somme man

Hi Quillan. Many thanks for your reply, our house is next to the barn but not in it, does that qualify? Sommeman

Hi Quillan. Thankyou very much, i think you have made my weekend. If i understand you correctly, i can convert my barn (700 sq metres) imto a 5 bedroom B&B and have 4 gites at the other end with a seperate entrance? Is this correct? Many thanks. Sommeman

Thanks catalpa. Great information. Excuse me for being thick, you say 5 letting rooms in your main residence, if i were to convert a part of my barn into gites would this be in addition to the 5 or inclusive?

Hi Crossy67. Do you have the same challenge?

Whilst i believe that over 5 bedrooms turns a B&B into a hotel, is this the case if you have 5 bedrooms and a number of self contained rooms/gites?

Not sure about Aude, Hexagone are a uk based agency that specialise in the complete buying process in Northern France and may be able to help with contacts, with regards to banking, HSBC in France offer an English speaking bank manager for us Brits in certain branches which takes a lot of the mysteries of banking away.

Thanks to you all, I like the idea of just offering my hand irrespective of the state of the tradesmans hands.   Tim.

Can anyone help me please. On a number of occaisions now tradesmen working on our house have in a very pleasant way refused to shake my hand as theirs have been dirty, they proceed to bend their right hand towards them and offer me their wrist. What should my response be? To date I have tried shaking the wrist, holding out my wrist and also proclaiming that i am not concerned by their dirty hands all of which appear incorrect. Advise would be greatly appreciated.   Tim.

Charente. I used Moneycorp for the deposit, purchase balance and all subsequent transfers for the ongoing renovations and have not experienced any problems. They have always acted quickly and effeciently and now only require a phone call if my money is going to the previous account.   Tim.

I have used Moneycorp for the purchase and the ongoing transfer of funds and have found them to be excellent. I bank with HSBC who offer an English speaking service at certain branches. I used an English speaking Paris based lawyer to liaise with the notaire on my behalf and brief me prior to signing the compromis and the final purchase documents however I believe that the notaire must supply a translator at your expense if you language skills are not great. Be aware that the Immo may ask you to sign a document prior to letting you see the house, this is to ensure that they get the commission if you purchase.

Thanks everyone for your help and advice, our neighbours came to us on Saturday evening at 6.30 and we had a great time. We had an array of nibbles as advised on the forum and added a few other bits and pieces, our neighbour had mentioned in the past that he liked small tomatoes stuffed with tuna and they went down a storm. Although we have limited French language skills and our neighbours speak little English we chatted, laughed and gesticulated until 10pm, the evening was a great success and my jaws were sore with laughing at our attempts to make each other understand. Many thanks once again. 

Thanks Zeb, do not want to look like we are not trying to embrace the local culture.

After many more unbelievable acts of kindness on the part of our neighbours and following the advise on this forum we have taken Whiskey, chutney and shortbread for them, all of which were very well received. We have now managed to get our neighbours to agree to come to us for the first time for drinks and nibbles, we know what they drink but are a bit clueless as too the concept of nibbles in France? Are we talking nuts and crisps or pate, cheeses and bread, advise would be appreciated.

Hi Gail. Congratulations on making the decision to purchase a property in France. I can fully understand your wish to speed the process along, however my experience of people who rush into a purchase abroad is that they do not obtain every item on their wish list and will ultimately be asking "what if" and not fully enjoying the wonderful experience that they have invested in. It took us 4 years of searching and numerous visits to get our perfect property which ticked all of the boxes we had agreed. Because of the vast array of properties available you can afford to be prescriptive within reason about location and type of property but you must be 100% sure before you start the process. I wish you all the very best in your search.

I have used Moneycorp for the purchase of my house and to get funds into the French bank account to pay tradesmen. Always found them helpful with reasonable rates. Just bought a few more and would be interested to see what rates other forum members are getting from different companies.