Pierre Guillery

Hello Edel: I am a French bilingual US-educated (MBA) real estate consultant/agent with my own carte (licensed broker) and 14 years experience. I primarily act as a buyer's agent for English-speaking customers. Based on my experience, here is what I would tell a customer in your situation: 1) Given your expressed needs, I strongly recommend that you hire a bilingual notaire, or even a Franco-British notaire. I dont know how many there are, but I know one I have worked a few times with - it went really well. It is also possible to work with a notaire employing bilingual/binational staff - as the "clerc de notaire" does most of th work, that could work. And when you're with the notaire in-person, the clerc can act as a translator. 2) A very important fact: the notaire does NOT have to be local. In France, notaires can act anywhere in the country. 95% of notaire offices are equipped with videoconferencing tools (thansk to Covid). Which will make it easier to find the right notaire: you can look anywhere in France! (As a matter of fact, a good number of French people, the wealthiest who deal regularly with a notaire have "their own" notaire, which they use for all notaire business - because they trust him/her.) I would ask the UK embassy for names of notaires - I have never done that, but there is no downside in trying... 3) Every transaction is a new transaction for a notaire. Menaing it doesn't matter that the house has been sold/bought at any given notaire. The plus here is that the notaire has a quicker access to some of the documents - but most need to be updated anyway, and the notaire HAS to get newly produced documents anyway. 4) About translation: you may want to translate the important documents (compromis first, that's the most crcuail one, and acte authentique later - which contains almos the same content). I would, for peace of mind. But you will always want your advisor (noatire, clerc, biligual agent, lawyer) to trake you through it parapgraph by paragraph and explain - before the actual signing meeting. It'll take you an hour, worth it. IMHO dont pay a translator to assist you during the process or the meeting - it's not worth it. And dont forget: "Google translate" is now 95% efficient. At zero cost. Useful also for email exchanges. Hope that helps. BTW: I can provide you with the names of the notaires I mentioned in the post. Just ask! [This is my first post on this forum, so please excuse possible protocol errors...]