Foreign Perspectives

As we’re confident that we’ll be on the move at some stage this year, we’ve started thinking through some of the logistics of the process.

Our first problem is that we don’t know when the sale will go through and therefore we can’t currently go out and buy somewhere else. Also, given the slow pace of sales here and likely delays in the process, it would be quite difficult to synchronise the sale here with the purchase somewhere else and especially so as each trade is separate here ie buyer/seller chains don’t exist.

That lack of synchronisation means that we’re almost certainly going to need an interim place to live in between living here and living in our new permanent home (where-ever that may be). Although simplifying the logistics of moving out of here it adds some other complications for us in terms of schooling for the kids and where to tell the removal truck to go. In that the interim place isn’t going to be our permanent home and may not even be in the country that we’ll finally settle in, it’s also looking likely that we’ll be needing to store the stuff from here somewhere but, of course, we’ll need some of that stuff whilst we’re in our interim home which means that we’re going to have to sit down and work out what we’ll need to take with us rather than put in the truck. That’s not so simple in that there’s a whole lot of kiddy stuff which takes up quite a volume not to mention items like the computer I’m typing this on, bedding and so on. Now obviously we could do without some of that stuff for a “while” but here too we don’t know how long we’ll be in the interim spot.

Far from simple, eh?

We’ve been rolling out our marketing campaign to pull in more entries on our B&B listings sites over the last few weeks and it’s interesting to see how differently the offers have been taken up.

First off, the Spanish began with a vast number of duff addresses which implies that a lot of them don’t bother with e-mail for their bookings. Virtually all of the addresses were from free accounts like hotmail and the Spanish equivalents which also implies that they’re not really using the Internet as a primary means of promoting their businesses. Overall takeup was really low at around 0.5% although, to be fair, it’s my first attempt to do a mailshot in Spanish so I wasn’t expecting an overlly high response. What did surprise me was that they looked at the example sites I quoted in really big numbers and also clicked on the various ads that they came across.

This was my second major mailshot aimed at Scotland. The first, about a year ago had a fairly low takeup but this one completely took me by surprise and the takeup has been over 3%. By contrast, they didn’t look much at the example sites nor did they click on the ads: they just went ahead and either signed up right off or passed on the offer.

It’s my first run at Ireland too and early days with that as yet. What has surprised me already though is that a much lower number of places quote an e-mail than I’d expected. In fact, the Internet presence seems largely to be confined to B&Bs with hotels not bothering to quote either an e-mail or a website. Still, we’ll see about Ireland over the coming week.

Next up is England and Wales which I hope to do over the coming week or two. It should provide an interesting contrast with Scotland where I went from fairly low numbers a few weeks ago to quite a sizeable and growing presence today.

In the middle of a programme on the 31st our satellite system packed in and we’re still trying to get it going again!

We’ve changed the LNB, changed the cables leading to the dish, changed the digital tuner and even changed the dish from an 80cm one to a 95cm one and still no telly! It’s not even that we’re not getting a signal as we’re picking up “something” which gives us a 75 to 85% signal strength with around 45% quality yet no channels at all which is confusing.

Originally we were thinking that Sky had issued a new card and we’d not gotten it yet but that wouldn’t matter as the free channels (ie BBC & ITV) don’t need a Sky card and the second tuner that we’re trying now doesn’t even have a slot for one (and, yes, it did work fine before without a card).

It only took us about half an hour to get the thing tuned in when we did it first time around yet we’ve spent loads more time than that now and still not one single channel is coming through, even in great weather.

So, if anyone has any ideas, they’d be welcome because we’re stumped!

Whilst it’s easy enough to come up with a price for a house in a town where there are a lot of similar houses around and a regular turnover, it’s an entirely different matter in rural France.

For a start, once you get into the countryside, houses aren’t all the same. Even two similar looking cottages won’t come with the same price attached because they’ll be in different locations with different views and so on. And, of course, they’ll not be the same inside either nor will they have been equally well maintained. Finally, there just isn’t the regularity of turnover of housing in the French countryside as you get in a typical town in the UK.

So how do the French price their houses? Well, first off they look around at the various estate agent brochures that seem to be in every place you could possibily find them. The French don’t have a single estate agent selling a property usually so there are even more brochures than you might expect.

They look for vaguely similar houses to what they have to sell and take a view on whether their’s is worth more or less than the price being asked. What they don’t do usually is to ask the estate agent what the price should be and therefore the prices listed aren’t necessarily realistic. In fact, most are actually conversions from some relatively arbitrary figure in French francs with the estate agent commission being added on (hence the slightly peculiar sums that you sometimes see being asked).

So, don’t take the price in the estate agents brochure as gospel. It’s usually not based on any firm idea of what the house should be worth so you may well be able to negotiate either the price or what’s included in the price.

We’ve been looking around the prices of places locally and there’s quite a divergence between what some places are actually worth and what they might sell for at the moment.

For example, there’s a major hotel/restaurant complex near us that’s listed for almost EUR 2.5 million. It’s easily worth that as it’s a recently modernised building with over 30 rooms, large swimming pool, gardens, sports facilities, has a second building under construction to add another 30 rooms and planning permission for a third building for the complex plus extensive grounds.

Unfortunately, that complex is totally out of character with the region. There’s nothing comparable to it locally and for good reason: there just isn’t the market for it here.

So, whilst it might well be worth 2.5 million (and probably more), chances are that it’ll sell for around 1.5 million or so. That’s if it sells at all, of course, as it’s nothing like what people would expect in this area which means that nobody is looking to buy such a facility here.