Foreign Perspectives

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In many ways, the house buying process in France is quite similar to that in the UK but there are important differences.

Once you’ve found a place, the first stage is to sign a Promis d’Achat (promise to buy). If the seller accepts this, then you have your house as they aren’t allowed to even show it to anyone else (ie no gazumping), subject to you following through with the later stages of the purchase, of course. Signing this commits you to buy the place at the agreed price but only commits the seller to sell to you if they accept this contract.

Since it commits you to buying, you MUST add a “subject to mortgage” clause if you plan on getting a mortgage for the purchase. The mortgage clause needs to include the bank that will be giving you the mortgage, the rate and the term of the mortgage so if you are hoping to get a French mortgage you’ll need to see the bank first. If you haven’t done so already, you should open a French bank account at this stage (links to the various banks are in the Foreign Perspectives directory) During the next two weeks or so the notary will draw up the Compris d’Achat which is the sale contract and will come with an inventory of what’s included in the price and a completion date for the sale. You need to pay a deposit of 10% (sometimes 5%) to the notary at this point. Although you and the seller can use the same notary, it’s best to have your own one (this doesn’t cost any extra as the notaries split the fees). Read the inventory very carefully as what is understood to be included in France is very different to what is understood in the UK. For instance, you can be left with bare wires where light fittings used to be and even gaps where there used to be doors.

On the completion date, you go along to the office of the sellers notary and sign for the property. You need to sign every single page of the contract so allow an hour or perhaps two to do this. Once completed, the property and everything in it is yours. Unlike in the UK, everything you find within the property at that point belongs to you which sometimes includes the likes of unwashed dishes in the sink but can also include furniture and the like eg in our case we acquired a very nice desk valued at 9,000‚€!

Once the sale is completed, the estate agent will arrange to have the electricity, phone, etc. transferred into your name. If you are buying a commercial property (eg B&B) you must be registered with the Chambre of Commerce before these can be transferred into your name.

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Seeing as SuperFrenchie thinks I’m “just” anti-French, I thought I’d redress the balance a little and point out one area where the UK is anti-European too.I was in getting my driving license renewed last week which is something of a hit and miss affair as the explanatory leaflet leaves a LOT to be desired in clarity. Even though the thing was in English and, one would assume therefore that I’d understand it, the opening paragraph on what proof of ID was required was totally incomprehensible and appeared to be totally wrong too.It opens by saying that if you have a colour photograph on your existing driving license then you don’t need to have someone certify your photograph nor to present a passport. Except, that when my father presented his renewal application complete with his old driving license with colour photo, they wouldn’t renew it without his passport.

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Although Bayrou appears to be in third place, the peculiarities of the two stage electoral process in France mean that he’s the candidate with the greatest potential majority in the second stage, assuming that he gets through the first stage of course. It seems that the candidates in France have had a similar analysis of the voting possibilities to our own and are adjusting their approaches accordingly.

As reported in the Financial Times, this has already had a considerable impact on socialist thinking with an unsigned manifesto in Le Point calling for quite a radical rethinking of socialist policies. In effect, this would represent the realignment of socialism in France that happened with socialism elsewhere in Europe some years ago. Will that realignment happen this time around? I suspect not as there seems very little time before the election now and I can’t really see such a change being one that the electorate would believe.

To an outsider Sarkozy doesn’t seem to need that radical shift in ideology required by Segolene in that he runs what appears to be a very modern party with equally up to date policies. A few weeks ago I thought that his approach would be a little too radical for France at this time but apparently not if the polls are to believed. It does seem though that it’s now even more important that he aims to knock Bayrou out of the race at this point.

What about Bayrou in all this? In many ways it seems as though he is likely to win not so much as a positive statement by the electorate but rather as a vote against the other two candidates which is, of course, exactly what happened last time around when Chriac came up against Le Pen in the second round. The difference this time around is that Bayrou seems to be a realistic possibility in the eyes of the electorate and perhaps we will be referring to him as President Bayrou in just a few months time. If they’re lucky perhaps he will even deliver that “third way” that the French often seem so keen on having but have never quite managed.

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