Looking for lakes and ponds for sale in Manche? The department has no shortage of water, but few ponds in the strict sense, and those sold on their own are rare. In the centre of the Cotentin, around Carentan, the marshes form a vast wetland where the wildfowling pond with its “gabion” hide is the most typical property. In the bocage of southern Manche, from Saint-Lô to Mortain, small fishing ponds sit in the folds of the valleys, often close to a house. On the coast, the havres (tidal inlets) of the west coast and the Mare de Vauville, in La Hague, are protected areas. This page gathers the field ponds and lakes for sale in Manche, from land with a pond to a stone house with its own water, listed by private sellers, estate agents and notaires.
It also shows the prices recorded for pond sales in Normandy, with the benchmarks available for Manche, followed by the checks that count here: the declaration of the hide, wetlands and the regional nature park, salmon rivers and ecological continuity. Our guide to buying a pond wisely completes these pointers.
According to the ma-propriete.fr pond price observatory, which keeps only ponds, lakes and pools sold without buildings in the French DVF land registry data, only 6 pond sales were recorded in Manche between July 2020 and December 2025: too few to publish a departmental price. In Normandy, 31 ponds sold over the same period at a median of €34,014/ha*; the national median was €25,235/ha in 2025.
| Indicator | Manche (50) | Normandy | France |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median price 2020-2025 | not published | €34,014/ha* | €25,694/ha |
| Average price 2020-2025 | not published | €34,877/ha* | €32,291/ha |
| Number of sales 2020-2025 | 6 | 31 | 2,053 |
| Median price 2025 | not published (3 sales) | not published | €25,235/ha |
| Number of sales 2025 | 3 | 8 | 300 |
These figures divide the sale price by the total area of the property, banks and surrounding woodland included: a small, well-equipped pond always comes out dearer per hectare than a large lake surrounded by rough ground. They describe ponds sold on their own; once a house or a sizeable wood is added, the price is built differently.
On the listings side, 26 properties with a pond are offered on ma-propriete.fr across France as of 2 October 2026, 1 of them in Normandy. Their median asking price is €94,000 for a median size of about 2.6 ha. These asking prices apply to complete properties, often with buildings, a pond or hunting rights: they cannot be compared directly with DVF medians per hectare. To work out the full cost of a purchase, add the conveyancing fees with our notary fee calculator.
Source: DVF (French tax authority), processed by ma-propriete.fr; ponds, lakes and pools without buildings of at least 2,000 m², with water covering at least half of the property; July 2020 to December 2025. Listings recorded on 2 October 2026.
The Marais du Cotentin et du Bessin regional nature park, whose visitor centre is at Saint-Côme-du-Mont, covers the wet heart of the peninsula. In winter the meadows turn into “white marshes” under water; the network of ditches and the tidal gates, which drain the water to the sea, then allow grazing to resume. In this landscape, Manche is one of the departments where waterfowl may be shot at night from a fixed post, the gabion, a hide often sunk into the ground beside a pond. A marsh plot with its gabion pond is sold as a property in its own right: the declaration of the hide must be transferred to the buyer, and the law ties this shooting right to the upkeep of the pond and the surrounding wetland. For a larger holding, see our sporting properties for sale in Manche.
Between Saint-Lô, Villedieu-les-Poêles, Avranches and Mortain, the bocage is crossed by streams running down to the Vire, the Sée or the Sélune. Ponds here are generally small, whether a fishing pond dug for leisure or a pond for watering livestock; they are fed by a spring, a brook or run-off, and most often sold with a stone house. The Sée and the Sélune, salmon rivers flowing into the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, show how much ecological continuity weighs in the department: the Vezins and La Roche-qui-Boit dams, which held back two lakes on the Sélune, have been removed to reopen the river to migratory fish. A pond connected to a watercourse in this catchment will be closely examined by the authorities; one fed by a diversion channel or a spring raises fewer issues.
On the west coast, the havres of Portbail, Lessay or Regnéville combine salt water, salt meadows and back-dune marshes, much of them protected. At Vauville, in La Hague, a large freshwater lake separated from the sea by a narrow dune ridge is a national nature reserve. These places are not for sale, and the Loi Littoral (the French coastal law) strictly limits building and development in coastal communes: a private pond near the shore should therefore be bought for what it is, without counting on future improvements.
Buyers are mainly wildfowlers, local anglers and second-home seekers, including British buyers for whom the ferry links from Cherbourg bring the peninsula within easy reach. All of them should make the same checks: proof that the pond exists lawfully, from the DDTM (the departmental land, water and sea office), whether it lies in a wetland or a Natura 2000 site, the nature of the water, closed or connected to a watercourse, the state of the earth bank, the outlet structure (“moine”) and the overflow, and the water level at the end of summer for ponds fed only by run-off. In the marshes, ask the seller about ditch maintenance and the presence of coypu. And since supply is scarce, compare with the ponds for sale in neighbouring Calvados.
Properties with a pond in Manche shown on ma-propriete.fr are sold by private owners, estate agents and notaires. Compare them by price and size, switch on an alert to hear about each new pond or lake, or publish your own listing. For a project centred on woodland, explore our forests and wooded land for sale in Manche, and for the whole region, the lakes and ponds on offer across Normandy.
