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Earning enough to get by gardening, changeovers, handyman, light building work.


North Country Boy
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OK, i have, like most people, had a 15 year yearning to sell up and ship out. I have enough equity and investments to buy a modest property in france, brittany area. I run my own fairly successful garden maintenance company doing everything from grass cutting to hard landscaping, wall building, patios etc. I have also had a hand in building single skin outbuildings, sheds garages etc. I am also adept to general handyman type stuff, decorating, floorlaying etc. First question is what would i have to do to register myself with the french authorities to start paying tax? Secondly and most importantly, is there enough work in the Brittany area for someone with the pre described skills to enable me to make ends meet? I am not looking to make a fortune, just enough to pay bills, buy food (the bits that i wont grow and rear myself), run a vehicle and pay for the odd trip back to Uk to visit family and friends.

Are there still alot of people buying renovation properties, would they be looking for someone to do the finishing off jobs and establishing gardens etc.

Any help, especially setting up in france and abiding by french self employment law would be great.
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Due to the weak £ and poor state of the UK economy, I don't think you will find many Brits buying renovation properties in France at the moment. In fact all the evidence points to a lot of Brits trying with difficulty to sell up, and those that are not are often reliant on a £ income and struggling as a result.

Buying older French properties for renovation in rural areas is mainly a Brit preoccupation, as the French generally look for new properties that cost a lot less to heat and maintain. The French tend also not to be big into garden or property maintenance, with the distressed look being fashionable!

If you have an established fairly successful business in the UK, I would think long and hard before giving that up, in the current economic climate.
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[quote user="crossy67"]There is loads and loads of info on the Auto Entrepreneur (AE) system that would suit you for setting up business as a "handy man".  Make a cup of tea, get comfortable and start reading. 

Good luck.[:)]

[/quote]

OK, legaly, you cannot cut grass or do any gardening as a pro under AE. You have to register with MSA as gardening/grass cutting is classed as agricultural.

We came over 9 years ago and set up as gardeners, and now have a very sucsessful company, cutting grass and cleaning pools for a living. We have a couple of change overs too, but only as the clients really want us to do it, and no one else.

We have French, English, Dutch, German and a couple of yanks as clients and cover a 40km distance from home.

It an be done, its bloomin hard work and 50% of your earnings will go to MSA to pay for medical/pension etc. Then if you earn enough, you pay tax.

Get the right kit (bring it with you!) and there is work out there for it, you just have to find it.

Steve
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Hi Steve

Noticed your post stating you are gardeners....................We have just had a Schedule/Estimate from an English couple for gardening work and pool maintenance. They have been doing something similar to you for around 7/8 years.

The first cut was in March and we had an email from them apologising that it took 10 hours and not the 6 hours they quoted. But now the garden was under control then it would take considerably less time in the future. They would also like to add an hour per visit for extra strimming work, above the original quote.

The garden was not out of control, on the contrary, we have been paying a French guy 2500.00 euros a year to cut and strim it.

Getting a reliable service is not easy anywhere these days, so I don't really want to be too padantic about the quote, but at the same time it feels a bit wrong, just to accept the rise above the quote.

What do yer think?

Tony

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[quote user="nemltd"]

Hi Steve

Noticed your post stating you are gardeners....................We have just had a Schedule/Estimate from an English couple for gardening work and pool maintenance. They have been doing something similar to you for around 7/8 years.

The first cut was in March and we had an email from them apologising that it took 10 hours and not the 6 hours they quoted. But now the garden was under control then it would take considerably less time in the future. They would also like to add an hour per visit for extra strimming work, above the original quote.

The garden was not out of control, on the contrary, we have been paying a French guy 2500.00 euros a year to cut and strim it.

Getting a reliable service is not easy anywhere these days, so I don't really want to be too padantic about the quote, but at the same time it feels a bit wrong, just to accept the rise above the quote.

What do yer think?

Tony

[/quote]

we have been paying a French guy 2500.00 euros a year to cut and strim it.

Hi Tony , did you you win the lottery or maybe you play centre forward for Man United or,you are Fred Goodwin in disguise!

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Hang on a minute, Leo.  We don't know the size of Tony's garden and pool and also what sort of land it is.  For example, hedges take forever to cut and the trimmings even longer to cart away.

As for strimming, if there is a lot of rough ground, it's actually quite hard work and very hot work in the summer.

OTOH, I'd expect the contractor to give me an accurate quote and not just give me a low one so that I engage him to do the job and then he comes back and says sorry, but it's a lot harder work than I expected!

 

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Hoddy, I am sure you are right. Unfortunately for the OP, the days that a Brit with limited language skills could come to France and find sufficient work amongst the Brit expat community are over, if indeed it ever existed. As it is clear from this and other similar forums that many more Brits are leaving than arriving and that is unlikely to change until the Brit economy and the £ recover.
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[quote user="sweet 17"]

Hang on a minute, Leo.  We don't know the size of Tony's garden and pool and also what sort of land it is.  For example, hedges take forever to cut and the trimmings even longer to cart away.

As for strimming, if there is a lot of rough ground, it's actually quite hard work and very hot work in the summer.

OTOH, I'd expect the contractor to give me an accurate quote and not just give me a low one so that I engage him to do the job and then he comes back and says sorry, but it's a lot harder work than I expected!

 

[/quote]

Tony said;,

we have been paying a French guy 2500.00 euros a year to cut and strim it.

Tony said he pays 2500 per year to have his grass cut .

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We also came to France 9 years ago and work in the Dordogne doing changeovers, pool cleaning and some gardening. It is extremely hard work and work is getting harder to find with so many Brits returning to the UK. Also the exchange rate means they are holding onto their money more. However, what does make us so cross is when people advertise offering to pay a rate as low as 12 euros per hour (think we have had this discussion before). When you have to pay approx 45% to the system do people really expect someone to graft for 6 euros an hour??? Please be realistic. We can all potter out in the garden cutting the grass for an hour or so, then stop for a break a cup of tea etc and do a little bit more the next day. If you actually stopped and added up the time it has actually taken to cut that grass or the hedge (and clear it all away) you would probably get a surprise. If people cannot make a living and have to go back then who will be left to look after the holiday homes.
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Therein lies the rub, North Country Boy (assuming you're still following this?)  2500€ is a big chunk of money, especially on a diminishing budget, and yet it might well be a reasonable amount for the work involved, as Felix so rightly points out.  A big percentage goes in cotis (social security contributions),  for some of which - pension for example - you will see little or no return because you will have started work here in (I assume) your thirties or forties, not straight from school, and will never build up enough credit to be comfortable in retirement.  Meanwhile the British community, even if it isn't shrinking, is getting poorer because of the exchange rate, and having seen the £ at its worst, I reckon it will be a long time before expats' confidence in the property market returns, if it ever does.

Learn French so that you can have a larger customer base, and consider what you are proposing very carefully.  I don't say "don't do it", because life is too short not to take chances, but just be aware that you might end up on the breadline, not simply "a bit short of money", and that can be tough in a country where you won't have much of a safety net if  you fail.

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cooperlola, I am a member of another French Forum, which has a specific section for those selling up and going back and although not scientific, it is clear that from the posts, many Brits are leaving France. By contrast these days there are very few posts on this, or the other forum from those actually moving to France, in total contrast to the situation a few years ago.

Unlike countries such as Australia and New Zealand, France does not seem to be a country that Brits permanently emigrate to, but one where you spend some retirement years and then return or move on elsewhere.
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Sprogster, I quite agree but like you, it's an unscientific impression I get, I couldn't back it up with any facts or statistics. I certainly get the feeling that this forum and others have changed radically since the double whammy of the weak pound and the lack of healthcare for the pre-retired.  There aren't a lot of Brits around here but of those I know, the majority seem to envisage ending their days in the UK and at least two couples - one working, one retired - (out of only a dozen or so in total) have returned to the UK in the past year.  In the cooler parts of France such as Britanny where NCB is talking about moving to and  where the weather isn't part of the draw, I have a suspicion that the number of retirees might even get smaller, but that is speculation. 

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cooperlola, if the health care hadn't been changed, how do you think that just the 'low £' would have affected people. Would it alone have made that much difference? Have many been affected by it, I know you know all about this.

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Idun, my gut feeling is that the low £ on its own isn't sending people home again necessarily, but it is making them tighten their belts and one of the first casualities is things like having somebody else to mow your lawn, and redecorating/refurbishing your home.  And I certainly think it will make people think twice about moving here in the first place.

But I do think that low UK house prices and the contrasting high value of the Euro - and thus properties over here if you're lucky enough to be able to find a buyer - make going "home" easier, so if you miss your grandchildren and your old life then it's an option which wasn't there when houses in Britain cost a lot more.  In  my example of one - the pre-retired couple whom I know who sold up last year and went back - they put their house on the market here at a realistic price and left with more £s than they arrived with and then bought a house in England for 25% less than they had sold their old home for.  Not bad really, eh?

The healthcare thing is, I am sure, preventing many pre-retired couples from moving here. People with even the most minor of health problems cannot, by definition, comply with the law, and even if they are eligible for full private cover, are finding it far too expensive (I saw a quote on another forum from one couple who'd been asked for 8k a year for a compliant policy.  That's a scary sum if you have no S form cover - 40k for the five years is a lot of money just for the privelege of living in France.)  I doubt it's sent a lot of people back home though, Idun.

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I think the low pound alone would have had quite an impact since the cheap property perception, would have fallen as the pound did.  There was in our area already signs that the market had gone well off the boil before the crash and that I think was as a result of prices racing upward and out of the dream get away/retirement home category.  The falling pound just exacerbated that.  Healthcare then became the cherry on the cake in turning off demand.
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After the strong £ that prevailed up to early 2008, the most important factor that fuelled the boom in Brits buying properties abroad was undobtedly the UK boom in house prices. This also enabled UK house owners to release equity from their UK properties to help fund early retirement. Now with UK residential property values in decline, other than central London, combined with the impoverished £, most Brits can no longer afford their place in the sun.

Another consideration is with the terminal decline of final salary pension schemes, later State retirement age, shrinking civil service and inflation raising its ugly head again, early retirement will become a distant dream to most I would have thought.
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Recently two ageing ex-pats who have been in France for a number of years have spoken of packing up and returning to the UK.  One said that the regular drive to the UK to see the children and grandchildren would soon be getting too much for him.  The other said that he couldn’t stand the thought of ending up in a French retirement home and having to call for a bedpan in French.

On the subject of the OP, I happened to speak yesterday to a property maintenance man who said most of his clients were English-speakers but that he supplemented the basic maintenance and gardening work with acting as interpreter and service jobs such as taking the car for its CT while the owners are away.  As others have said it would be difficult at present to start a business like this without good French.  Others have mentioned the dwindling English community but before deciding on the area it would also be necessary to judge how much competition is already established.

 

Good luck.

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