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DerekJ

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Everything posted by DerekJ

  1. Thanks for the welcome WJT. I hope I don't end up asking too many dumb questions. You make some interesting points re the French psyche on house buying/selling. It's useful to be aware of the differences.
  2. [quote user="Will"]A couple of points. First, if a house has been on the market for a long time, it could be that it has been poorly marketed - most (not all) notaires and a lot of French agents have little grasp of marketing. [/quote] Will, thanks for the reply. I very much agree with this statement. I'm amazed at some of the photographs that are used to sell  houses... ironing boards up with clothes waiting to be ironed etc. I understand your point about pricing. My general presumption (right or wrong) is that the vendor may be more likely to accept an offer in the off season. [quote user="Will"] Secondly, your plan of staying in the NHS and using an EHIC, splitting your time between France and Britain is quite OK in principle. The only difficulty is if you intend to take your six months all in one go. That can cause difficulty because if you are in France for more than three months you are considered to have taken up residence, so you will be expected (in the near future) to get a certificate from the mairie, arrange health insurance etc. Likewise if you are out of Britain for more than three months, then you can, as far as the NHS is concerned, be deemed to have moved away, so you could be refused free treatment, EHIC etc. So as long as you time your stays in the respective countries in sensibly-sized chunks you should be fine. [/quote] Thanks for clarifying the 3 month rule. I think this would work OK for us. Initially I would be at the house more often than my wife but probably for not more 4 to 8 weeks at a time.
  3. Firstly, hallo to everyone as this is my first post on these forums that I found rather by chance.  I've been reading a lot of the posts for the last couple of weeks and have found some really useful information. My wife and I made our first house hunting trip to France a couple of months back. We were looking in the general area between the rivers Lot and Dordogne. Prior to the trip we'd done a lot of reading up and had a meeting with a UK based French notaire as we were particularly concerned to properly understand the inheritance issues. We viewed quite a few houses and at the end of the trip ended up making an offer on a property near to Souilliac. We returned without having actually signed the CdV.  As part of the offer we asked for a bit more land to be included but this was rejected as the sale was part of a divorce settlement. The wife was selling the house and the husband owned the additional bit of land we wanted. After some soul searching we decided we would still continue. We had a survey done on the property which threw up a couple of things but not showstoppers. However, we went back to the agent and said we would want these issues resolving by the currrent owners. Then, prior to a response from the agents I discovered some chicken processing activity in the village and reports of smell and flies.  As a result of these factors we ended up pulling out of the purchase (no CdV had been signed). We will return to do some searching probably early in the new year. Of course, the Euro/pound exchange rate has been taking a bit of a battering so we have to keep an eye on that. I don't know how beneficial it will be to house hunt during the off season in terms of getting a lower offer accepted? Also we are aware of the health changes but as we don't initially plan to live in France for more than 6 months we will retain our UK residency (and house) and will have to rely on our existing health arrangements. One area I'm not sure on is whether our EHIC will give us reasonable cover if we are in France for an extended period ( under the 6 months though). One thing we have noticed is that a lot of houses we are keeping a watching eye on seem to have been on the market for some time. I get the impression that is is more the norm in France but it also makes me wonder if we are attracted to hard to sell properties! Oh, the final thing (sorry for the long ramble) is that my wife speaks reasonable French. I'm doing quite a bit of self study and have been using the "Hugo French in 3 months" and now the "Hugo Advanced French" books and CDs. So far I've found these very good and I like the format.
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