The French village PAYING families to move in: Quaint hamlet lures couples with £4,000 bonus plus £850 per child in bid to boost dwindling population

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Three hundred thousand spectators descend on the French city of Le Mans every year for the opening day of the world-famous endurance race.
The region, today, owes much to the noise and fervour of the competition, bringing nearly 100 million euros to the local economy annually.
But just 15 miles to the north, the way of life is slower, still cloaked in its Medieval history and visibly untouched by the busy communes on its frontiers.
The sparse streets of Marolles-les-Braults are studded occasionally with a house or a heritage site. Churches and castles nearby paint a rich picture of France 's rocky history with England. But the village of 2,000 today is content with quiet inside its tiny borders, surrounded in all directions by sprawling fields of gold and green.
Still, an unsettling truth looms over the village. The population is ageing, and the number of empty properties has swollen in recent years. Pressed to respond to this existential challenge, authorities are trialing radical ideas to encourage change.
Taking note of similar trials across Europe, a new scheme - introduced only in November - will see first-time buyer couples aged under 40 paid a €5,000 bonus (£4,195) to move to the hamlet, with an extra €1,000 (£839) per child under 15.
There is a real sense of pride around the carefully conserved way of life in Marolles-les-Braults.
Publicly, the mayor boasts of how 'fortunate' they are 'to have two churches'. Illustrating the rate of change, he says the area has taken on 'a new dimension' since a decision to cultivate more flowers.
People are clearly important. A polished website for the commune has been updated to list all of the small businesses offering services to locals, many of them family-owned.
There are separate pages dedicated to markets and funfairs taking place throughout the year, and a place to report anything lost and found.
Decisions are made on a small scale, and the village rarely makes national headlines. But a page has nonetheless been cultivated to keep a record of the village's history and changes on a local level.
The demographic crisis is not immediately apparent. In 1982, the earliest published record, there were 1,840 people living in the village. In 2022, there were 2,135.
Change has been steady. But, in keeping with trends across Europe, there is a felt concern that the population cannot continue to age at the current rate without replacement.
The response is still very much in its early stages. It has been only six months since the authorities voted on a plan to welcome in younger people with a cash incentive.
A welcome page for new residents - a nice thought - so far only reads: 'Welcome to the new residents of Marolles-les-Braults and Dissé-sous-Ballon. We invite you to come and introduce yourself at the Marolles-les-Braults Town Hall.'
And an initial annual budget of just €30,000 has been set aside for the scheme.
The preconditions for the bonuses makes clear the priorities of the administration. To qualify for the €5,000 grant, couples must be first-time buyers aged under 40 purchasing a home in the area.
An extra €1,000 per child under 15 is available for those fitting the criteria.
The offer is quite significant in an area where homes usually cost between €130,000 (£108,000) and €170,000 (£142,000), per SeLoger. AirBnb shows rental homes from as little as £51 a night.
The Connexion, an English-language outlet in France, says that the scheme aims to 'rejuvenate the village' by 'bringing in a younger population to increase its dynamism and prevent homes from remaining empty for too long and decaying'.
So far, they wrote in the middle of May, three young couples have moved to the area.
Marolles-les-Braults is not the first to try such a scheme. Italy this year unveiled plans to offer families as much as £23,000 to move to the idyllic regions of Sardinia and Calabria, but there is a catch.
Residents considering a move must go to one of nine small villages in the regions with populations of 2,000 or fewer.
These are not the more touristic areas but sleepy villages. Italy recognises the wider pattern of an exodus of young natives moving to larger cities or overseas for work, and looks to bring people in before making its smaller population centres more desirable to stay in.
France also has a precedent of encouraging residents with cash incentives, though unlike Italy the fees are significantly smaller, organised by the regions rather than the state.
In 2019, the 42 municipalities in Aisne, northern France, banded together with a scheme to encourage buyers to relocate with €5,000 grants.
It was hoped the scheme would breathe new life into a sparsely populated area and help rejuvenate the region's old buildings, unoccupied and falling into disrepair.
'We have carried out a study that has led us to the conclusion that many of these houses have been empty for a long time,' Pierre-Jean Verzelen, president of the community of communes for Pays de la Serre told Le Parisien at the time.
At the time, a 115sqm home in the region could be expected to set buyers back just €35,000 (£29,000). Today, the average price per square metre in the London region is £7,000.
It was unclear how well the scheme had worked. MailOnline was unable to reach the local administration for comment.
The scheme aims to 'rejuvenate the village' by 'bringing in a younger population to increase its dynamism and prevent homes from remaining empty for too long and decaying'
In Brignon, a village in the south of France, authorities experimented with selling off land at just €1 per square metre to young couples in an effort to rebuild its population.
The population in 2017 was much smaller than that of Marolles-les-Braults, hovering around 600.
But by 2024, Brignon was able to report a net population increase of 30 - a not insignificant rise of around five per cent.
The Connexion reported in January that the increase was enough to keep open a local school and justify plans to build a new day nursery.
With its bold new policy, Marolles-les-Braults will hope to echo some of that success.
The village is only a stone's throw from the city of Le Mans, but carries a much slower pace of life.
Recognising this to be an asset as much as a curse the commune will hope its carefully conserved offer is enough to woo new friends and neighbours from afar.