

In Normandy, concrete facts are important. Here we have compiled some useful information that will be of interest if you’re looking to adopt our region as your own in the future !

Choisir la Normandie - je m'installe
Place saint sauveur, Caen

Find somewhere to live in Normandy

Looking for a flat, a small or large house, new or older accommodation, in a town, on the edge of town or in the countryside ? The range of accommodation on offer in Normandy is considerable. Not all of the region was affected by bombing during the Second World War, and some of the towns that did suffer still have lovely historic quarters. At the same time, the architecture employed to reconstruct many Normandy towns, with its emphasis on functionality, light and the use of materials such as cement, is now considered very fashionable. The flats designed by the famous architect Auguste Perret in Le Havre, and houses in many parts of Normandy, have since been renovated, so are very modern and comfortable.

©Jérome Doinel
©Jérome Doinel

Buy or rent your future home in Normandy

If you are looking to buy a property here, think of prices as being around €1,100/m² in the southern département of Orne and up to €2,265/m² in the département of Calvados to the north. Average property prices in the départements of Seine-Maritime, Eure and Manche lie somewhere between these two.

 

If you are considering renting a property, prices range from around €7.1/m² in Orne to €9/m² in Calvados and Seine-Maritime.

 

Then compare our reasonable property prices with those in Paris, Bordeaux, or even the Breton capital of Rennes for good measure!

Nearby amenities and services

You can live in the country without cutting yourself off from the world – this is one of the great benefits you’ll find of moving to Normandy. Here, half our inhabitants live in rural village parishes ‘where population levels are low’, to quote INSEE, the French State’s statistics office. And if these locals appreciate their quality of life, it’s not to the detriment of the rest – to quote INSEE again, ‘The rural areas benefit from good amenities and inhabitants of the very low-density parishes only have to count five minutes extra to access everyday amenities compared with those living in the most densely populated parts.’

 

In fact, that’s one of the main characteristics of Normandy – given the large number of mid-sized and large towns in the region, 75% of its small village parishes are located in the latters’ spheres of influence, so they always are close to services that they can access.

Choisir la Normandie - je m'installe
Randonée à vélo au coeur de la Normandie

New life, new job

Towns go hand in hand with employment opportunities; in fact, several sectors are recruiting in Normandy, including the hotel/restaurant and industry sectors. In certain parts of the region, the unemployment rate is as low as 5%! This is certainly a figure to consider when planning to settle here. Industries like aeronautics, wind power and agri-food are booming and in need of a range of professionals. Salaries are also good – in 2018, a Randstad barometer classed Normandy third among all French regions in terms of salaries for non-management posts, with an average gross salary of €1,641/month, but with much higher salaries in industrial jobs.

Move with your family

What about your children? Whether they’re small or growing up fast, they’re very welcome in Normandy. From schools to universities, not forgetting prestigious specialised and selective grandes écoles and professional training establishments, there is a variety of training opportunities on offer here (see the Study in Normandy section above).

 

Ready to make the move? Don’t hesitate to contact the town halls and communautés de communes (centralised groups of village parishes) in the area you’re interested in moving to – their offices can provide you with useful information to help you set up home here!

©Jérome Doinel
©Jérome Doinel

Testimonial

Témoignage Sylvaine Couleur

Normandy awakens an imagination in everyone.

Sylvaine Couleur

I grew up at the foot of the mountains in the Haut Beaujolais area of France, then I headed to the French capital for work, like so many others. It wasn’t part of my plan to live in Normandy! However, I met a genuine Norman by birth who made me discover the region and it didn’t take much to convince me to move and start planning our lives here together, as well as those of our children.

 

In all the time and the years I’ve spent here, I’ve come to realise that Normandy gets everyone’s imagination going. For some, it’s the romanticism of places like Honfleur and Cabourg; for others, it’s Deauville and its links to cinema; for others still, it’s a land full of history, from the Vikings to the immense chapter that took place here in the 20th century. For food lovers, it’s the region’s dairy produce and cheeses, and lamb reared on the salt marshes. And around the world, it is of course, among other things, the Mont-Saint-Michel…

 

In short, it’s that mix of everything that I love in this region – in fact, I did actually have all those clichés in my head before I discovered Normandy!

 

And let’s not forget the Channel, which I’d imagined as being grey and cold before getting to know it and falling in love with it – the calm power of this sea, that looks so different depending on the day… I’m lucky to live very close to the Channel and its sight and smells always reinvigorate me. It is, without doubt, one of the things that most strikes people in my circle who have discovered Normandy through me – the beauty of the colours and landscapes along the Channel coast often leaves people speechless!

 

I think this region is set to develop a lot over the coming years. Its proximity to Paris, the extraordinary variety of all it has to offer, what with tourism, its ports and its industry… all that it needs is for one of its football clubs to get back into the French premier league! Certainly we can easily picture ourselves pursuing our professional lives here in Normandy, having learnt much from our experiences working in Paris in the last 15 years. We are sure we can make our own small contribution to the region’s economic development!

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