5-Bed Stone House with Pool & Outbuilding Near Ruffec – Charente Vacation Home



Poitou-Charentes, Charente, La Faye, France, La Faye (France)
5 Bedrooms · 0 Bathrooms · 231m² Floor area
€377,600
House
No parking
5 Bedrooms
0 Bathrooms
231m²
Garden
Pool
Not furnished
Description
Sunday morning in La Faye sounds like this: the distant chime of the church bell in Ruffec carrying across the fields, a coffee going cold on the kitchen windowsill because you got distracted watching a pair of hoopoes pick through the garden. That's the pace of life here, and once you've had a taste of it, it's very hard to go back.
This five-bedroom stone house sits just outside the small village of La Faye in the Charente department of Poitou-Charentes — rural southwest France at its most quietly compelling. Five minutes by car puts you in Ruffec, a proper market town with a covered market, a decent boulangerie on the Rue du Marché, and a weekly Wednesday market where local producers bring in their chevre, walnuts, sunflowers, and duck confit in jars. It's not a tourist circuit. Real people live here, shop here, grow things here. That's exactly the point.
The house itself is built in the classic Charentais style — solid stone walls that keep rooms cool through July and August without air conditioning, high ceilings that make every space feel unhurried. At 231 square metres across two floors, this isn't a weekend bolt-hole; it's a proper family base for extended stays. The ground floor was designed with genuine practicality in mind: a fitted kitchen with a utility room directly off it, a formal dining room that seats everyone comfortably, and a living room with enough light in the afternoons to make you forget you intended to do anything productive. There's also a master suite on the ground floor with its own private bathroom — a detail that matters enormously when you have teenagers upstairs and grandparents visiting.
Head upstairs and you'll find four more bedrooms and a dedicated office. That office isn't an afterthought. More and more international owners in the Charente region are using their second homes as part-time primary residences, working remotely for weeks at a stretch, and having a proper desk in a quiet room — not a laptop balanced on a bed — makes all the difference. The second bathroom serves the upper floor.
Beyond the main living spaces, this property has layers of functionality that reveal themselves the longer you look. A laundry room. A summer kitchen — perfect for the kind of slow, social cooking that defines a Charentais July, with Pineau des Charentes poured over ice and something going slowly on the grill outside. Two garages. A workshop. A technical room. And then there's the detached outbuilding of around 25 square metres. It already has obvious potential: convert it into a gîte and you've got a legal, income-generating holiday rental that could comfortably offset ownership costs. The Charente has a well-established market for rural gîte tourism — walkers following the Via Turonensis (the Poitiers route of the Camino de Santiago passes not far to the west), cyclists on the Charente cycling routes, families seeking quiet countryside for a week away.
Outside, the garden has been planted and tended with the kind of attention that takes years to build. Mature trees, flowering beds, proper shade by mid-morning. The swimming pool sits within it — private, well-positioned, the kind of spot where you lose entire afternoons in high summer. August in the Charente sees temperatures consistently in the 28-33°C range, with long dry evenings that make outdoor dining feel almost obligatory. Spring arrives genuinely early here — by March, the fields are green and the days are already pleasant enough for garden lunches.
Angoulême is roughly 45 minutes south. It's worth knowing. The city hosts the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée every January — one of Europe's largest comics and graphic arts festivals — and its medieval old town sits dramatically on a hilltop above the Charente river. For shopping, a larger hospital, international transport connections, it's your nearest proper city. Poitiers is about an hour north, with its own TGV station linking directly to Paris Montparnasse in around 1 hour 20 minutes. Bordeaux, with its international airport, sits roughly 2 hours south — a manageable drive when arriving for a long stay, and flights from across Europe land there daily.
The property's condition is genuinely good. This isn't a renovation project wrapped in romantic language. It's a house that's been maintained, lives well, and is ready to use from the moment you complete. For international buyers, that distinction matters — the difference between arriving with suitcases and arriving with a project budget is significant.
From a practical ownership standpoint, France's system for non-resident property ownership is well-established and navigable. EU citizens face no restrictions. Non-EU buyers — including British nationals post-Brexit — can purchase freely, though the financing and tax structure is worth discussing with a French notaire early in the process. The notaire handles the entire transaction, and their fees (regulated by the state) typically run 7-8% on older properties. There is no annual wealth tax on properties under a certain threshold for non-residents, and rental income from a gîte is taxed under a relatively favorable micro-BIC regime for lower annual yields.
Key features at a glance:
- Five bedrooms across two floors plus a dedicated ground-floor master suite with private bathroom
- 231 square metres of internal living space in solid stone Charentais construction
- Second bathroom serving the upper floor, plus a utility room, laundry room, and workshop
- Fitted kitchen plus a separate summer kitchen for outdoor entertaining
- Private swimming pool set within a mature, tree-planted garden
- Detached 25m² outbuilding with strong gîte conversion potential
- Two garages and a technical room providing practical storage and workspace
- Dedicated home office ideal for long-stay remote working
- Five minutes to Ruffec's weekly market, shops, and services
- Approximately 45 minutes to Angoulême, 60 minutes to Poitiers TGV station
- Around 2 hours from Bordeaux international airport
- Well-established gîte tourism market in the surrounding Charente countryside
- Charente climate: warm, dry summers and mild winters, with early springs
- Good, move-in ready condition — no renovation required
If you've been looking for a second home in France that feels like it actually belongs somewhere — rooted in a real landscape, close to real towns, with space for the whole family and room to grow — this house in La Faye deserves a serious look. Properties with this combination of size, outbuilding potential, and a working pool at this price point in the Charente don't sit on the market long. Get in touch with the team at Homestra today to arrange a viewing or to request further details, including the full diagnostic reports and floor plans.
Details
- Amount of bedrooms
- 5
- Size
- 231m²
- Price per m²
- €1,635
- Garden size
- 1773m²
- Has Garden
- Yes
- Has Parking
- No
- Has Basement
- No
- Condition
- good
- Amount of Bathrooms
- 0
- Has swimming pool
- Yes
- Property type
- House
- Energy label
Unknown
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