We started out living in the north of France, in Brittany. I worked for French property magazines and later as an English teacher. But my husband wanted to be somewhere warmer so we relocated further south to the town of Dax in the Landes region [in the south-west, near the Pyrenees mountains, less than 100km from Spain].<\/p>\n
We ended up living in Dax for 18 years, and in the same house for 15 of those. <\/p>\n
Now, my husband and I are divorcing so I moved back to Normandy in October last year \u2013 to be closer to my adult children, and live in a more temperate climate, which I prefer. Since then we have been trying to sell the house but it is clear that many people, like me, are leaving Landes. I am convinced that climate change <\/a>is the reason why my house hasn\u2019t sold.<\/p>\n Over the last two decades living in Dax, I saw the weather become more extreme<\/a>. We no longer had the seasons of spring and autumn, we just had torrential icy rain all winter and summers of unbearable heat<\/a>. We were close to the Pyrenees mountains so we should have had snow but it was just freezing rain. I have horses and at first they spent all winter outside, then they started needing raincoats. Then bigger raincoats. Then it got so bad they needed a shelter.<\/p>\n By comparison, in the summer, it was so hot you had to get up really early if you wanted to do anything. Forest fires<\/a> started all over the region. We also had extreme summer storms, with hailstones the size of tennis balls. Cars and windows were wrecked. You expect winter storms but now France has them in summer too. Flooding was thankfully not an issue for us but it was close by.<\/p>\n Our house has been on the market for more than nine months. It is a five-bedroom detached family home, built in the 1850s, with a hectare of land, outbuildings, and a swimming pool (now an essential with the weather). It should be really sellable but there just aren\u2019t enough buyers looking in that area anymore. <\/p>\n The house hasn\u2019t got air-conditioning (only 25 per cent of private homes in France have AC according to the environment agency, Ademe) but it is an old house that is built to be cool in the summer, which does make a big difference.<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t think it is the property putting people off \u2013 it is the region. I think there are no longer vast numbers of people buying there and very strongly suspect it is due to climate change. There are also obviously fewer British buyers since Brexit, too.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/SEI_258392730.jpg\")
The five-bedroom property has now been on the market for more than nine months <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/comp-1752057905.png\")
Catherine has had to slash the price of the property by \u20ac220,000 or \u00a3190,000 to try and sell it but there is little interest<\/p>\n