giteowner

the agents Leggett's immobillier have house swaps on their site. I am not plugging for them and have nothing to do with them other than advertising my gites in the Dordogne for sale with them. I amnot sure how successful the swap site is as some of the homes have been on there for a long time but it is an interesting thought. I believe the French home has to be advertised through Leggett's to go on the swap part but anyone in UK can apply to swap their home.

Janet - I do not think you have been given the correct advice on this forum about the TV licence for gites. I don't believe you need to pay for 2 gites. I say this because we have an apartment in the Alps, let out in ski season through an agency who handles all the booking etc. A few years ago they wanted all apartment owners to put TV's into the apartments to make rental more attractive. They said that for French owners there was no need to pay for another TV licence as French residents can have 2 more TV's if paying for the TV at their home address. At that time we were living in UK so I had to pay for licence but I noticed that as soon as we moved to France and got a TV and licence at our home address then payment for extra licence at the apartment was deleted. Lo and behold, as soon as we returned to UK and I amended our address then I got a letter asking for payment for TV licence for the apartment again. As we still owned our place in France and were still paying for the licence there I simply wrote back saying that although UK was now our residence we still owned house in France and were paying for TV licence there so I felt I did not need another one for the apartment even though that apartment was rented out in ski season. I never heard anything back frm them so am assuming they agreed. I think you should investigate more before taking your TV's out. We also had a gite with a TV while living in France and did not get an extra licence for it, on the basis that was our third TV and we were allowed 3 on the one licence.

Coops - in general I agree with you about it being difficult for the early retired to move to France. But the 'easy' way to do it is to pay social contributions by being self employed - for which the simplest way is probably to own gite/s and register them as a business. I am surprised the sale of gites is not escallating!

If you started working in UK at 16 and are now 42 then you are still short of the required 30 years of payments to get the UK full State pension. And it would be taking a massive leap of faith to think that it will be possible to live in France on a UK state pension when you are 65.

thanks to all those who replied especially Montybird who PM'd me and domaineblanchecolombe. I deliberately did not put our web link on the original post as I felt it would have been a blatant ad - and I don't want to get involved in the above dispute about web links! But I am getting the feeling that the gite market is opening up and becoming easier with more potential customers out there......Anyone looking to buy gites can clearly choose to send me a private message so there is no need for a web link in my opinion.

This happened to me once on a holiday property I had in the Alps - I gave a new UK address when I moved but it was clearly written down wrong and so I never got the bill - they had had previous cheques from me and so had bank account details - the Tresor Public took the amount plus penalty out of my bank account. They certainly did not freeze the account. The bank just sent me a letter saying that the amount had been taken out by Tresor Public. We have also recently has a problem paying our last CSG bill relating to when we were actually French resident in the Dordogne(now back in UK) - never received the bill despite having been in to give them our UK address - just last week we got a letter (to the correct address) saying they had deducted full amount plus penalty out of our bank account - and another letter from bank confirming this - again no talk of freezing account.

Eleve - I saw your post on here and on the health forum messages. It is right that you should be filling in a tax return with your world wide income but that alone will not get you into the health system. I think you were given good advice about meeting with a French accountant as you need to find a way of registering your business in France and paying the relevant social contributions on the business income (not just tax) if you want to get into the French health system.

Hi - I know it's not an easy time to be selling a gite complex (house and 3 gites in Dordogne), but the time is right for us to sell and base ourselves in UK. We've placed it with one local agent so far but we need to decide on wider marketing strategy. We have never struggled to get gite customers and have 11 years good bookings to show, but I still know that finding a buyer could be slow. Its hard to believe that 11 or 12 years ago when we bought, there were no marketing web sites - we relied on magazines and Saturday Telegraph to look for ad's and then faxed estate agents. If anyone can let me know what sales web sites they have recently used successfully, then I would be really grateful and if anyone can recommend good agent in Sarlat /Le Bugue area it would be a big help. Thanks