oatesdaniel

Thanks dave

Oh I agree Mac, mobile homes arent all that bad. But at the momejnt, fishermen are paying £2000 a week to stay in the house, so I cant turf them out of the house for my mother and father in law to live there and not provide them with suitable luxurious accommodation and unfortunately mobile homes are not going to provide that, which is a shame as they are more cost effective in the short term, but log houses are more cost effective long term as they can easily last over 100 years.

I'm not installing Mobile Homes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for the idea, but the whole point in this particular fishery is that the gentleman who owns it charges a lot of money because everything is luxurious and I want to keep up that appearance but with Log Houses, or converting the barn. But thank you for the idea. Thank you too to you Val, I have dealt with a lot of planning issues in the UK so I'm sure it is not a dissimilar system from what you are talking about. The land I would be building on is already considered building land within the 60 hectares, but you are right, I do need to find out several things such as drainage issues, and installing different utilities. My idea would be that we would have electrics running to the property, water, and that is all, as currently the property uses propane gas bottles for heating and I would rather us solar panels and a woodburner from the cost effectiveness side of things.

[quote user="idun"]60 hectares? Isn't that a farm? have you not to be registered as a farm??????  I really do not know, so I'm asking. Especially if you are going to be registering a business........ holiday rentals.......... on 'perhaps' agricultural land?????? [/quote]   Well there is a business already running there so we will register as whatever the gentleman who is selling it is registered as

Hi, What are everyones favourite online home furnishings and clothes stores, etc? We ask this because we are unsure of exactly what to bring with us to France when we move. How does the price and quality differ from the UK? Is it more advisabke that we just bring everything over with us and save the hassle and time? Thank you in advance

Hi, could anyone tell me if you can get either tax breaks or money off things like solar panels and heat exchangers for older builds please? How does it all work? Also, I am considering building some log houses upon my land. Is it possible to get tax breaks for these as they are very eco friendly builds??   Thank you in advance   Dan

[quote user="Val_2"]To the OP, because you have a lot of land do not assume for a moment you can build on any of it nor what you want to build, it is very strictly controlled these days and many communes will no longer allow new builds outside of the POS limit due to the immense cost of installing utilities,drainage and access(must be more than 2m width for permission to build so that emergency vehicles can easily enter).Agricultural land,coastal land and woodland are heavily protected against development and as I mentioned earlier, you really need to discuss your plans firstly at the mairie who will simply tell you if it is possible or not before you start expensive and lengthy enquires and applications(those are free but the photos,printing etc are not). Being on council I get to see a lot of applications to build on land which upto even five years ago would have been allowed with no problems but no longer and many folks who bought land and banked it for retirement builds have been left with parcels of land that can no longer be developed even though they may be close to other dwellings. Also the type of new build you wish to construct may not be allowed either, all the materials have to be approved as well as the design. [/quote] Thanks for the advice, but I have already mentioned in a previous post that I know this and I will do my due diligence!! Thank you to everyone for all your advice and kind remarks, I won't be knocking the barn down, nor by the looks renovating it. The likelihood is that I will now build a couple of log houses, but I do need to check on building land etc etc. thank you

[quote user="Quillan"]As wonderful all this advice is and has given the OP food for thought I still think he firsts needs to find out if he can a) Renovate the Barn. b)Knock it down and build on the footprint. c) Build anything on the land at all. Surely this should be the first step before making any offer etc. [/quote] We wouldnt knock the barn down to build on the footprint. There is over 60 hectares of land. Now I know not all of it is building land but I know that some of it is, probably enough to put 2 lovely log houses on it. Don't worry, I'm a business man and I will do all my due diligence, but thank you for the advice

[quote user="Bill"] hello   my short experience has been everything has cost me about double my estimate on our renovation.   how about a log cabin, that might work for you.. they can be quite cheap..   I had a quick look and found this..  for 17000 euro   I am sure there are better deals..   http://www.rpmloghomes.com/our-best-loghouses/rpm-tre   No idea about the planning implications..   rgds Bill [/quote]   Love the log cabin idea actually. We need them to be around 140m2 each, probably take 2 of them. But from what I understand, dont they cost around double the initial price once you add in everything from delivery to installation???

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum so please go easy on me! We have found a lovely fishing business in Charente that we are interested in purchasing. Very good business model as it stands, but we want to maximise the potential of the property as currently the owner only has room for 6 fishermen to stay, and with 10 acres worth of carp lake on the property, we feel that we could potentially open up to more clients if we had more accomodation. Currently there is 1 x 170m2 3 bed house, 1 x 140m2 3 bed bungalow, and a 725m2 barn. The barn looks in decent structural condition, roof looks ok, walls look ok, and ideally we would like to convert this into 3x 3 bed properties, with a little bit left over for storage of lawnmowers, tools, cars, etc. However, the estate agent has told us that it would be just as cheap to build new houses and build them to exactly what design we want without the restrictions placed upon us by the current barn walls, etc etc. Does anybody know if this is true? We do hear all the horror stories that come with renovating old properties, but surely its still less expensive to do this rather than lay new foundations etc etc? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.   Dan