Jump to content

French letting agents


tommyjones
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi all. Looking for a bit of advice. Next year my girlfriend and I are planning on living in the South (after I finish my final overseas "6 months summer holiday" on her Maj's service and then leaving the forces), preferably within a few miles of the coastal area. She's a big beach fan! Anyhoo, initial googling for estate agents and lettings have come back zilch. Initially we're looking for a 12 month let as we'd rather rent for a year to get to know the areas before deciding whether to commit fully and move from the UK permantly. Can anyone recommend or point me in the direction of letting agents within the coastal regions of the South?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many agents are FNAIM members and so if you look at

http://www.fnaim.fr/recherche.html?category=location

you will see a lot of adverts for property to let. It'll give you a start anyway.

I don't know how good your French is, but at the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, I will remind you that the search terms to use include "immobilier" (=property) "location" (=lettings) or "a louer" (=to let).

Bear in mind that the standard unfurnished residential letting period is 3 years: however as a tenant you can give notice before the three years is up (pretty much whenever you want, so long as you abide by the notice period): the landlord however cannot give you notice within the 3 years (unless for breach of the terms of the lease).

Regards

Pickles

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many thanks for the advice Pickles. That link certainly puts us in the right direction. All this time we've been googling using english search terms when we should have been using french based search terms!! We still have a mountain of things to still check out and plan but this forum is proving to be an absolute gold mine for information!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I rather feel that your decision as to where to let is almost as important as your final decision as to where to eventually buy.

Since you're probably expecting to spend at least one winter in rented accommodation, you'll want to be pretty sure about the spot you choose. If it was me, I'd plan a week's leave down here to tour the coastal region of the Midi - no need to fix hotels etc in advance, unless it was August that you planned to be down here. That would be a bad time anyway, because all the immobiliers will have shut down for their hols.

Make some appointments with immobiliers in advance if you can, giving them a spec of your requirements and an indication of your long term plans. No more than one / day so that you have time to get a feel for the area.

You're not necessarily looking to seal a deal: it's about deciding where you like, making contacts and understanding what your budget will buy you (both on the rental and purchase market).

A week spent like this won't cost a fortune and it would make an interesting sort-of holiday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We're planning on having 2 seperate week long visits to the South before I re-deploy overseas with my unit. I get 10 days leave in mid May before I start my pre-deployment training and then another 14 days towards the end of september. On both of those occasions I'll be in Germany so our plan is for my girlfriend to fly over to me in Germany, and then from there we drive down to the South of France. It'll be a canny long drive so the first and last days will effectively be wasted on driving, but we'll still be left with a good 5 or 6 days of getting out and about and seeing whats what.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...