Looking at the farms for sale in Maine-et-Loire leads to a department whose speciality is not the one outsiders expect. Anjou is above all a centre of specialist plant production: nurseries, ornamental horticulture, medicinal plants and the multiplication of vegetable and flower seed hold a place here that few French territories can claim. Around that activity turn the Loire valley orchards, the vegetable crops of the Authion valley and, to the west, a dense livestock bocage. The properties circulated here come from farmers preparing to step back, from firms dealing in rural land, from notarial offices in Angers and from takeover advisers. Each description covers the area worked, the fixed equipment, the glasshouses or buildings and the contracts attached. Together they feed our census of farms for sale in France.
Choosing between two properties takes more than a list: this page sets out what gives a specialist production unit its value, which areas see the most handovers, and which rules govern setting up in Anjou. The Anjou vineyard, from Saumur to the Layon, is dealt with under wine estates. Our white paper « Créer une exploitation agricole » (in French) supports the building of a takeover project.
Land forms the base of a farm's value. DVF, the property sales database published by the French tax administration (vineyards excluded), records a 2025 median of €3,055 per hectare in Maine-et-Loire (49), an average of €3,388 and 408 sales; four transactions in five fall between €2,350 and €4,831, against a national median of €5,307.
The SAFER land value benchmark sets €3,820 per hectare for vacant land and pasture offered for sale in the same year, +2.1% over one year and +25.7% over ten, against €6,460 nationally. Land sold with a tenancy in place is valued at €3,050, a discount of about 20%.
Against the Pays de la Loire region, whose median is €3,267 per hectare, this department sits 6% lower. For commune-level detail and comparisons with neighbouring areas, see our land price observatory, then cost your purchase with our financial calculators.
Specialist crop holdings are the department's signature: field and container nurseries around Angers and Beaufort, glasshouse horticulture, contract seed multiplication, aromatic and medicinal plants, and mushroom growing in the Saumur caves. Such units sell with heavy installations — heated glasshouses, potting areas, irrigation systems, cold stores — whose condition often counts for more in the asking price than the land itself. Loire valley orchards and the market gardening of the Authion valley complete this block of high-value production.
West of the river, the Mauges and the Segréen live on grass and stock. Dairy holdings and beef cattle enterprises, sometimes with a poultry building alongside, shape a bocage of hedged fields and serviceable buildings. A working farm in that country costs appreciably less to enter than a horticultural unit, but it calls for livestock capital and stockmanship the buyer needs to have before, not after, the handover.
The Authion valley, from Beaufort to Longué, concentrates glasshouses, nurseries and vegetable crops on irrigated alluvial soils: demand is high and area rarely comes free in one block. Around Angers, the urban ring lifts the price of any flat, serviced ground. The Baugeois, further north-east, alternates cereals, woodland and livestock on larger structures at more reasonable levels. The Saumur country combines caves, specialist crops and stock on limestone slopes.
West of the Loire, the Mauges and the Cholet country remain the reservoir of complete livestock holdings, renewed steadily as farmers retire; local demand is strong and enlargement between neighbours common. The Segréen and the edges of the haut Anjou offer the most affordable grassland blocks in the department.
A specialist plant project is examined differently from a livestock one. Have the glasshouses and their heating checked for compliance, along with the irrigation method and its authorisation — borehole, river abstraction, connection to a collective network — the volumes allocated within the Authion catchment, the health of soils after years of intensive cropping, and whether multiplication contracts can be transferred, since they carry much of the commercial value. For a livestock unit, attention turns to any classified-installation status, to slurry storage capacity and to the obligations of nitrate zoning, which covers the department.
The rules common to every purchase then apply: notification of the sale to SAFER, which retains the power to pre-empt; an application for authorisation to farm, judged against the priorities set for the Pays de la Loire region; and the survival of the tenancy where land is let, with the tenant entitled to buy ahead of any outside party. An agricultural property largely under lease does not give the same freedom of cropping as one free of occupation.
Growers, nurserymen and stock farmers handing over, rural land agencies in Anjou and notaries across the department place their files here. Sorting by production type, by available equipment and by budget avoids comparing properties that have nothing in common, and a subscription to new entries relays each posting. Sellers publish through a form of their own. For the wider picture, open farms for sale in Pays de la Loire.
