What's available?
France is massive and so is the variety of houses that you can get with everything from small apartments to large castles on the market and locations varying from the city centre of Paris to rural areas with just the odd passing cow for traffic.
The first things that you need to decide for yourself when looking for a place in France are what type of property you want and what kind of area you would like that property to be in. These two aspects are closely inter-related in that you won't be able to buy a chateau in the centre of Paris nor buy a chic apartment in rural Roussillon.
The days of run-down barns available for a few thousand pounds are long since gone and prices these days start at around 50,000€ which will buy you anything from a reasonable townhouse in the country to an apartment on the outskirts of a town. What that price won't buy you is a chic apartment in the centre of Paris nor will it buy you a massive farmhouse ready to move into.
On the other hand, there are still bargains around. As we write this, there are a number of quite charming chateaux for sale at around the 600,000€ (£400,000) mark although at that price level you should expect to have some work to do to them. Similarly, if you are prepared to move outside the Brit-enclaves and into the real France you will find quite substantial properties for perhaps 300,000€ (£200,000) although again you should expect to do some work at this level.
Where are these Brit-enclaves though? Well, one easy to find them is to pick your favourite B&B listing site (which must be, of course, Chambre-d'Hote) and look at areas with large numbers of listings. At the moment, you'll find these mainly around Brittany/Normandy, Poitou-Charentes, Dordogne and Cote d'Azur. Prices in these areas are, generally, that little bit higher than in the surrounding areas for comparable properties.
If you haven't got your heart set on a particular region in France, the best thing to do is to make up a list of the characteristics of the type of area that you are looking for. For example, we wanted a place that was within 10km of water that we could swim in which meant that we looked at properties near the coast and near lakes etc. We also wanted somewhere broadly in the southern half of France which narrowed down the search a little. Finally, we wanted somewhere with views of the mountains which reduced the areas somewhat more.
Doing this will bring up a number of regions that you may not have thought about before and give you a much wider selection of properties. Note too that it's best to think about why you want a particular feature eg we didn't say that we wanted to be on the coast but rather that we wanted to be near water that we could swim in. Likewise we said that we wanted somewhere scenic rather than with views of the mountains.
Where to look for a house
The housing sales market has been very slow in France during 2006 which we've noticed through the large drop in house buyers staying with us during the year.
However, it does seem to be picking up fast as we've had quite a flurry of house hunters staying with us recently and bookings into the new year for house buyers are well up on what they were over the same period last year. That in turn appears to be taking the prices being asked for up too so if you're planning on buying somewhere over here it might be as well to get moving on that idea sooner rather than later.
One of the best ways to get a feel for the market here is via the major property exhibitions in London. The best one is Vive la France which is a combined French property and culture exhibition held each January. If you miss that one, the next best is the French Property Exhibition in early September which is basically Vive la France without the cultural section.
In both cases, you should go on the first day of the exhibition because it's quieter and the exhibitors aren't nearly so exhausted. As 90% or more of the people going to these things are just window shopping with no real intention to buy, it's important to separate yourself from them in some way. In our case, we took along a short specification of the type of place and sort of area that we were looking for and made it clear that we were returning to France 2 or 3 weeks after the exhibition on a buying trip.
I thoroughly recommend writing a little specification of what you're looking for as both exhibitions are enormous and you'll need to be quite clear in your mind what you want. With our little specification we were able to go through the list of exhibitors and rule out all those that weren't of interest in about 10 minutes. You really need to be ruthless doing this as even with that we spent over five exhausting hours going round those that remained on the list!
If you are hoping to buy in France, the best times are out of season as that will give you a better impression of what the villages and towns are really like. There's normally a flurry of house hunters around just after the two property exhibitions mentioned above but any time from mid-September to mid-June is excellent (avoiding the Christmas, New Year and Easter breaks) and will give you low flight and hotel prices too.
The buying process in France
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. As 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 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.
What about your house in the UK?
We're looked at French housing, but what about your house in the UK?
Even if you are absolutely certain that you are going to spend the rest of your life in France, it's best to retain your house in the UK if you can so that you have a fall-back position in case things don't work out in France or you change your mind about living here.
Not everyone is able to maintain houses in two countries of course and it will probably make finances a little tighter in France than they would otherwise be. However, once you sell your house in the UK you can find it very difficult to get back into the housing market. In our own case, our UK house went up over 40% in less than three years and effectively beyond our reach had we sold it when we moved.
If you are lucky enough to be able to keep it, you should try to rent it out. Not only will this keep the house occupied but it will help pay the mortgage etc. without needing to rely on income from France to pay for the various bills that will arise in the UK.
If you are going down the rental route, you will almost certainly need to change your mortgage to a buy to let one as few normal residential mortgages allow you to rent out your property easily. Your house insurance also needs to change to reflect the fact that you will have tenants in the house and that it may be unoccupied for extended periods of time between tenants (don't rely on 100% occupancy!).
Although you could try to find tenants yourself, it's much simpler to arrange the rentals through a letting agency as they can arrange for work to be done and to inspect the house before during and after each tenancy. This service usually costs around 10% of the rental income plus advertising costs of around 100 in advance of each tenancy.
Costs will continue during periods that you don't have tenants. For instance, you are still liable for aspects of the electricity, gas and water bills. Throughout your ownership you also need to pay council tax / rates and, of course, insurance.
It's difficult to be definitive about this decision. Keeping a house in the UK does entail a lot of costs from insurance to mortgage not to mention the additional effort that you need to put into managing your house (even if you have a letting agent). However, selling can be quite a permanent thing to do if you live in an area where prices move quickly and, to my mind, it's best to retain your house as a fall-back should things in France not work out as you expect.
If you do decide that selling is the best option for you, it's best to get this in motion before you leave the UK as otherwise you could find yourself liable for French capital gains tax on the proceeds of any sale.
Separately, but related to this topic, is the issue of maintaining a UK postal address. This is one thing that is definitely advantageous to do. If you can change the address for several credit cards to that of a friend or family member before you go, this will effectively move your credit history to their address which we have found to be very useful over the years.