Moving to SW / Dordogne / Limousin

[james_robins]

Hi all,

I have been reading through lots of posts here and very pleased to see so much information on all things French. I am currently living in Edinburgh and am planning on moving to France by October or November this year. I have no definate preferance of locations in France i would move to, but have done a search on areas served by flights from Edinburgh and arrived at the South West, with Bergerac airport a direct flight away, and then options to go to Bordeaux, Limoges and the new airport in Brive to open next year.

Another reason i am looking at this area is price of properties. I am looking for something around £70-80k that is basically habitable but needs interior work.

I have spoken with VEF about a couple of properties that are of interest, but was wondering if anyone in the region knew of any other local or UK agents to consider. I am planning on flying out for a few days next month so would also be keen to meet up with anyone for a coffee and to hear of how you managed to get everything organised for a move to France.

I am 23 and have lived in Italy for a year and loved the experience, but am now looking to settle down in a new area and really get to know the language and culture.

Hope to hear from you soon,

James

[Dee]

James what sort of property are yopu looking for......I feel that maybe I can direct you to a good agency...as I have been in touch with so many.There are one or two companies which call themselves agencies but they work as brokers and usually know almost nothing about the properties....which could have been sold  ages ago.

[Bob T]

Come out, hire a car, and drive through all the little villages that are on the map but you would not normally go through. You will find something.

[suzi05]

Hi

You could try www.webterre.com They're english speaking and very nice people too!

suzi

www.patiras.com/trinite.htm

[Hoddy]

WWW.fnaim.fr

is a reputable asociation of agents with homes in all areas.

You can put in your search criteria and I'm sure you'll come up with many possibilities.

Hoddy

Edited for typo.

[plod]

Excuse my curiosity and feel free to tell me to mind my own but - have you got work lined up? I am sure you can find somewhere in SW France, it's a huge area with tremendous variety. Why narrow down your search by restricting yourself to English estate agents?

[tetley]

We bought through a french agency, but with a very helpful 'able to speak good english' agent.  I can pm details if you are interested.

[Tony F Dordogne]

James, sorry if this sounds too much of a downer but £70-80k isn't going to buy you a great deal in 24 and the chances of getting something other than very small tho  basically habitable will be slim.  Two tiny apartments in my vollage are on the market for E190,000 and one has no proper plumbing.

And you should be aware that without good/excellent French work down here is difficult to get, we know of three graduates (French) with substantial work experience who are finding it difficult to find work at anything other than the SMIC rates.

You really need to come here with enough money to live on, I would suggest, for a year plus money to renovate if that's your thing also. 

[KathyC]

Tony, you may be right about prices if you're talking about pretty country cottages of the type older Brits usually go for. However, these might not be so suitable for a young man of James' age. In and around our area there is plenty of choice of habitable houses in the towns for less than 120,000E and there's a commutable train service of less than an hour into Bordeaux if needed. I haven't used this agency but their site is very handy for searching the different areas.

http://www.bourse-immobilier.fr/liste/liste_biens.aspx?typeTri=3&natureBien=1&lieu=mussidan%20(24)&surface=0&prix=120000&PageStart=1&ordre=0

I totally agree with your comments about work and language skills.

[james_robins]

hi all,

thanks for all your suggestions. indeed kathy, i have managed to find a couple of properties for around 80k that look great. i am now looking at the earliest dates i can come out to see them, hopefully later this month or in early july.

with regards to work, most of what i do is on the internet and i will be doing this in france, as well as freelance web design so i do not need to find a job in the area as my uk company will continue to pay me.

whilst in italy, i managed to pick up the language by just interating with the local community and also found it a great way to meet people. i think with the latin roots and the fact i have learnt one language from scratch should help me, and the fact i dont need to be perfect from day one for work will help too.

just going to look through all the property sites listed and will get back to you with where i get to.

cheers again,

james

[KathyC]

[quote user="james_robins"]hi all,



with regards to work, most of what i do is on the internet and i will be doing this in france, as well as freelance web design so i do not need to find a job in the area as my uk company will continue to pay me.


[/quote]

You lucky so and so!

[AnOther]

[quote user="james_robins"]I am looking for something around £70-80k that is basically habitable but needs interior work[/quote]Just a tip, beware the phrase "basically habitable" we looked at some described thus and quicky discovered that "barely" was more often than not nearer the truth !

Good luck anyway.

[Adriana]

[quote user="james_robins"]

with regards to work, most of what i do is on the internet and i will be doing this in france, as well as freelance web design

[/quote]

In that case, make sure you'll have proper internet access. Not all villages are connected and not all connections are reliable.

[james_robins]

thanks for the tip Adriana, do you know if there is anyway to check online with the service providers if you enter the french equivalent to a post or zip code?

also, what are the locals views to expats moving into the region? i really enjoyed mixing and meeting with locals when i lived in italy but have heard that sometimes the french can be anti english or american. although i would like a property slightly out of a village, i would still enjoy being part of a local community and meeting people there. how have you all found this to be?

james

[londoneye]

I can second that.   I am 40 kilometres from Limoges, in the Limousin, and the reliability of our internet connection is frankly laughable - it is one of the few things which I am able to seriously complain about here.   I certainly could not reliably run a business from here via internet currently.

However, I am told by a neighbour that there is a 'plan' to update and improve the internet connectivity in this region - how long ?   However, I wouldn't bank on it being soon enough for you ...

[hoverfrog]

we have now got high-speed internet access, since January, and we are 35 kms E of Limoges.

The annoying thing is that when we bought the place they already had ADSL to the right of us and to the left of us, and doing a serach with a random phone number from the village online said that a high level of service was possible.

Turns out that our telephone exchange was not equipped and we were 365 metres the wrong side of it!

Most of Limousin is now covered due to the Dorsal project - they have maps of coverage levels online but I deleted the bookmark after we got ours...

There's an extremely good internet café near the station in Limoges - saved my life more than once in the last 2 years when I had to do a release or upgrade my machine. They have the fastest connection I've ever seen and you can connect your laptop :)

[AnOther]

[quote user="james_robins"]thanks for the tip Adriana, do you know if there is anyway to check online with the service providers if you enter the french equivalent to a post or zip code?[/quote]You can't check by postcode only by number so you would need to know the actual telephone number of the prospective property which the Estate Agent should have, assuming it actually has one of course.

With the type of property you say you are looking for this may well not be the case.

Once you have the number you can check it out here:

www.degrouptest.fr

[Hoddy]

I'm sorry to be a bit of a wet blanket about this, but if you business depends on it you need to make some very searching enquiries before you buy.

In theory, according to the website ErnieY quotes, it is 'possible' for us to have ADSL.

In practice I have visited the Local France Telecom  Shop twice in the last four weeks (waited fifty minutes the first time and forty the second)  and been told that  just because the website says it's possible and because our neighbours have it,  is no guarantee that we can and that they will telephone me.

I'm still waiting for the call.

Hoddy

[suzi05]

Hi James

I know you can check online once you have a telephone number, but I'm not sure about postcodes. But if you're looking at properties through agents, they might be able to tell you if they're online for "haut debit" (broadband) in the places you're looking.

With regards to the locals  - I can only speak for around here (Gironde) where we're positively welcomed. We do live here though, so we contribute to the local community rather than just having a little used holiday home here (which is often contentious). Everyone we've met here is really pleased to have us here and desperate for us to teach them or their kids english!

suzi

www.patiras.com/trinite.htm

[AnOther]

I don't know about the big towns or cities but in rural areas it seems that the post code simply refers to the commune rather than pinpointing an address like in UK.

My commune comprises some 2700 inhabitants and I am 3.5 km outside the actual village yet one post code covers it all.

As someone else pointed out, the fact that a near neighbour has a certain speed is not necessarily an indication of what you might get.

In my own case for instance, my line length is 4700m with a predicted speed of 2400kbs (I'll find out how true that is in a couple of weeks time !) whereas my neighbour, who is less than 300m away and close to the village, has a length of 6500m because his cable comes via a different route and he therefore struggles to get 512kb.

There are some communes I believe which have setup their own WiMax systems but they are probaby few and far between.

2 way satellite systems are available of course but are horrendously expensive to install although you could possibly defray the cost by clubbing together with other locals to share the cost.

 

[meg]

Hi James,

We are at the moment in the same situation, we have just come back from France having spent 2 weeks there looking at property.

After looking at places that weren't suitable at all, having asked for a house with land in the country, one agent took us to see a plot of land near a main road,  not what we had asked to look at. One agent  didn't even turn up.  We were alittle deflated.   This is our dream, hard earned money .....etc ...etc ....etc.

Then  we found an estate agents office situated in the centre of Gueret which is the main town of the Creuse in the Limousin. We walked in and were in the middle of asking for properties in our not so good French when the agent with a huge smile asked if we would like to explain in English! You can imagine how happy we were.  Infact she is English! she moved to france with her parents about 7 years ago. 

What Luck! Anyway the long and short of it is that she has been amazing, we only had two days with her before we had to fly back to the uk. We are in constant contact with her by telephone and email and we plan to go back in a month to visit some of the properties she thinks we would be interested in.   She has been GREAT,  a breath of fresh air, our dream back on track! ! !

My advice would be to contact her, the agency  is L'ADRESSE part of the FNAIM group and ask for Kerri    No:  from england : 00 33  5 55 52 30 54

Good luck with your hunt, hope you have as much fun as us!

Meg