valiantlad

you could try www.getvillas.com  £60.00 for 12 months  - currently throwing in 3 months extra free! 

Yes as always compulsive viewing but what a daunting task, there seems such a lot to do and then to find out you need to re-plumb and rewire the total property - why didn't they have a survey carried out?. I am no expert which is obvious from my previous post but to have no survey and expect to come in at 65K seems a tad ambitious for such a vast property. Destroying the ceiling to provide a split level room for their children(I think) seemed a little unnecessary, shouldn't they be concentrating on getting small areas of the accomodation to make them acceptable? Did I hear at the end they have some guests arriving on next weeks programme? Unless it's David Blunkett and Stevie Wonder they're in for a shock.  

Thanks for your replies, to be more accurate on the sibling front the probability is that only two of the children will be going with us, my 2 children (9 & 6) from a previous marriage will be staying in the UK with their Mum. The oldest of the children (15) is currently doing GCSE's and will continue his A levels staying with relations in the UK. The 12 year old wants nothing more than to be with her Grand mother in France and the other 9 year old is currently unaware of the plans, the reason being we are just in the process of finishing off our property in the UK prior to marketing it. Our reason for not telling him are that we don't really want to cause him any unrest where it's not required, plus he'd pester us to death about it!! The figure of 550,000 Euro is a figure that would leave us mortgage free and we do have a small income from a website that we own and run.   We will however have to have some sort of facility to feed and home all the above at some time though,(maybe we could charge them!) and we hope the quality time we will have together should outweigh any negatives.   Thanks for your views they are very much appreciated. 

Hi to all you people out there, just wondered if anyone had their crystal ball at hand to give out some advice on our french dream? You know the score all the propaganda TV programmes painting the idyllic lifestyle in the sun away from the day to day drudgery that you all lead!! Well we have the same idea but after reading recent articles and their pessimistic view that gite complexes have had their day  wondered if anyone on the ground could throw a little information this way. I understand from what I have read on threads on this forum about people who have rented gites in the past using the equity in their Uk property to finance a French holiday home and then subsequently renting it out, this seems quite logical but I would think that ther are still people wanting to explore france from the gite perspective. I suppose what I am asking is will there still be a market for the gite complex?  We are a family that currently spends very little quality time together due to myself and my wife having demanding full time jobs, and to make matters worse I work every other weekend and night shifts to boot, not to mention we both have to travel some way to work. throw in the 5 children and 1 on the way and you get the general picture ( please no advice on family planning! ). Our dream was to totally sell up in the Uk and purchase an existing gite complex or similar for around 550,000 Euro and we always expected that the work would be hard but we would be together and see more of each other as afamily. My wifes mother and brother are both long standing residents of France but have no knowledge of the holiday industry, any replies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks