Mr Coeur de Lion Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 Anyone have a clue what these people actually do?They don't sell houses, they don't answer emails, they don't do what they say they're going to do. They must sit in their offices doing nothing.What is the point in them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 From what I have heard over the years you need to get in the queue with that one, there are quite a few in front who have asked same question and are still waiting for a reply. [;-)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pickles Posted August 4, 2011 Share Posted August 4, 2011 [quote user="Mr Coeur de Lion"]Anyone have a clue what these people actually do?They don't sell houses, they don't answer emails, they don't do what they say they're going to do. They must sit in their offices doing nothing.What is the point in them?[/quote]Certainly SOME don't seem to do much, but there are others who are pretty active in selling properties and are very responsive to email. It must be noted that the idea of the use of internet email for personal communication is coming late to some people in France and to some French organisations. However, others are quite responsive.RegardsPickles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Coeur de Lion Posted August 4, 2011 Author Share Posted August 4, 2011 Think I'll just email a heap of them and those that respond will get my business then. It's frustrating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evianers Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 Yes good question; and the answer from our point of view is..... tell us a long, complicated sob story regarding obtaining planning permission for a house next door to the apartment we were planning to buy and meanwhile taking 10% as a deposit from us. Oh and by the way, he just happened to own the apartment on the next floor. Upshot was, after one year when the agreement to purchase ran out, he called to say that permission was not going to be granted, and here is your money back - er, less 12 Euros costs for the "dossier". We vehemently objected to this and finally got the 12 Euros restored [it was the principle, not the money - cost more in telephone calls] but of course, in between the value of the apartment had risen considerably. What's the betting he bought it for himself? Jaded outlook perhaps, but once bitten.....Would like to name and shame him but don't think it's allowed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anton Redman Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 I have discovered the key differences between UK and French Estate agents. UK estate agents resemble vampires, broadly they need to sell a house a week to live and are highly focused on this. However they dare not cross the channel for fear of garlic.French estate agents in contrast resemble zombies. There are signs they may once have been alive but some key areas of the brain have suffered irreparable harm. Particulars of the property change rooms moved floors and changed size. Dates of birth seemed variable.Weeks passed without response to simple questions and it took ages to put anything up on the web. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Coeur de Lion Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 Exactly how i'm finding it Anton. I've contacted another three and it's like getting blood out of a stone. They'll all go bust, I can't possibly imagine how they are making money. Cusstomer service is non existent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pachapapa Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 july & august! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Val_2 Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 They don't seem to last long around here now, lots of empty shops that were immos about and the big nationals have trimmed their number of branches down too. Love the comparison. Loads of folks, especially older locals only trust notaires and the internet sites like leboncoin are also taking more and more ads for property sales too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 Like Zombies and Vampires they are in at the Death though.The only contacts I had face to face were the day when I put a property on the market (I provided the photographs and details, knowing their incompetence) and then of course at the signing of the 'acte authentique' when they were there to collect the cheque for the commission from the Notaire... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mozman Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 Our experience of French immobiliers is that they are crooks. We have a house in Normandy and took sales advice recently. The quotes varied between 200,000 and 120,000. The floor area of house could not be measured properly with elaborate ideas about grenier conversions. The rate per square metre varied hugely. Apparently the 'right price' was one that achieved a sale in two days. We firmly believed that the agents thought that a Brit selling had to sell. We would not use an agent to sell our house if we needed to. Thwey charge big fees for tryinbg to sell the house cheaply. They do not represent the seller. We know when acting as a buyer, how they act. We often found agents only too happy to explain that there client would reduce the price. Let's face it the agents are desperate to get fees in and they do not really care what it takes to get them. Along with politicians and bankers rthey represent the scunm of humanity. Harsh but true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evianers Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 You know...... we heard a very interesting thing the other day.An English friend of ours herabouts told us that "Rightmove" in the UK will market your French house for a pitiful sum if given six months to sell. So far so good. Not only that, but apparently [and this has not been verified by us] if they do not manage to sell the house within six months, they give you a further six months free!Yippee. Hooray. Hope this is true.....it is passed on in good faith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mint Posted August 13, 2011 Share Posted August 13, 2011 Rightmove, eh, Evianers? Will have that name branded on my memory for when we want to sell our house in 17.As I remember from my househunting days, they always have hundreds of properties for sale and have a reasonably big presence.As for immos, yes, they just do want to sell and, I am sure, try to push their clients to drop their price. We bought our present house at a hugely discounted rate and the sellers lost money and had to pay for a fiscal representative to officially state that they lost money (it was a residence secondaire for them).It was never properly marketed, ie pictures did not do justice to the property and its best features were not properly showcased. And, guess what, I have looked at the agents' site since our purchase (just nosy, I guess) and they have hardly sold anything since. So, my belief is that they just offloaded this house to earn some fees....Nice for us, of course, but we have also subsequently learned that the previous owners were very keen to have a quick sale so I guess that, at the end of the day (as they say), everyone's happy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Val_2 Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 Its quite a scrum too out there if you look at the internet sites for immos in your region, THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME PROPERTIES for sale at the same time and it makes you wonder who approached who to sell. Also the prices vary too and when a property does sell, they all seem to have it marked on their site so you don't really know who is getting the business done. I see lots of folks actually putting up their own for sale signs more and more after years of nothing moving and in yesterday's paper locally it said building land here on the coast was far too expensive for most locals to buy to build and many larger houses were just not selling at all. An example of greed is a friend of ours from Paris who has a piece of land which he has just decided to sell for building.There is no CU etc on it and he is asking €6/m² more than the new lotissement with everything connected and roads laid and more than people just five mins down the road with sea view land for sale. I told him he was asking too much for the position as it backs onto a house and is next to a mini sewage treatment unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabbie Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 As I understand it, if an offer to buy a property is made at the advertised asking price then you have to accept this offer. Please correct me if I have been misinformed on this point. This inevitably leads to high asking prices because sellers don't want to lose out if at all possible. At the end od the day a property or anything else for that matter is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pommier Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 Further to Evianer's posting re Right Move- £599 seems a lot of money to me for simply adding your house to their website.I wonder how many people sell by this means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mint Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 [quote user="Rabbie"]As I understand it, if an offer to buy a property is made at the advertised asking price then you have to accept this offer. Please correct me if I have been misinformed on this point. This inevitably leads to high asking prices because sellers don't want to lose out if at all possible. At the end od the day a property or anything else for that matter is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it.[/quote]No, Rabbie, you do not HAVE to sell but, depending on the mandat (contract) you have with the immo, you HAVE to pay their fees should you decide, for whatever reason, not to sell after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judie Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 [quote user="sweet 17"][quote user="Rabbie"]As I understand it, if an offer to buy a property is made at the advertised asking price then you have to accept this offer. Please correct me if I have been misinformed on this point. This inevitably leads to high asking prices because sellers don't want to lose out if at all possible. At the end od the day a property or anything else for that matter is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it.[/quote]No, Rabbie, you do not HAVE to sell but, depending on the mandat (contract) you have with the immo, you HAVE to pay their fees should you decide, for whatever reason, not to sell after all.[/quote]In addition to paying the immo's fees, in theory the would-be purchaser could pursue you through the french courts to force you to sell. However I have never known this happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Coeur de Lion Posted August 14, 2011 Author Share Posted August 14, 2011 [quote user="pachapapa"]july & august![/quote]Well, if they're not selling anything, how can they afford to go on holiday? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabbie Posted August 14, 2011 Share Posted August 14, 2011 SW17 & Judie. Thanks for the clarification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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