strake

It's tough at the moment with low bookings and future uncertainty, so anything that gives us an edge when this crazy situation is over might be worthwhile.

I have an electric car (Tesla) and always check on the 'EV friendliness' of B&B's/Hotels I am going to stay in before I book.

One night's holiday charging for an EV is about 3€ from a normal power socket and it isn't needed every night. It's worth mentioning if it's a facility you are happy to offer.

I'm a member of a number of closed-forum EV groups, the members of whom have many avid European travelers. I'll be happy to add your gite or Chambre d'Hote to the lists on there if you provide a link. No charge - just want to get our micro-industry up and running again.

Don't give up hope but don't hold your breath either...!

When we exchanged my wife's licence about 18 months ago, it was easy..straight to the pref. When I decided to do mine, I quickly read (too quickly!) the latest notes on the govt website and understood exchanges now had to go to the address in Nantes. Stupidly, instead of sending, as requested, just a photocopy of my licence with the application, I did the same as when we applied for my wife's and sent the actual licence - it was only afterwards I understood how the whole process was now working. Fortunately, I have been able to print out a copy of my UK licence from the GOVUK website and that has enabled me to rent cars in the UK etc. I presume it would also get me past any Gendarme checks although that hasn't been tested yet. Here's the bad news...I sent my licence to Nantes in June of last year. This morning, seven months later, I received a paper attestation which runs to September of this year.

nomoss,

Thanks again for your advice - much appreciated.

lucas,

Well, we gave up on the English advertising sites as there just wasn't any response. Happy to provide more info if you pm

"The process of selling the house will be similar to that when you inherited the property and it was transferred into your name(s).

Suggest you use the same Notaire as you used then".

Sorry, I didn't make that clear. The property has not been inherited, it has been gifted for various reasons - and I understand that has specific issues as to how we deal with any sale. It may be we do the sale in our parents name. This is why the lawyer/Notaire requirement is quite specific for us.

As far as we understand, CGT is payable on any amount over the original price paid after a number of criteria are taken into account - namely costs and time since the purchase. From our side, we're pretty relaxed about that as it's a given so best treated as something that has to be done - although minimised where possible. Our main concern was whether we'd actually get someone to buy the property given the depressed state of the market but we now have four interested parties so just want to press ahead.

Thank you very much for your reply. Amazingly, just after posting above, a private ad we placed on a site yesterday came up with three responses today - two sound pretty positive so we might just get a sale without an agent. In any event, we'll be doing some intensive reading over the weekend about the process.

Strake

My parents have a house in France (Auvergne) which was basically a holiday home for the family as we grew up. They lived there for a while but came back to the UK a few years back. It is now our property. We like the French lifestyle but if we bought our own house, we would not choose the same area (more coastal for us), so have decided to sell.

My question is, in the hope some may have experience here, can we manage the whole sale process from the UK just advertising privately and then appointing a lawyer or would the general advice be to appoint a sales agent in France - even though this seems to be very expensive? We've dipped our toe in the process by advertising with a couple of the standard property websites but not a bite after about three weeks.

As is probably apparent, we know little about the French selling/buying process!