gayns

Gastine, Can I pick your brains regarding your post about doing your renovations? I am about to build my own home.  I have just moved to France and am not registering as an artisan as I will not be looking for work during the build.  However, I seem to be hitting a brick wall with regards to getting my work covered by a warranty (like the NHBC or Zurich warranty in the UK that you can get).  I have been advised by the Notaire that, because I cannot get decinnel insurance (which would otherwise cover the work I do) as I am not a registered artisan in France, if I sell the property within 10 years, I merely state that there is no decinnel insurance on it.  He did not seem to think it would be a problem. The thing is, I have found out that if someone was renovating a property and sold within 10 years, a decinnel insurance would be required also.  Are you registered to do your renovations in France or have you found that this has not been an issue in selling your properties on? There doesn't seem to be any solid information around with regards to this.  I would assume that banks lending mortgages on such properties would want this decinnel insurance but then again, they don't ask for the properties to be surveyed, do they? My property will be my only residence, but I am pretty certain that I will be moving within 10 years.  So although I will not have the CGT issue, I also don't want to have a 'decinnel' problem either!

Yes, thank you for your replies (even if they did seem to wander off to a bit of a 'slap'-fest!) The CGT issue is simple enough if it is your main residence, which it will be - you do not pay it.  It would be helpful to get a solid answer regarding selling on at a later date - there must be some sort of structural warranty which is required which would result in an inspector from the insurance company making a number of visits to the site to sign off stages for the warranty to be valid. Anyone had any experience in this? And, please boys and girls, lets not quarrel!!!   gayns

Hi all, Can anyone advise?  We are in the middle of buying a plot of land to build a 3 bedroom bungalow on.  Building in France is the only way we can fulfill our ambition of building our own home owing to the astronomical price of land in UK.  The thing is, if we were in the UK, we would know the procedure to do a self build, that is, we could get project insurance to cover us doing the build (qualified builder already) as opposed to having to employ an NHBC builder.  Then of course you would have the building inspector coming out periodically to check off your work.  At the end of the build you would have it signed off as it were, to certify that the whole build has been carried out to Building Regulations.  If this isn't done, you've built yourself a white elephant and wouldn't be able to sell it on, at a future date. However, we just can't seem to get any information with regards to the procedure over here in France.  The last thing we want is to do this build ourselves and find that, if at a later date we move on to pastures new, we are not able to sell the property on because we didn't do a particular thing.  Also, as we will be building the property ourselves and will not be working for anyone whilst we are doing this, will we need to register as builders to do this and/or do we need to take out insurance for personal liability? If anyone out there has done a 'self-build' self-build, if you know what I mean (not someone who pays someone else to build it for them), we'd appreciate your advice.