School goes back in the first days of September. Overnight the beaches lose their families, the supermarkets fill with stationery and every village square with a school on it becomes impassable at half past eight and again at half past four.

So do the offices. This is the part nobody warns you about. In August you could drive the coast road at nine in the morning. From the first Monday of September the A8 between Cannes and Nice, the Basse Corniche and the approaches to Sophia Antipolis go back to being a commute. Rush hour here means roughly seven-thirty to nine-thirty and five to seven.

And the associations reopen. The first or second Saturday of the month, most communes hold a forum des associations on the main square: every club, choir, language exchange, hiking group and pottery class in the village, at trestle tables, signing people up for the year. If you have just moved here and know nobody, this is the single most useful morning of your first twelve months. It costs nothing and everybody is there.

Our Sundays usually start at the AntibesLand brocante, where my husband loves hunting for treasures. His idea of the perfect time to arrive is very early, as that's when all the best finds are still there. I join him when I can, although I'm definitely not as enthusiastic about the alarm clock.

Afterwards, I'm usually ready for coffee and breakfast. I love meeting a friend or taking the family to Le 410 for a proper English breakfast, something that's surprisingly hard to find around here and always feels like a little taste of home.

September afternoons are still warm enough that we'll often head to the sea for a swim. As the weather starts to cool, we tend to swap the beach for our rollerblades or bikes and head along the bord de mer at Villeneuve-Loubet: flat, easy and a lovely way to spend an afternoon by the water.

Then we see where the evening takes us. September sunsets are just too good to waste. Sometimes we'll stay close to home, sometimes Antibes, but the Juan-les-Pins side is my favourite for sunset, with those gorgeous views across the water.

Nothing fancy, and plans often change along the way. But brocante hunting, a good breakfast, the sea and a sunset is pretty much my kind of Sunday.

• Sat 12 Sept

  Forum des associations, most communesConfirmed for Vence on 12 September; most other communes hold theirs the same weekend or the next. See the opening section. If you are new here, go, and check your own commune's exact date on its website or Facebook page.

• Sept 26 – Oct 4

  Les Voiles de Saint-TropezClassic and modern yachts racing in the gulf and the village turned over to it. Free from the shore.

• All month

  Fêtes des vendanges, inlandThe grape harvest itself runs through September across the Var and the Bellet hillsides above Nice, though the public fêtes tend to follow once the picking is done: Saint-Laurent-du-Var's harvest fair is 17 October, and Bellet's wine fête runs 18–24 November. Worth marking down for later if you want the party rather than just the grapes.

September is when houses that were full all summer get emptied. Holiday rentals turn over, second homes close up, estates that waited for the family to gather in August get settled in September. More goes onto the tables this month than at any other time except the spring.

There is plenty happening already. Nice runs its professional flea market, Les Puces de Nice, several days a week, and two dates are locked in for September: a vide-greniers in Menton on Sunday 13 September, and a brocante at Terra Provence in Les Arcs on Saturday 19 September, worth the drive if you have a car. Antibes, Cannes, Vence and Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey also run theirs this month, with Cannes leading off on 6 September and the rest clustered around the 12th and the following two weekends.

A quick note on vocabulary. A vide-greniers is mostly private individuals emptying their own attics, with a few dealers mixed in: a bit of everything, cheaper, and the best hunting ground if you are after an actual treasure. A brocante professionnelle, like Nice's, is different: dealers only, and the prices reflect the sorting they have already done for you. More reliable, less of a gamble, and less of a bargain.

• Every Mon

  Brocante du Cours Saleya, NiceThe east end of the Cours, professional, best before nine.

• Tue–Fri

  Les Puces de NiceThe professional flea market, recurring through the week.

• Every Tue

  Brocante professionnelle, AntibesPlace des Martyrs de la Résistance.

• Sun 6 Sept

  Vide-greniers du Suquet, Cannes6 rue Saint-Dizier. Free entry, dealers and locals side by side, best arrived early.

• Sat 12 Sept

  Vide-greniers, AntibesStade du Fort Carré, run by the local football club – separate from the Tuesday professional brocante above.

• Sat 12 & 26 Sept

  Vide-greniers, Saint-Vallier-de-ThieyLe Grand Pré. Two dates this month, up on the plateau.

• Sun 13 Sept

  Vide-greniers, MentonParking Rondelli, organized by the association Mahras. Free entry for visitors.

• Sat 19 Sept

  Brocante, Terra Provence, Les Arcs495 boulevard de la Liberté, 83460 Les Arcs. About an hour inland, worth the drive.

• Sun 27 Sept

  Vide-greniers, VencePlace Clémenceau, in the historic centre.

• Sundays

  The village vide-greniersThis is often where the best finds are. Dates change regularly, so check the local calendar before you go.

It's also just easier. The summer crowds begin to thin, reservations become a little less competitive and there's a more relaxed feeling everywhere. You can decide to go out without necessarily having planned it three days earlier.

I also love watching the markets begin to change. We still have all those wonderful late-summer tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, figs and melons, but slowly you start seeing the first signs of autumn creeping onto the stalls.

Restaurants reopen and rebook. Many good addresses close for two weeks after the season, usually in the second half of the month, then reopen with the autumn menu. It is the one moment of the year when you can get a table at short notice at places that were impossible in August. Ring rather than book online: the closure dates rarely make it onto the website.

From late September the conservatoires, the municipal theaters and the churches restart their programs and a surprising amount of it is free or nearly: student recitals, organ concerts, open rehearsals, the season-opening evenings that communes put on to fill the hall.

The heritage weekend is also, quietly, the best free music of the month: many of the buildings that open their doors put a concert on inside them.

If you're planning to plant, autumn is often a better bet than spring here. The soil is still warm and the autumn rains are on the way, giving anything put in now time to root in before next summer's heat arrives.

Bulbs go in. Narcissus, iris, anemones and ranunculus can go in from the end of the month; tulips generally do better planted in November, once the ground has cooled.

Divide the perennials. Irises above all, which want lifting and splitting every three or four years and hate being buried: the rhizome sits on the surface, half out of the soil.

Sow the winter vegetables. Broad beans, spinach, chard, winter lettuce and the last radishes. Keep them damp for the first fortnight and they come up in days.

There's a definite change of energy on the Côte d'Azur in September. After two months when so much revolves around holidays, visitors, beaches and simply trying to stay cool, September suddenly feels purposeful again. Phones start ringing, emails get answered, diaries fill up and conversations that were left hanging before the summer begin again. Real estate wakes up with it.

I always find this an interesting point in the year because it isn't simply that there are more people looking. The mindset changes too.

The September buyer. Summer naturally brings people who are here on holiday, fall in love with the Côte d'Azur and start imagining what it might be like to own a home here. I completely understand that: it's very easy to fall in love with this place in summer. But September tends to bring a different kind of energy. People return to searches they may have started earlier in the year, families have had time to discuss what they really want, and buyers who are serious about making a move begin looking again. There are also new properties coming onto the market, which makes September interesting from both sides: for buyers who felt they had already seen everything available before the summer, it can be worth starting again.

September shows you the real Côte d'Azur. I particularly like September for people considering a permanent move here. July and August are wonderful, but they're not necessarily a very accurate picture of everyday life on the Côte d'Azur. September gives you a much better idea: the villages feel local again, you can get a table at your favourite restaurant, parking becomes possible again, children are back at school, people are working and neighbourhoods return to their normal rhythm. If you're buying a holiday home, perhaps that matters a little less. But if you're thinking about actually living here, those everyday details matter enormously. I know from our own international moves that choosing a home isn't only about the house: you're choosing what your Tuesday morning is going to look like, where you'll buy your bread, how long the school run takes, whether you can walk somewhere for dinner and how you'll actually live once the holiday feeling wears off.

Buyers are looking more carefully. The other thing I'm seeing is a more selective buyer. People are comparing properties and looking carefully at what they're getting for their money. The things that sometimes look like small details on a listing can become very important once you're standing at the property: how much sun does it actually get, is the garden usable, is there road noise, how steep is the access, where do you park, what condition is the house really in, what would need renovating. And, particularly here on the Côte d'Azur, when someone says a property is "five minutes from the village", I always want to know what those five minutes actually look like. A spectacular view can make you forgive quite a lot, but perhaps not everything.

Price versus value. This is where I think sellers need to understand the difference between price and value. A beautifully renovated home with a great view, good access, a wonderful garden and somewhere you genuinely want to spend time outside can absolutely justify a premium. But buyers are also very aware of what another €100,000 or €200,000 should be buying them. It's completely natural for sellers to have an emotional connection to their home: they remember what they paid, what they invested and all the years and memories attached to it. The buyer doesn't have that history yet. They're looking at your home alongside everything else their budget can buy.

Those first few weeks. This is particularly important in September because new properties are arriving and buyers suddenly have more choice. When a home first appears online, it has something very valuable: it's new. Buyers receive their alerts, agents think of clients who might be a match, people click because they haven't seen it before. If the price feels significantly above the market, buyers may simply watch and wait, and once a property has been sitting online for several months, the conversation can change from "Have you seen this new house?" to "Why hasn't this sold?" That's not where you want to begin a negotiation. Of course every seller wants the best possible price and my job is to help them achieve that, but achieving the best price and simply starting with the highest price are not necessarily the same thing.

What I tell my clients. I would never tell someone they have to sell their home for a particular number. Ultimately, it's their home and their decision. What I can do is show them what has actually sold nearby, what they're competing with today, what buyers at that price point are expecting and where I believe their property fits. Sometimes a home also has something genuinely special that comparable sales don't capture: an extraordinary view, a beautiful renovation, a fabulous garden or simply that feeling you get when you walk through the door. Those things have value too. The important thing is understanding the market around you and then making an informed decision.

F. Scott Fitzgerald opens Tender Is the Night with a large pink hotel on the Riviera, in the season that begins when the English go home. He was describing the coast in September and the sentence has not aged.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tender Is the Night, 1934. Reported here rather than quoted, pending a check against the edition.

Thinking about buying or selling here? Tell me roughly where you are in the process on the property page and I'll answer properly.