Looking for lakes and ponds for sale in Pays de la Loire? In the west of the region, the old, impermeable bedrock of the Armorican Massif keeps water at the surface: the bocage of Vendée, the Mauges and Mayenne, a patchwork of hedged fields, is dotted with small ponds dug for fishing, for watering livestock or to set off a farmhouse. To the east, in Sarthe and the Baugeois, water bodies tend to lie hidden in woodland or in old quarries along the valleys, while Loire-Atlantique is first and foremost a land of marshes and large natural lakes. This page gathers the ponds and lakes for sale in the region — fishing ponds, land with a pond or houses with a lake — listed by private sellers, estate agents and notaires.
It then sets out the prices recorded in pond sales across the region and its five departments, followed by the areas where properties are actually found and the rules of the Loire-Bretagne river basin, which keeps a close eye on ponds. Before any viewing, our guide to buying a pond lists the documents to ask the seller for.
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, 342 ponds were sold in Pays de la Loire between July 2020 and December 2025, at a median price of €25,243/ha and an average of €30,685/ha, or about €2.52 per square metre at the median. The region sits below the national median for the period (€25,694/ha). In 2025, 53 sales give a regional median of €21,944/ha*.
| Department | Sales 2020-2025 | Median price | Average price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendée (85) | 165 | €25,367/ha | €32,026/ha |
| Sarthe (72) | 53 | €26,519/ha* | €29,787/ha* |
| Loire-Atlantique (44) | 45 | €15,244/ha* | €23,254/ha* |
| Mayenne (53) | 45 | €30,628/ha* | €34,897/ha* |
| Maine-et-Loire (49) | 34 | €26,214/ha* | €29,839/ha* |
| Pays de la Loire | 342 | €25,243/ha | €30,685/ha |
| France | 2,053 | €25,694/ha | €32,291/ha |
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, 6 properties with a pond are offered on ma-propriete.fr in Pays de la Loire as of 2 October 2026. Their median asking price is €184,500 for a median size of about 2.0 ha. These are asking prices for complete properties: they describe the supply on offer more than the average price of a wooded hectare. 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; 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.
Vendée (85) is where the most ponds change hands in Pays de la Loire. Its bocage, from the hills of the Haut-Bocage to the Lay valleys, holds a multitude of small farm ponds and hillside reservoirs built at the head of small valleys for irrigation; many are now bought for carp and pike fishing, or as land with a pond for weekends. With little groundwater to draw on, the department takes most of its drinking water from reservoir dams such as Mervent on the Vendée river, Angle-Guignard on the Lay or the Graon: these public lakes are not for sale, but protecting them weighs on water use across the catchments that feed them.
The coast is another world. To the north-west the Marais breton and to the south the Vendée part of the Marais poitevin are laced with canals, flood meadows and pools frequented by wildfowl, with water levels managed by landowners’ drainage associations. What you buy there is a piece of marsh rather than a pond as such. Listings for the department are gathered on our page of lakes and ponds for sale in Vendée.
In Loire-Atlantique (44), the largest stretches of water never come on the market. Lake Grand-Lieu, south-west of Nantes, is in winter the largest natural lowland lake in France and is protected as a national nature reserve; at the heart of the Brière regional nature park, the Grande Brière Mottière is held in undivided ownership by the inhabitants of the surrounding communes, a status recognised as early as the fifteenth century by the Duke of Brittany. The large Vioreau reservoir, built in the nineteenth century at Joué-sur-Erdre to feed the Nantes–Brest canal, is public too. The private market is therefore mostly north of the Loire, in the bocage around Châteaubriant and Ancenis, where modest fishing ponds surrounded by meadows or woodland come up for sale: see our ponds for sale in Loire-Atlantique.
In Maine-et-Loire (49), the best-known water bodies are public: the Étang Saint-Nicolas, dug around the turn of the first millennium on the west side of Angers, is now a municipal park, and Lake Ribou, near Cholet, supplies the town with drinking water. Private ponds are found in the wooded Baugeois, the Segréen and the Mauges, often alongside a wood or an old farm.
Sarthe (72), the region’s second market, offers two kinds of property. In the forests, such as Sillé with its leisure lake, fishing ponds are sold surrounded by oak and pine. In the Loir valley, former sand and gravel quarries have been turned into leisure lakes or woodland-fringed ponds, popular with carp anglers. Our ponds for sale in Sarthe cover both types of water body.
Mayenne (53) shares with Vendée a bocage rich in small ponds, but here their history is industrial as well: some large water bodies in the west of the department were impounded to power forges and mills. Fishing ponds for sale are usually modest, fed by a spring or a stream close to its source, and are sold on their own or with a longère, the long, low farmhouse of western France. In the north-east, within the Normandie-Maine regional nature park, the park charter guides development projects among the wooded hills.
The whole region lies in the Loire-Bretagne river basin, whose water management plan (SDAGE) curbs the creation and enlargement of ponds, especially at the head of catchments and in areas that already have many. So buy a pond for what it is, without counting on making it bigger. Ask for proof that it exists lawfully — fondé en titre (a historic right), authorised or declared under water law — and check whether it counts as closed water (eau close) or open water (eau libre), which are subject to different fishing rules. In the marshes, find out which drainage association the plot belongs to and what annual levy it charges.
Shallow bocage ponds silt up quickly and can drop markedly in summer: measure the water depth, ask when the pond was last dredged and inspect the dam, the outlet (moine) and the spillway. Coypu and red swamp crayfish weaken the banks, and water primrose spreads through the still waters of the Brière and the Marais poitevin alike; our article on pond maintenance helps you put a figure on this work.
Pond listings for Pays de la Loire on ma-propriete.fr are posted by private sellers, agents and notaires’ offices. Filter them by department, size or budget, save an alert to receive new water bodies by email, or list your own pond. To combine water and woodland, widen your search to our forests and woods for sale in Pays de la Loire.
