Finding a forest for sale in Charente-Maritime means looking past the coast, the cognac vineyards and the marshes that shape the department’s image. Woodland is there all the same, in three distinct settings. In the south, Haute-Saintonge, between Montendre, Montguyon and Montlieu-la-Garde, belongs to the Double saintongeaise, a plateau of maritime pine, oak and damp heath. On the coast, the dune pine forests of the Arvert peninsula and the Île d’Oléron are almost entirely publicly owned. In the north, the Benon forest marks the Aunis, while the woods of Saintonge mostly offer oak woodland of modest size. Most buyers are after woodland plots for firewood or leisure, less often a production forest.
This page gathers the woods and forests listed in the department by private sellers, estate agents and notaires, followed by the prices recorded in recent sales. Properties on offer are often small: their value depends less on the price per hectare than on access, the type of stand and how close the plot lies to the coast, where planning constraints multiply. To set these benchmarks against the wider market, read our article on how forest prices are moving in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
According to the ma-propriete.fr forest price observatory, built from sales recorded in the French DVF land registry database, the median price of a hectare of forest in Charente-Maritime was €2,660/ha in 2025*, across 61 sales, with an average of €3,493/ha. That puts the department below the Nouvelle-Aquitaine median (€3,995/ha) and below the national median (€4,936/ha). Year on year, the departmental median moved by +0.1%: a change to read with caution on fewer than a hundred sales, where a few large estates can shift the median. Over the more robust 2020-2025 period, 316 sales give a median of €2,676/ha for a median plot size of 4.2 ha.
| Indicator | Charente-Maritime (17) | Nouvelle-Aquitaine | France |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median price 2025 | €2,660/ha* | €3,995/ha | €4,936/ha |
| Average price 2025 | €3,493/ha* | €4,688/ha | €6,214/ha |
| Number of sales 2025 | 61 | 1,450 | 6,329 |
| Change in median 2024 → 2025 | +0.1%* | +5.5% | +1.9% |
| Median price 2020-2025 | €2,676/ha | €3,684/ha | €4,778/ha |
| Number of sales 2020-2025 | 316 | 8,009 | 35,100 |
Prices vary widely: in 2025, one forest in ten sold for less than €1,557/ha in Charente-Maritime and one in ten for more than €6,173/ha. The cheapest sales mostly involve young coppice, landlocked or steep plots; the dearest involve harvestable high forest, leisure woods near towns or properties with a pond.
On the listings side, 8 forests and wooded properties are offered on ma-propriete.fr in Nouvelle-Aquitaine as of 2 October 2026, none in Charente-Maritime at that date. Their median asking price is €61,900 for a median size of about 12 ha. These are advertised prices for whole properties, sometimes with a house or a pond, not recorded sale prices per hectare like those in the DVF database. Conveyancing fees come on top of the price: our notary fee calculator lets you estimate them before making an offer.
* 30 to 99 sales: indicative value. Source: DVF (French tax authority), processed by ma-propriete.fr; forests of 1 ha or more, cadastral type woodland; July 2020 to December 2025; Moselle, Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin are not covered by DVF. Listings recorded on ma-propriete.fr on 2 October 2026.
The Double saintongeaise is the department’s main block of private woodland. Drained and replanted with maritime pine under the Second Empire, it now combines pine stands, pedunculate and Pyrenean oak, heather heath and small ponds formed on impermeable clay and sand. This is where the department’s production forests are concentrated, run as pine high forest with clear-felling and replanting, alongside oak coppice cut for firewood.
In the north, the Benon forest, often described as the only true forest of the Aunis, covers a limestone and marl plateau on the edge of the Marais poitevin; downy oak dominates, with ash and maple. Only part of it belongs to the State and the Département, the rest being private. To the east, on the edge of Deux-Sèvres, the state forest of Aulnay was devastated by storm Martin in December 1999 and has needed many years of restocking. In between, the woods of Saintonge form a scatter of oak woods and coppice among vineyards and fields.
On the coast, the state forests of La Coubre, on the Arvert peninsula, and Saint-Trojan, in the south of the Île d’Oléron, were sown in the 19th century to hold the dunes in place. They are not for sale, and the few private woods next to them are bought mainly for amenity: the sea close by, a second home, walking. In these coastal communes, wooded land is frequently protected as an espace boisé classé (protected woodland in the local plan) or as a remarkable area under the Loi Littoral (coastal law): it can then be neither cleared nor built on.
Inland, the market is made of small plots: coppice on the edge of a vineyard, a few hectares of wood attached to a Saintonge farmhouse, a poplar stand in a valley bottom. Larger properties combining woodland, wet meadows and water appeal to wildfowlers from the Brouage, Seudre and Rochefort marshes as much as to foresters: they appear among our hunting properties in Charente-Maritime, while those where water dominates are on our page of lakes and ponds for sale in Charente-Maritime. La Rochelle, served by TGV, and the A10 motorway, which crosses the department from Saint-Jean-d’Angély to Mirambeau, put these properties within reach of both Paris and Bordeaux.
Woods in the department are exposed to fire risk, particularly the coastal pine forests and the Double. If the plot carries a building or adjoins houses, check the statutory brush-clearing obligations (obligations légales de débroussaillement) set by prefectoral order: they fall on the owner of the building and may extend onto neighbouring land, including yours. In pine stands, have the health of the trees and the success of replanting after felling assessed; in the oak and ash woods of the Aunis, ash dieback and oak decline after recent droughts can sharply reduce the harvestable volume.
On the legal side, the sale of a forest under 4 ha must be notified to the owners of adjoining woods, who may buy it on the same price and terms under the neighbours’ right of first refusal; from 20 ha, a management plan (plan simple de gestion) approved by the CRPF, the regional forestry body, is required. Finally, make sure timber lorries can actually reach the wood, which remains tricky on marsh or vineyard tracks, and have the standing volume estimated by a forestry expert before settling on your offer.
On ma-propriete.fr, woods and forests in Charente-Maritime are put up for sale by their owners, specialist agents and notaires’ offices. Sort them by size, price or area, set up an alert to receive each new listing by email, or publish an advert for your own wood. If local supply looks thin, compare with the forests for sale in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, from neighbouring Charente down to the Landes.
