RuthMcG

Hi Jetlag I have 2 gites in the Aude (dept 11) near Limoux/Quillan and in the last 4 years and the majority of my clients are Belgian, Dutch and French. I advertise to these markets on the following reasonably priced websites: www.bonjour.nl and www.alassy.nl where you can give your text in English and they will translate into Dutch for you. I also advertise in Homelidays.com where you have the choices of languages but from this site my clientele is mostly French and Spanish. Hope this helps somewhat. Good luck with the advertising. RuthMcG at www.southfranceselfcatering.com    

Hi All   Just thought I'd update you on our situation with our tenant farmer. Legaly, we are not in any position to terminate his bail no matter how simple (and it is) as the bail automatically rolls over for another 9 years. The only way we can finish the bail is to pay him an extortionate amount or go back to agricultural college and become authenticated farmers of some sort or other ourselves. We then have the right to take back the land giving him 18 months notice but ONLY 18 months before the new bail runs out in 2014 and only if we are going to exploit the land ourlseves. However! We have had a very informal meeting with our farmer who quite understands the predicament we are in and has agreed that we negotiate and remain amicable throughout. He says he does not want us to suffer financially for this situation. Therefore it has been agreed between us that the bail runs as is for another 9 years, he will negotiate with us and any potential buyers and is willing to reduce the amount of land he has in the bail to a certain level (in order to keep his EU grant in place) and also he is willing to terminate the bail with the new owners if they give him 18months notice within 3 months of purchase. If they don't then the bail runs the entire 9 years. All in all, we 3 were quite happy with the result of this meeting and think it is quite fair to all who are or maybe involved. The farmer has always been pretty straight with us so we see no reason why this won't work. He has also agreed to sign this in writing, which of course we will draw up and do immediately. Ruth

Hi All We have 2 gites in the Aude and got some bookings through homelidays.com. Most of our bookings are repeat or by word of mouth - so we get quite a few friends and family of people who have stayed with us before. Homelidays have a month free trial (I think?) and then their charge per year isn't bad. We got a lot of enquiries for Chambre d'hotes (which we don't do) and also for mid week breaks. Hope this helps a little Ruth www.southfranceselfcatering.com

Hi All, Many thanks to all of you who responded and it has certainly given us food for thought. Have taken your advice and booked an appointment with our Notaire for legal advice. However, we do think at this stage that we are probably rightly stuck unless our farmer (age 40) decides to be honourable and allows us to relinquish the bail with a reasonable amount of notice. With regards to the price of the property - we are only looking to cover our expenses on buying it and the renovations that we have done. We know that for a property this size there has been no signifcant market increase in the time we have been here. On re-reading the Contrat de bail en Ferme it is a 2 page document which only covers the sections of land rented, what the farmer is allowed to do on the land, the rights to produce, amount of rent, registering of the bail and "cas imprevus" which doesn't really say much. Does anyone know if the farmer has unused certain parcels for 3 years is there any way of negotiating back these parcels of land for ourselves? He has unsued about half of the land in the bail for this period of time. The reason that we are looking into all of this is to make the property more interesting to potential buyers who may want to do something with the land themselves. It may arise that someone like ourselves, with no real farming interest, will be interested in the property for the gite business and simply put for its stunnign beauty..... Will keep you posted and thanks again - it is really appreciated! Ruth

Sorry - should have said we are in the Aude. Ruth

Basically, we bought our property of house, 2 gites and 50 hectares 3 years ago. The previous owner had a "simple" bail between himself and the farmer for 9 years which runs to 21 July 2007. At the time that we bought both the farmer and owner told us that there was no problem if we wanted the land back for ourselves, the farmer would vacate. We allowed the farmer to continue his run of the bail as we had no need of the 15 hectares that he uses, while all the time being told by the farmer that he would leave at any time if we gave him notice of one season.   We are now in the position that we want to sell the property to release some equity for my husband's business here (we are residents here full-time). The farmer has indicated that the bail that he had with the previous owner will automatically roll over in July and there's not much we can do about it. We can't take back the land for ouselves as we are not registered 'agricultuer's.   He mentioned that if we want to buy him out of the bail then it could cost as much as 54,000 euros as there may be some indemnitities! (what does that mean?) He has since said that if we are fair with him he will be fair with us which we take to mean that he may well demand some sort of payment to make him leave.   Before we officially approach the farmer I would like to know if it is true that after deciding to put the property on the market we must send a recommended letter to him, telling of our intention to sell, giving details of the total price asked for the whole property and offering him first-call to buy. From the date of the letter he then has 6 months in which to make an offer or send us a letter saying that he has no wish to purchase the land etc. If he decides not to buy himself then is it also true that this letter is official notice of the termination of his renting the land. (I heard this from someone who is currently studying to be an agriculteur here.) If he decides not to buy but wants to remain on the property is there anything I can do?   I also heard from one of the estate agents who we have just registered with that we can at any time give sufficient notice (1 year) to the farmer to vacate the land as we have every right to exploit the land ourselves without having to do the diploma course.   We want to have a meeting with the farmer ourselves to discuss the sale (we have only just registered with a few agents so very early days yet) and to see if there is a problem or not. We may well be jumping the gun a little, however I would like to be armed with what are our rights as owners (if any!) and also information on who has claim to do what in relation to the sale. I do understand that SAFER also has a claim but that is a seperate issue.   I would really appreciate any advice or pointers as to where I can find out the true answers as everyone I have talked to so far has a different opinion and standpoint.   Thanks in advance to anyone who can advise!