We bought our dream home in France for £25k - in UK it would cost £1.5m

A couple who moved out of the UK have managed to buy their own dream home for just £25,000 without being saddled with a huge mortgage. Phil and Kirsti Coley left the picturesque surroundings of the Cotswolds and opted to move to France for a fresh start.

The move also opened the door to business opportunities made unaffordable by high business rates back home, reports The Telegraph.

The couple hopped on the Eurostar in 2017 to find their new home and within 10 days, a five-bedroom dilapidated house within an acre of land with a two-bedroom gite caught their eye.

The price of the house was €30,000 (£25,632).

Phil, 55, a marketing business owner told the publication: “Kirsti wanted to move somewhere where it was affordable to run her own business the way that she wanted to.

"That wouldn’t have happened in the UK, because business rates and rents are too high to set up a high street shop.”

“We rolled up our sleeves and renovated our home ourselves. We watched a TV programme of people buying houses in France. The prices seemed reasonable so we started an internet search to look for areas that matched our cash budget of £50,000.”

However, the house required a lot of work.

Phil added: “It needed a lot of renovation but we were prepared to roll up our sleeves and do a lot of the work ourselves.”

Seven years later, he estimates an equivalent property in the Cotswolds would be worth around £1.5million.

He said: “A typical starter family home here costs the equivalent of £70,000 to £125,000. It’s much cheaper to run a business in France than the UK.”

He has then set up a YouTube channel, A New Life in France.

While the couple managed to purchase a house in France at £25,000, a first-time buyer home costs on average £251,000 in the UK, according to Zoopla, while a three-bedroom semi-detached house would set you back £280,000.

Kirsti, 38, moved to France full-time in 2018 while Phil remained in the UK to run his business, visiting every two months. A year later, Kirsti set up a shop in the middle of town specialising in upcycling furniture and selling chalk paint.

Phil permanently joined Kirsti in March 2020 and set up another marketing business in France, plus a co-working space.

He said: “The barriers to starting your own retail business with high street frontage in France compared to the UK are hugely different.

“In the UK I could expect to pay between £15,000 to £20,000 in rates a year for this type of premises which we’ve turned into office and workshop space with a coffee shop. Here, it’s just £1,000 a year.”

He adds: “The business costs associated with bricks and mortar are so much lower which means the cost of the barriers to entry of starting a business aren’t the same. Like residential property, commercial property is hugely cheaper which makes it that much cheaper to run a business in France compared to the UK.

“If we had bought the same property in Cheltenham on the high street we would have paid £600,000 to £700,000 for a comparable building. We bought a former dental practice on the high street for under £50,000 that we let out for workshop space, office space and a café. I have my own office space here which I don’t have to pay for because I own it. That’s a huge benefit over the UK.

“Around 60percent of the working population in France are employed by the government, there’s not that many entrepreneurs in France, it’s a real cultural shift. It means there’s less competition from other entrepreneurs for premises and business.”