Cathar Country Houses (and Chalabre-Immo) came about as a result of a friendship, a lunchtime conversation - ( and many, many since ) - and, above all, a shared love for the area in which we live.  To be exact, we live in Chalabre, a village in the Languedoc, which is a part of the larger grouping of the newly created Occitanie - the land where Occitan was and is spoken, between the Pyrénées Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.

A beautiful region, and, as we say: " One of France's Best Kept Secrets "... We want to share this secret with you.

We are a tiny, specialist agency - just the two of us  - and we have no intention to expand.  We want to keep our agency personal, responsive and, above all, to listen to the needs and dreams of our clients.  We believe - strongly - that this area offers not only a range of housing from a chateau to a tiny village house but also absolutely unbeatable value for the money.  Where else could you buy a chateau for less than a million euros, a hamlet of five houses surrounded by its own land,  for 550,00 euros and a little  "pied a terre"  (a little " turnkey " or " lock up and go " ) for under 75,000 euros?  We think that the answer is "Nowhere Else".  This is an area with a great climate - short winters - hot, but not humid summers, history and great natural beauty.  It has easy air access, very good train services and is linked to the French motorway network.  You will find far more information under our "Occitanie" heading....

Who are we?

The agency was founded by Jennifer Smith Parrette and Lizzie Rees-Ryall, two women with very different backgrounds, but with skill sets and experience that enabled them to listen, empathize, understand, and work to enable clients to achieve their dreams of living in southwest France. Recently Jennifer has taken up a great offer of work in a different region and she has been ably replaced by Joseph Allett - but Jennifer does continue to offer her support and to help on mandates collected from sellers during her tenure.

Lizzie and Joseph are both bi lingual and, for legal documents, have arranged for a formally qualified translation service to be available. For our clients, this means that they have two agents available to them throughout the process.

Lizzie - English, an ex Charity Director working in the disability field in London, background in fund raising, marketing and an ex political lobbyist, worked for an international yacht chandlery -  (sailing is one of her passions ) - and worked for many years as an Estate Agent in France, retired, but decided to come out of retirement to work with Jennifer to found and co run Cathar Country Houses.

Original co-founder Jennifer is an American, with a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business. She has held positions as varied as VP Midwest for an Investment Bank based in Chicago to marketing management for a start up software company.  Married to world famous jazz composer and singer Vinx,  she and Vinx have toured the world experiencing and appreciating a range of cultures.  Now living in this area, she and her husband searched France before deciding to settle, permanently, in this region.  They experienced, first hand, the frustration of agencies that did not listen, showed inappropriate properties, wasted valuable time...  and she felt " I can do better ".

Lizzie and Joseph are both committed to providing a service that listens to clients and does not waste your valuable time.   We have arranged partnership agreements with other agencies that we respect to extend the area that we cover and we will only list properties that we would be happy to live in ourselves.  We will support and advise our clients - both vendors and buyers - at every stage of the purchase process.  We aim to be the best - we care about what we do -  and we love where we live.

We recognise that buying in, or moving to, another country is a life changing process -  we are here to make this process both understandable and a pleasure.  It has been for us and we want it to be so for you.

With all best wishes, Lizzieand Joseph

NOS TARIFS - AGENCY FEES

Minimum €6000 TTC

€0 - €300.000 = 6% TTC

> €300.000 = 5% TTC

Honoraires charge vendeur / fees to be paid by seller