Apart from the ages of the homes, it’s not as if you can’t find similar deals in rural Vermont or some parts northern California/rural Oregon. We’re not talking about Parisian pricing here.
As far as bureaucracy and taxation, France is far from being free of it, rather the opposite. Though the good thing is that there’s a much bigger tradition of lawbreaking and evasion there, so the effects of the bureaucracy tend to be tempered.
