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Any probs with letting when new to France, costs and AOB


redlancer
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Hi

 

Hopefully moving to France, or well my wife and kids are in 3 months time.

We're looking at dept 73/74 and will go for a long term let, started looking at internet for possible lets, but thought i'd pick your brains for advice.  Going to go out in a month or 2 and get in touch re letting agents before hand as internet is a bit thin on the ground.

How easy is it to set up long term lets when only ref etc will be from England?  Will be classed as home owner in UK

How quick is it to set up, i rent in UK which takes about 2 weeks?

What are the costs compared to the UK?

Any warnings or beawares off?  And major differences between UK and France?

thanks in adance, after a lot of info so any will be of use

EDIT - forgot to ask, do lets generally allow dogs?

Graham

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[quote user="redlancer"]

Hi

Hopefully moving to France, or well my wife and kids are in 3 months time.

We're looking at dept 73/74 and will go for a long term let, started looking at internet for possible lets, but thought i'd pick your brains for advice.  Going to go out in a month or 2 and get in touch re letting agents before hand as internet is a bit thin on the ground.

How easy is it to set up long term lets when only ref etc will be from England?  Will be classed as home owner in UK

How quick is it to set up, i rent in UK which takes about 2 weeks?

What are the costs compared to the UK?

Any warnings or beawares off?  And major differences between UK and France?

thanks in adance, after a lot of info so any will be of use

EDIT - forgot to ask, do lets generally allow dogs?

Graham

[/quote]

These are my experiences, as a landlord;

You will not be able to get a long-term rental from the UK. Your best bet is to rent a gite for a while & sort it out from here. You should not have a problem with UK references, although you will get nowhere without a French bank account - so sort this ASAP (different problems though). It depends on the individual landlord as to whether he wants you in. Remember that long-term lets here are for a minimum of 3 years. It will work against you if they reckon that you will leave early - the law is basically on the side of the tenant and landlords will want to know chapter & verse before they decide.

Takes about a month, sometimes 2.

Much cheaper here (most/alot of French never buy a house) although availability often outstrips demand - we have a 4 bed house (+ 3 recepts & 3 baths) which we get about 600€ pcm for. If you mean entry costs, then a Notaire will charge 50% of a months rent and an agent about twice that. Plus a deposit (1-2 months rent). Interesting to note that, if you rent from a "commercial" landlord he cannot cash your deposit cheque without good cause, where a private landlord can. This however gets you into the realms of French banking law - so don't ask!

Here, the law basically favours the tenant - if you have kids it is very difficult to get "you" out, for any reason. Consequently, some landlords won't rent to people with kids.

Dogs (or any animals) are rarely a problem.

etc etc

HTH!

 

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[quote]3 years!!!! whats the normal notice period then?[/quote]

The normal notice period, to be given by a tenant, is 3 months (at any time during the tenancy). The landlord, more-or-less, can't give notice (except towards the end of the 3 years, to avoid an otherwise effectively automatic renewal).

Generally speaking, you should have no great difficulty renting (ignoring gites which are not relevant to the normal rental market). Bear in mind that any proper agency will insist on you restricting yourself to a maximum rent of 30% of income (after tax). I note you say "home-owner" in UK - do you mean that, or do you have a mortgage (if you do, your payments towards that are likely to make it look as though you can't afford, in French terms, the rental).

Some rental agencies make a direct charge to the tenant, others simply get their cut from the rental via the proprietor.

You will need (at least) the following (assuming you go through normal rental channels):

- a RIB (relevé d'identité bancaire), so you'll have to have a French bank account (I suggest you open it as far in advance as possible and stuff it full of money - the agency we rented our house through were less than thrilled to learn that we had opened our French account the previous day with a cash deposit of €50!);

- a passport or titre de séjour;

- previous year's tax return/P60;

and most likely several other things (including copies of last 3 months bank statements).

When you sign the contract you will almost certainly have to have a decent sum of money in your French bank account* because you will have to write out two cheques - one for the first month's rental and one as a deposit (equal to two month's rental).

Depending on all the above (and the owner and/or agency), you may also be required to stump up a "caution bancaire" (a bank guarantee) that will cover a year or two's rent and that's a real pain (tying up a sizeable lump of capital in an account which will pay next to no interest). Make sure you meet all the requirements above, don't make the same mistake we did with the bank account and you probably won't need a "cb".

Security of tenure is very good here for the tenant, not least because the bulk of rental properties have been partially financed by some special tax deals (owner is allowed to offset a huge chunk of costs of purchase/renovation against their global, not just rental income), provided that the property is let for at least (usually) 9 years, so even though the contract will only stipulate 3, you're likely to be secure for much longer.

Rental will be automatically increased each year up to (i.e. equal to) the IRL (indice de référence des loyers), a sort of French HPI which generally runs at just over 2.5%.

[quote]are there any short term like on the UK 6months/12 months etc[/quote]

Basically, no, three years being the legal minimum. However, you could, conceivably, investigate holiday lets and the tiny number of furnished places (neither of which are covered by the main rental regs).

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Just a mini-tip on this subject.  I recently introduced two couples (one with a property to rent, one seeking).  When we went to the notaires to sign the rental agreement, I was obliged to be there myself as the notaire would not let the renters sign the contract without me as they do not speak French.  I had to be present, tranlate all that the notaire said, and countersign all the documents.  In other words, you may need to have a bi-lingual representative with you to translate for you if you don't speak French - or use an English speaking notaire.  It would be good purely as a protection for yourselves, also, if this is the case.
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a lot of usefull info there thankyou all.

as for house in britain its rented out on a 12month lease.

what's included in the rent or is it just the rent?

apart from utilities, house insurance and tax d'habitation any other costs i need to buget for?

as for tax d'habitation what's the comparision to UK council tax etc?

 

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Taxe d'habitation is only the occupiers tax, so should be less than the local taxes in the UK. It is the two taxes, ie this one and the owners taxe, that can make it all add up.

The two Savoys can have fairly expensive rentals, depends where though. There are places in both counties which are cheaper, with reason usually.

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