Does the internet make it easier or harder to move and live in France ?

[alittlebitfrench]

Question of the day...

'Does the internet make it easier of harder to move and live in France ?'

So much information out there regarding living, working, buying property etc in France so you would think yes. But you could also argue that people are actually being spoon fed and not learning to stand on their own two feet. Or is it better just jump in the deep end and move 'blindly' to France and just get on with it ?

hmmm.....I can't decide.

[crack]

When I came to live in France there wasn't the internet, there were no mobile phones either.  I was obliged to do everything face to face, which meant that :

I had to learn the language ( the best I could),

It meant that the information was first hand ,(not she said ,he said )

It helped me get in touch with the right people regarding admin,planning etc

It helped to get me known around the commune.It was a small commune.

That was just some of the benefits, for me it was better to jump in at the deep end, not necessarily blindly, but jump in anyway.The Internet spoonfeeds and gives false impressions and information and until you have been here a while you won't know this.

[alittlebitfrench]

Yeah agree. The internet does not help at all when you think about it.

Internet was in its infancy when I moved and then you could only get it through dial up....and you just got bored waiting for pages to load. No smartphones either. So you just got on with life.

It was not until some 8 years later that we managed to get properly online. I then discovered you could receive UK telly in France. That was a big mistake.

After 15 years I discovered French forums LOL. Another big mistake. Then some idiot invented Facebook. Eek. Then I discovered the Dordogne...WTF ??? LOL.

It seems to me that those who have truly integrated in France and it has become their home moved 'pre-internet'.

[EuroTrash]

Looking at it from a different angle: I work online and without the internet my activity as it is today would not been possible. So easier or harder is a meaningless question, it would not have been an option.

France's big push to dematerialise a lot of public services obviously makes living here easier - submitting income declarations, requesting a new CEAM card, downloading attestations etc can be done in minutes at any time of the day or night rather than having to visit an office or make a phone call during working hours.

As regards planning the move, the people who have enough nouse to sift out the information they need on the internet would have had enough nouse to find it out without the internet too. And vice versa. There's too much information on the internet, people get misled.

[alittlebitfrench]

I don't know ET. Don't you think the internet makes it too easy for people to make the 'decision' to move to France ? We all know that France is a tough place to live once you have moved here.

Going back to your other point 'internet working' there is a certain loveable character on this forum (and others) who makes their living in France from the internet....selling stone walls I think Lol. Apparently they moved to France yonks ago (which basically means 20 years ago in French forum world) but I remember there was not much internet in France in those days. Well certainly not in Paris and Lyon when I lived there...so I guess it was worse in rural world. So how did they survive ? What was their job ? Keeps me awake wondering. Anyway I am digressing.

So, hmmmm....using the internet to move to France.

Its a tough one.

[Leven]

Daltons weekly, exchange and mart and the Sunday Times. 250 an add in the times and they used to have three pages of classified for French property. Slightly cheaper these days to advertise on the net, plus you have a huge advantage over paper advertising, In the times after three or four days the enquiries stopped. The internet made things cheaper and easier.

[alittlebitfrench]

Interesting Mr Bond.

I guess in those days you could charge more given buyers could not cross reference prices like you can on the net today ???

Is that how the price boom on the Dordogne started do you think. People talk about the early 2000 when property was selling at ridiculous prices. But I guess as the internet became more mainstream prices started to return to their market value and some people got caught out. In that respect maybe the property crash in 'expat areas' was not due to the French economy !!! I think I am a little bit right.

[Chancer]

You talk a good job about renovation and business but your postings often show that you have zero experience.

 

Charging more! - That sounds just like the muppets that advise French businesses, in fact there is a job that you could be really successfull at AKA do really badly!

 

market price lies at the point of intersection between the available supply of the good or service and market demand for it.

 

A seller with alittlebit of sense will target his sales towards the greatest demand and will realise a higher sales price.

 

In 2000 a card in the window of an immobilier in nulpartcampagne written in French will be seen by far fewer buyers than a £250 advert in the Times or Expand & Fart plus the profit will be higher by the silly amount of the immo's commission.

[alittlebitfrench]

Rubbish Chancer.

...and please don't draw me a supply and demand graph to illustrate price.

We all know the British like to buy houses in France from British estate agents operating in France...or the UK. Preferably British owned houses as well. That is where the laws of economics falls apart. It is called the 'I can't speak French' effect. It is actually a economics law. Ask Levens OH.

I know a British estate agent in Charolles who used to advertise houses for tens of thousands more than the French estate agent two doors up advertising the same house. Of course, having a British flag above the shop and a sign saying 'we speak English' allows them to do this. In fact we used to have fun cross referencing houses in the local paper with the houses displayed n the window.

Fast forward 15-20 years and they are more or less at the market price but they are still higher.

The internet has allowed buyers to become more savvy now.

[woolybanana]

Any statement that begins "We all know" is necessarily uniformed and vacuous and in this case, seriously out of date.

Having sold and bought houses not long ago my experience is that many Brits do go direct to French estate agents as the excessive pricing of the Brit agents is well known.

As to the internet, yes, it does make life easier for everyone wherever they are: EG checking locations, towns, distances, locations (via Google Earth), shopping centres, land questions, rules and regs, airports, registration and on and on and on.

[alittlebitfrench]

'we all know'....check out Greenacres...

Wooly (you are back...insert a thumbs up smily thing) I was trying to work out why house prices in the Dordogne spiked just before internet became mainstream. I am not sure that happened in other regions.

As to your point about the internet, I think there are pros and cons for using it as a resource to move to France.

When I moved to France the only thing I knew about France was my girlfriend was French. So in that respect I was not disappointed when I moved to France. I did not have any views or opinions beforehand so I could not be let down.

Today, given the amount of info out there (a lot of which sells a France that does not exist) I understand how dreams can fall apart quite quickly.

So in that respect, the internet is not so good.

[idun]

Same as 'Crack's' post for me.

Heck we didn't even have a phone for a couple of years, never mind a mobile and I used to get my sorry backside round to the pay phone round the corner to call people in my rotten horrible french. Or go and see people.

And yet in that time, we bought land, had a house built and had a baby. Deep end, good for me. Within two years, my comprehension was fairly good, that I spoke like a retarded three year old did not matter. I was a lady on a mission when I wanted information or something done and did not hesitate to get on with things.

In fairness, EVERY last thing being on the internet is only about the last 10 years, the french were slow in getting stuff that was really really informative on line. Strange really as I remember having bank cards with pin numbers in about 1985 1986??? and it was years later in the UK. And I am pretty sure that they were scanning stuff in some supermarkets too,rather than the cashier, years earlier. I always suspect that Minitels held back the PC revolution in France.

Still even 17 years ago, there was info out there on the internet about France and french living, and all in french[:D] but I would hazard a guess that too  many brits (not all)  who moved to open b&b or gite, or some sort of business, imagined that the move would have every thing just the same as the UK only with another language, that need or need not be learned..... that is what brits had been doing in Spain for years. Ofcourse France is quite different, and some learned the hard way and I imagine that many left.

Does the internet help........... I cannot answer that, judging by the questions we get on here sometimes, even though people can VERY simply look things up from proper official sources, they cannot be ar5sed. And asking on here is a bit like asking in the pub. Info could be spot on, but personally, IF I got any info on here, I would always double check it.

[woolybanana]

"When I moved to France the only thing I knew about France was my girlfriend was French. So in that respect I was not disappointed when I moved to France. I did not have any views or opinions beforehand so I could not be let down. "

Perhaps, albf, you might review this paragraph as it could be interpreted rather 'oddly'!!!

[alittlebitfrench]

Sorry, I posted that on the wrong forum.

[woolybanana]

You mean that there is another forum which will put up with you?

Or was it LadsMag.com?

[idun]

And I knew nothing of France either, only I was off having a change and a bit of an adventure, AND it was a lot closer than New Zealand : )

[alittlebitfrench]

I moved from Bournémouth/Winchester and France was a lot closer than Yorkshire.

You could make worst mistakes in life. LOL.

[andyh4]

ALBF wrote:

We all know the British like to buy houses in France from British estate agents operating in France...or the UK. Preferably British owned houses as well. That is where the laws of economics falls apart. It is called the 'I can't speak French' effect. It is actually a economics law. Ask Levens OH.

All I can say is from my personal experience. We did a lot of research on the internet (and not just France) before arranging a series of visits to properties that we thought met our requirements.

At the time my spoken French and understanding of spoken French was shall we say challenged.- although I could read and translate reasonably well.

All of the estate agents we chose were French although they all provided an agent who could speak and understand English very well. In the main we were met and led around by Dutch agents. In one case the agency provided two French agents whose English was excellent. We did not use an English estate agency and we did not encounter English agents.

From our English friends around they also have ended up buying through a French agency and have not had an English agent involved in the sale. They may perhaps have used English agents elsewhere in their searches, but I rather doubt it. None of the houses bought have been bought from British owners. I have to challenge your assertion that British use British estate agents and buy from the British.

Incidentally one couple have sold - and guess what? The buyer was French. Bought from the French, sold to the French.

To the basic question:

The internet certainly helped us in our preparations and in identifying potential properties in advance of coming to France for viewings. In fact it also aided in helping us decide that our chosen country should be France and our chosen region should be one that we knew well from holidays rather than somewhere else.

Would we have moved if the internet did not exist? I think we might have done but we may well have ended up elsewhere in Europe and would probably have struggled rather more that we have.

Hats off to Idun, who did exactly that.

[Chancer]

The internet was well in existence and in use by many other enlightened people but not Chancer I bought through word of mouth and had no idea of the market value, it just seemed very cheap to me but most French property was back then, it could have been overpriced but I could see a lot of potential but not what and how, that came a lot later, so I bought in an instant, on gut feeling from a French notaire representing the liquidator, it turned out to be the deal of a lifetime.

 

I did zero homework before coming to France, did not even think about health cover, did not even have an EHIC, boring stuff like that got sorted a lot later on and I still didnt even think of looking on the internet despite facing all the usual problems without anyone to ask and not speaking the language, I reckon it was 15 months before I had the brainwave that there might be a French forum for English speaking immigrants, I had used a car forum in the UK so knew of their existence, it just did not dawn on me.

 

Brexit or otherwise people who act first and think much later AKA the young will always come to France or other countries to try their luck, they did before the EU and they will after, in many ways it has been far too easy for a long long time.

[idun]

We really could have ended up anywhere in Europe, with no research,we did have specific requirements though as to the country, we knew nothing about anywhere and we only spoke english then, so would have had to learn where we had ended up The ONE, the most important one was a job to go to, there were a few other things that we needed to, otherwise we wouldn't have done it.....and then we nearly ended up in the Canaries after France, but didn't. As young folk we were just ready for a change and being young, IF it goes bits up, then one can start again[;-)]

[woolybanana]

I think that Greenacres was mentioned; it is a French site but also multilingual, not Brit.

[alittlebitfrench]

Yes, but it is an expat focused website with prices to match. To expensive.

Today, no of adds for Eymet = 295. Le Bon Coin = 56. LOl

Ask the average French person in the street and they will never of heard of it or care. I would not waste my time.

Le Bon coin is by the far most popular website (nearly 50% of the market) followed by Seloger and pap. In Paris it is local estate agents

[andyh4]

So where does 50% come from?

Your one statistic suggests around 16%.

Elsewhere LBC has a reputation for attracting cons and the worst kind of pretend purchasers and time wasters.

I have not used it so cannot make any personal comment.

[alittlebitfrench]

@ Andy

I have a little book on my desk. LBC is the leading website in France for property in terms of listed advertisements. Seloger being second. At the date of the book (October last year) they had 940,764 listed property. Seloger 815 k but of course you will find the same property often listed on both sites.

Furthermore, according to notaires 40% of transactions are now between individuals rather than through estate agents.

We sold our house on LBC. We put the advert on a Friday and it was sold (well offer accepted) the following Tuesday.

If you think in Paris (well leafy suburb) a small horrible 3 bed 70sq m flat is going to cost 600 k. As a family, you really don't want to be paying agency fees (2-5 %) and Notaire fees. Then of course the cost of the loan.

Who said property is cheap in France ?

Greenacres started out as a translation site for property. Like I said, the average French person will never of heard of it. Although, I have seen adverts on TV about them. A lot of the property on the site does have a special 'expat' price.

[EuroTrash]

Yawn.