Newbie

[Bill]

Good afternoon guys and girls,

Seriously thinking about a house in France, as an place to escape to now and then. Looking in Normandy. Just some thought and questions, you may want to comment on. we leave on thursday night to have a look around.

I assume prices are a bit sick at the moment. One place was down by 2/3rds! astonishing. most 10-20 percent, or not at all, in the details anyway. thoughts ?

a lot of houses seem to come with gites attached and I am wondering if it would be a good idea to let it go for almost nothing in exchange for maintance. any potential hic cups ie rights to live there being granted ?

insurance, any big issues if the place is unoccupied for 9 months of the year ?

The estate agents , will they be someone to do battle with or are they helpfull or just a mixture ?

builders , I have heard horror stories, and just wonder if its best to bring over a load of brits to do any work thats needed , and upset the locals in the process.

see that sceptic tanks are a very hot topic.. for what its worth , in the uk u have to upgrade them as well, maybe its an eu wide issue.

last time we looked, it was perfectly feasable to warm a place with electric heating as very economical. something to do with nuke power

getting fast internet, is that a big issue ? we are looking at rural

As we are looking at rural/remote , I am suspecting whatever we buy is going to collapse in value .. as the decline in the numbers of people enjoying rural living continues.. thoughts.. Maybe its just a price we have to pay and we are only going to leave it all to the cats home anyway..

we have always hankered after a property in france as a holiday home, and one day to spend more time there, but not to emigrate entirely. One thought is always.. the cost of the investment will pay for many many many months of hotels or gites.. somehow thats not quite so satisfying.. could say its like boats and planes, rent them don't buy them.. Thoughts :)

officialdom, assuming we lead normal quiet lives & pay our bills , do we have any need to do battle with same..or is that considered part of the fun ?

thanks for reading this

best wishes

Bill

[Hoddy]

Welcome to the forum.

Some random and very personal thoughts. Do remember that everyone has a different experience.

You say that you would like to be rural if I were you I wouldn't buy anything too remote and isolated. How far is it to the nearest boulangerie ? You may not want to buy bread every day, but you will probably want somewhere to shop within reasonable distance.

I have been trying to get fast internet in my rural retreat for the last nine years.

We haven't found officialdom too bad. We try to take advice about what is 'normale' from French friends before we ask and have tried hard to speak French.

We have found a downside of having a house in France is that we always want to be there. For example, our plan to take some time travelling south and exploring the coast fizzled out on the third day. We just looked at each other and both knew that we wanted to head for our own little patch. Great fun but it means we never go anywhere else for holidays.

As I said some random thoughts. I expect others will follow.

Hoddy

[Bill]

thanks Hoddy.. Mon wife parlez de lingo, tres bien, .. but I am not so good. So we have a head start.

I'm looking forward to the down side, ie always wanting to be there.. still nervous about the plunge.

rgds

Bill

[Benjamin]

Just a small thought on the cat's home and inheritance. You don't get much of a choice in France as there are strict lines of inheritance.

You may have a much hated cousin.nephew etc. but if they're the next in line they get it. Best discuss with a Notaire.

[woolybanana]

Welcome.

Remember that is a property is cheap you may well end up spending a fortune on it. As you start looking at places, make sure that they have septic tanks which conform to the latest regulations (where appropriate), as dictated by the lovely ladies and gentlemen from SPANC, or that the price has been reduced to reflect the cost of the work to be done.

[Bill]

thanks , I understood that we form a company to buy the property & that may help with the inheritance issue.. the last people getting their hands on our dosh are the relatives,

We will be beyond caring at that point.

will seek advice.

wooly noted thanks

rgds

Bill

[andyh4]

[quote user="Bill"]Good afternoon guys and girls, Seriously thinking about a house in France, as an place to escape to now and then. Looking in Normandy. Just some thought and questions, you may want to comment on. we leave on thursday night to have a look around. I assume prices are a bit sick at the moment. One place was down by 2/3rds! astonishing. most 10-20 percent, or not at all, in the details anyway. thoughts ?

The French often seem loathe to drop prices hoping that someone will come along someday - often these are inheritance gains so no urgent need to sell.  Many foreigners and especially those who bought 2004 - 2008 may have paid over the odds and are now expecting unrealistic prices.  Depending on the degree of overpricing and the level of desperation to sell you will se different levels of "price discounting".

 

a lot of houses seem to come with gites attached and I am wondering if it would be a good idea to let it go for almost nothing in exchange for maintance. any potential hic cups ie rights to live there being granted ?

Not qualified to answer never having looked at a house with Gites attached

insurance, any big issues if the place is unoccupied for 9 months of the year ?

No - Many French own second homes as well as all the non-French so the insurance market is geared up to handled them

 

The estate agents , will they be someone to do battle with or are they helpfull or just a mixture ?

A Mix - but remember you will be paying his/her fees so I would say most will be helpful - especially since the majority will have a commission hanging on finding you the dream house

 

builders , I have heard horror stories, and just wonder if its best to bring over a load of brits to do any work thats needed , and upset the locals in the process.

Be prepared for things to be slower and more expensive than the UK, but I would always use local firms.  The work should then be done to the local norms and standards and not to the UK version (in other words wrong).  You will also get 10 year insurance on the work, and as you kind of hint using British workers can get backs up and even lead to visits from the Gendarmes to make sure that the work is legal.

 

see that sceptic tanks are a very hot topic.. for what its worth , in the uk u have to upgrade them as well, maybe its an eu wide issue. last time we looked, it was perfectly feasable to warm a place with electric heating as very economical. something to do with nuke power getting Electricity is the second most expensive way to heat a property (gas is worse) according to running cost statistics - but for a holiday home used only in summer it can still be the right choice.

fast internet, is that a big issue ?

In the countryside yes - over 9km from an exchange and you can wave goodbye to anything much over dial up speed unless you have a very progressive council. We have and they have installed infra red IT connections but speeds are still too low to stream video.

we are looking at rural As we are looking at rural/remote , I am suspecting whatever we buy is going to collapse in value .. as the decline in the numbers of people enjoying rural living continues.. thoughts.. Maybe its just a price we have to pay and we are only going to leave it all to the cats home anyway..

As said above - no you are not.  aaafrench inheritance rules are highly prescribed and virtually impossible to circumvent

 

we have always hankered after a property in france as a holiday home, and one day to spend more time there, but not to emigrate entirely. One thought is always.. the cost of the investment will pay for many many many months of hotels or gites.. somehow thats not quite so satisfying.. could say its like boats and planes, rent them don't buy them.. Thoughts :) officialdom, assuming we lead normal quiet lives & pay our bills , do we have any need to do battle with same..or is that considered part of the fun ? thanks for reading this best wishes Bill

The only issues I have ever had with officialdom has been with paying bills at the local tresorie (treasurers office).  They seem to dislike the idea of people coming in a nd paying money and disturbing their day - and even went to lengths to loose a chaeque paid to them.  The tax office - which you are not so likely to visit - have been helpful beyond all expectations and even dictated the text of a note to ensure I did not have to pay tax!

[/quote]

[Benjamin]

Another thought. Theree seems to have been a growing trend over the last two or three years when buying an older property to get a builder (ask the agent) to give a devis for any work you want carried out to bring a place up to a standard acceptable to you.

There may be items in there which are entirely your choice but it will give a starting point for price negotiations to begin.

Bear in mind that some buyers decide on a price, even ignoring their agent's advice, and will not budge. Walk away.

[Quillan]

Here's my tip for what it's worth.

Firstly I would look at how much capital I was going to spend on the house to buy and fix it up if required. Then I would think about how many weeks per year I would use it. Next I would look at the cost of a gite per week for the quantity of people I would have in my house.

Lets say you have for instance 50,000 put a side and you would be looking at about 600 per week for a gite, that's say 1,200 for three weeks per year. That's 41 year of three weeks per year holidays in total. You may well be dead by the 41st year, who knows. The other thing is how much it's going to cost to run the place, your annual tax's, electricity, water etc. I wouldn't really like to guess because my house, being a B&B, is not the norm but lets say 2,000 per year although I am sure somebody can give a better figure.

Quite a few, but not all, on this forum are either retired of can afford to have a reasonable amount of time off work, they may also have bought for their retirement i.e. going to move here permanently when they retire. From your comments it seems you won't be doing the latter. Of course don't forget your house is fixed so you always go to the same place, OK for some but others get bored.

So as your not going to be living there permanently crunch the numbers, I think you would be better of renting gites and go to different locations. Don't forget that if you do that there is no problem with maintenance etc, it's all somebody else's problem.

[idun]

Andy why did you say that gas was expensive. When we got gas it was by far the cheapest option. (apart from eco things like heat pumps).Electricity was an expensive form of heating.

[andyh4]

Why did I say gas was expensive?

 

because the report I read gave comparative costs.  They did not however consider mains gas in the analysis - mainly because of its poor availability.

 

These are running costs however and it is important to look at installation costs as well - and that can have a big influence.

 

Anyway from memory:

 

If wood costs 1 unit

Heat pump was about 1.25

oil would cost 2.5-3 units - today probably 3.

electricity was 4.5 units and gas was just under 5.

[powerdesal]

Heating.

Mains gas is, I believe, the cheapest but not necessarily available to most of us.

LPG (GPL in France) is expensive.

Electricity is obviously available and clean but also costly. Consider standing charges on a high rated incoming supply.

Heat pumps, both aero and geo are, no doubt, a good idea but installation of geo thermal systems can be very costly and there is the aesthetic aspect to consider for both types.

Wood is cheapest but can involve handling issues for logs and resulting ash. Wood pellet burning seems to address those problems particularly if a bulk pellet store is used with tanker delivery.

[cooperlola]

We're all electric and honestly, it's cheaper than our solid fuel boiler in the UK was!  I certainly think that for a holiday home it really could be a more viable option (who's going to top up the pellets when you're not there?) as you can set a minimum temperature and walk away, not worrying about frozen pipes etc etc.  I love it.  It may not be the cheapest option (and even then I'm not wholly convinced) but it is clean and convenient.

[powerdesal]

I must admit that I was not considering the holiday home aspect but rather a more general comment related to permanent occupancy.

As your all electric heating is cheaper than your previous solid fuel boiler in UK could this be related to the efficiency of the UK boiler and / or the cost of the solid fuel in UK vs the cost of solid fuel (wood pellets) in France ?

Electric heating is certainly clean and convenient but I believe that pellet burning with a fully automatic burner, auto feed from a bulk hopper and associated pellet tanker delivery is close in terms of convenience and, because ashing out is not done that often, comes close to an acceptable cleanliness aspect.

[cooperlola]

[quote user="powerdesal"]could this be related to the efficiency of the UK boiler and / or the cost of the solid fuel in UK vs the cost of solid fuel (wood pellets) in France ? [/quote]Probably.[:)]  I must admit that the convenience aspect is what I like most - not having to arrange to get stuff delivered etc - it's just there.  In the UK we used coal (well, anthracite, but you get the picture) and wood but our monthly bill for that in the winter months (£100-odd) works out roughly the same as our electricity standing order bill here (same sized house, same number of rads) which - although it's year long - includes cooking, TV, computing, you name it.  What's more, we left the UK seven years ago, and we were out all day so didn't light the boiler until around 8pm during the week.  I will admit, however, that we have a brand new roof here, fully insulated and that's a big factor on heating costs.  Our UK house had new roof also but I'm not convinced that they did such a comprehensive insulation job - but we did have neighbours on one side so to some extent there was insulation built in on one wall at least - not the case here.

I can't honestly speak for wood pellets so they may indeed prove to be cheaper but of course we'd need to install a whole new system and that's quite a few years of leccy right there; for the o/p much will depend upon what's already in the house.  We wouldn't necessarily have thought of electric ch when we moved but as it was there we lived with it and are very happy with the results, both in cost and convenience.

[andyh4]

[quote user="Quillan"]

Here's my tip for what it's worth.

Firstly I would look at how much capital I was going to spend on the house to buy and fix it up if required. Then I would think about how many weeks per year I would use it. Next I would look at the cost of a gite per week for the quantity of people I would have in my house.

Lets say you have for instance 50,000 put a side and you would be looking at about 600 per week for a gite, that's say 1,200 for three weeks per year. That's 41 year of three weeks per year holidays in total. You may well be dead by the 41st year, who knows. The other thing is how much it's going to cost to run the place, your annual tax's, electricity, water etc. [/quote]

 

Very valid points Q, but the analysis does miss the point that after 41 years renting in Gites you have nothing, but with a maison Secondaire you still have a tangible asset.  Purchasing is however not for everyone and as you rightly say, continually going back to the same spot will become very boring for some people.

[cooperlola]

[quote user="andyh4"][with a maison Secondaire you still have a tangible asset.  [/quote]Exactly.   I mean, what are the cats going to do?  If you have no children or other close relatives, you can leave what's left of your money to charity if you wish (once the government has taken its share.)  We are leaving some money to the SPA with the proviso that they rehome our cats  - all done legally with the notaire etc.

[idun]

Our wood was very expensive.  We used to use over 7 tonnes in the Alpes in winter. Eventually when we got our mortgage down we would buy three years supply from another part of France, but that was never 'cheap' either, but cheaper than local suppliers. When mains gas arrived in the late 90's we took it and paid a lot less and never used our wood burner again.

 

[Daft Doctor]

There are also the transaction costs to consider in buying and (albeit indirectly) in selling in France.  Forty years worth of property price growth (assuming the purchase is done at or near the current market bottom) will of course take care of that, but the incidental costs are of course much higher than in the UK.  If the OP is serious about buying and knows what it will cost him that is fine, but as he will unlikely keep it for anywhere near 40 years as he considers buying he must ask the question 'who will buy this when I want to sell it'.  If that is hard to answer, maybe he should have a rethink.  Never was the saying 'buy in haste, repent at leisure' more true than in France.   

[Bill]

thankyou daft doctor and all..

we hate making decisions for ourselves, yet in the work place do it for oodles of money. Yet spending a few quid on a new t shirt , takes a committee and many weeks contemplation.

hey ho..

for the rest noted, pellets seem interesting concept , I know of them here, but I think a wee bit expensive to use.. but I dont think the electricity /gas/oil bill can be the be all and end all.

thanks again one and all for your comments.

kind rgds Bill

[Sprogster]

Some French property experts are of the view that we are only half way through a five year downward property price correction on rural French properties. Certainly the numbers of Brits buying in France has declined substantively and they were the mainstay of the market in some areas.

Also according to a French immoblier I know, the French CGT changes being introduced in February, have led to a rash of second homes being placed on the market by their French owners.

All in all I would be in no rush to buy at the moment unless you can find a really good deal.

[Quillan]

[quote user="andyh4"][quote user="Quillan"]

Here's my tip for what it's worth.

Firstly I would look at how much capital I was going to spend on the house to buy and fix it up if required. Then I would think about how many weeks per year I would use it. Next I would look at the cost of a gite per week for the quantity of people I would have in my house.

Lets say you have for instance 50,000 put a side and you would be looking at about 600 per week for a gite, that's say 1,200 for three weeks per year. That's 41 year of three weeks per year holidays in total. You may well be dead by the 41st year, who knows. The other thing is how much it's going to cost to run the place, your annual tax's, electricity, water etc. [/quote]

 

Very valid points Q, but the analysis does miss the point that after 41 years renting in Gites you have nothing, but with a maison Secondaire you still have a tangible asset.  Purchasing is however not for everyone and as you rightly say, continually going back to the same spot will become very boring for some people.

[/quote]

Yes but you might be dead after 20 years. I don't know the age of the OB and his personal details so it's hard to say. The other thing is prices are going down, not up, so is buying now a good idea or simply wait, who really knows? As to leaving something behind, well I have already told my daughter that I am munching my way through her inheritance which could be a problem with a house in France, i.e. who gets it. Well of course we know who gets it but then you might not want them to get it if you see my point.

The other issue is that if something does go wrong and you need the capital then you have a problem. With agents closing in our region at a rate of one every couple of weeks first there may not be many around to sell it and secondly house sales always took longer to find a buyer in France but now they can take a couple of years (or more) and in the end you don't always get what you want as the OP has aleady seen and spoke about in his first post. So not quite as simple as going to the bank or wherever and taking the money out.

[Quillan]

Oops, as somebody said don't forget about CGT when you go to sell it.

[Sprogster]

If you are looking to fund the French house purchase by selling sterling for euros, there is another consideration, in that in all probability the £ will strengthen slowly against the Euro over the next five years or so. Therefore, if you decided after a few years to sell up and transfer the proceeds back to sterling, there is a likelihood you could be looking at an exchange rate loss.

Quillan, is absolutely right in highlighting that you should not invest in a French property, if there is any possibility you may need acces to that capital for other purposes, as selling rural French property can and often does take years.

[Bill]

thanks sprog,

No one can forcast euro sterling rates, only guess .. my bet is stronger euro, sterling has never been a strong currency other than the oil years & they are moving away

writing it off in my mind. Hence the need for a cat's /dog home.

who wants to be my cat then :) ?

rgds