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France overrun by les rosbifs?


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[quote user="Miki"]PS. We put a Carolina door on our first house Miki,  they were cheap and better than the crumbling bit of wood that was already there(not an ex-council house by the way)  LOLOLOL

Have no fear Bassman, we fitted dozens of 'em, along with Kentucky doors by the gross ! It's the customer is always right syndrome !!

I have to say though, Blair may not be many peoples cup of tea and as a socialist, he is out of sync but to go back to some old socialist policies, would not be a smart move BUT let's be fair here, all those that have come here in recent years have benefitted greatly from the huge hike in prices.

Us, well we bought our second place at the bottom of yet another Tory induced slump and the French house prices where we bought, were not (for the greater part, regardless of what one is told) reliant on Brits buying, so they were selling at French prices, not at a reduced slump related price, although the French have had years where prices have slipped but sadly, not when we have bought !!




[/quote]

 

 

LOLOL I don't think Blair has ever hears the word socialist TBH

 

The only reason we have been able to fulfill our dream of owning a home in Brittany is that my parents ( dad was a brickie, mum worked in the Co-oP) died and left me a half share in their house and some money, which suprised me as for the last few years of my fathers life my mother was having to pay a fortune every month to keep him in residential care ( none of their children were in a position to help as we are split up all over the country/world ala the "get on your bike and look for work" idea and the nearest me (only 100 miles away) was in no financial state to assist) yes the country my father fought for in the war, suffered a serious industrial injury for , the party he supported all his life took most of what they had worked and saved for to look after him in his final years niiiiiice [:^)]

 

Yes I (by reason of their dying)  have benefitted from astronomical house price rises but that still doesn't make it right in my view

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[quote user="viva"]

I wondered when the term 'yuppie' would rear its head.

It seems to me that Thatcher's Yuppies are called entrepreneurs under Blair, and are therefore generally held in higher esteem.

 

 

 

[/quote]

 

Not by me they ain't they are still a bunch of selfish arrogant ********'s LOLOL

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[quote user="le bouffon"]We bought our first house in the early 80`s paid it up,kept the endownment and that with bonus was worth more than the house when it came in...nice little earner.The later problem was that some years later when everyone heard about how good they were,they nose dived.The mid to late 80`s were a good time for savers 15% interest,the good old days bring um back,now in france 2.6% on savings if you are lucky or .....................go see a french bank manager.[/quote]

 

 

Jeeeez talk about selfish that's exactly the problem I'm alright Jack eh? If you were getting 15% interest some poor sucker was being charged even more do you not see that????

 

We got our endowment in 1986 and I DIDN'T want it as I have never believed there is any such thing as a free lunch, it's paid for by someone somewhere!!!

 

The  ring the bell I'm on the bus attitude is what we seem to be getting from some of  les rosbifs ( hey back on topic eh?) the I've got my place in France now I don't want anymore coming here attitude [8-)]

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Paul,

However you came by the money, it is no good feeling guilty. The

obvious alternative is not a player. It may not be morally right but

come on, neither you, nor I (who have similar principles I'm sure) can

put all the world to rights. We can but try to ensure, for own mental

well being, that  we try to walk an unselfish path. I don't

entirely disagree about your thoughts Mr Benn but having read much

about him, including his own works, I think senior post was as much as

far I would have actually wanted him to go. Good man for sure but in a

world market, not the main player one might want to front the country

but certainly ideas and idealisms that were and are, far more for the

benefit of the majority of people than what ever Mag.........(can't

bring myself to utter the full name, sorry !) did for the country as a

whole.

We are in Brittany but further to the east than you. Are you managing two places at the moment or ?

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 Hi Paul, Thank you for your concern about the moderators. There are four mods and we are volunteers (or were asked to do it). We are pretty concious of the dangers of posting and moderating, so if a difficult situation came up we would just ask another mod to look at it.

Being human we have our likes and dislikes and when this occurs we also refer to the others or in extremis to James,who is the LF admin for this board. Its been like this for a couple of years and we still have the same mods (bar one who moved away and didn't have internet access)

My comments to Kathy C may worry you, but while I feel able to express my view and don't agree with hers, of course she has every right to express it.

Thats the end of the 'mod ' bit

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Regards endowments, yes we had to pay 15% too, but I can only suggest that Le Bouffon is either a lot older than I thought or got married very young,  [;)] because certainly people were exiting endowments with good profits at that time I can remember my father saying 'I would rather have less interest if it meant more people being able to own their own homes' and offering to help when .25% went on here and there, no we didn't let him !  I'm afraid I can't even blame the IFA, mine was my sister (now fully qualified after many years of study)

As regards Socialists, well at least that would be a clear and honest choice. as it is they are so busy fighting for the centre ground they are almost interchangable. I'm probably not as Conservative as you may think from this thread either -

One thing I have noticed is that nearly all politicians look an awful lot more sensible when they retire!

 

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Paul,yeah I`m alright jack and so what I owe nobody nothing,and thats the way I like it.Do you think that the "les rosbifs"that come over here on a wing and a prayer should be given charity status or counselling.Just posted and caught russie`s post,no, just used some commom sense and chose the right policy for us,no one ever made any one borrow anything.So like I said I`m all right jack and so are my kids and that I all I could care about,even to the point that I have bought them a house,(but will charge them rent,all heart I know).
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[quote user="le bouffon"]Paul,yeah I`m alright jack and so what I owe nobody nothing,and thats the way I like it.Do you think that the "les rosbifs"that come over here on a wing and a prayer should be given charity status or counselling.Just posted and caught russie`s post,no, just used some commom sense and chose the right policy for us,no one ever made any one borrow anything.So like I said I`m all right jack and so are my kids and that I all I could care about,even to the point that I have bought them a house,(but will charge them rent,all heart I know).[/quote]

Are you French learning English? I only ask because your posts seem a little double Dutch!

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[quote user="Miki"]Paul,

However you came by the money, it is no good feeling guilty. The obvious alternative is not a player. It may not be morally right but come on, neither you, nor I (who have similar principles I'm sure) can put all the world to rights. We can but try to ensure, for own mental well being, that  we try to walk an unselfish path. I don't entirely disagree about your thoughts Mr Benn but having read much about him, including his own works, I think senior post was as much as far I would have actually wanted him to go. Good man for sure but in a world market, not the main player one might want to front the country but certainly ideas and idealisms that were and are, far more for the benefit of the majority of people than what ever Mag.........(can't bring myself to utter the full name, sorry !) did for the country as a whole.

We are in Brittany but further to the east than you. Are you managing two places at the moment or ?




[/quote]

 

Miki

 

 

Yeah doing the back and forth thing [:D]  need the wife to get a bit(lot) more paid off the mortgage before we can sell up here and move to Brittany for good LOL

 

Yes we could have used the money to pay off some of the mortgage here but it wouldn't have paid it all off, and we would still be in debt and paying for holidays, it was another one of the things my dad wanted to do (move to France) and never did so I thought I'd use their money to that end and  as for waiting till we had paid off the UK house , .....welllll who knows what tomorrow may bring at least if everything goes belly up in the UK we have somewhere to live[:)]

 

We bought the place last June pretty much around the time of the Brits Go Home outbreak in Brittany , which was apparently started and fueled by a ring the bell type Brit LOL. I have to say we have met with nothing but friendliness and charm by the Bretons and local Brits [H] we did say to the Breton lady from the immobilier that we were concerned about buying a house that "locals" may have bought but she said "locals" would not have bought it as it is too isolated, only two other houses in the hamlet, and that it was not the type of house they would want either, just can't wait to be able to live there permanently nowLOL

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What did the breton estate agent charge you,normally it is around E7500 per E100000,go on how much time did you spend with the agent,and what did they do to earn that5 grand, a couple of viewing,and how long had you known your immo??before they took you in to thier confidence.Five grand for what????????????/
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"Yes we could have used the money to pay off some of the mortgage here

but it wouldn't have paid it all off, and we would still be in debt and

paying for holidays, it was another one of the things my dad wanted to

do (move to France) and never did so I thought I'd use their money to

that end and  as for waiting till we had paid off the UK house ,

.....welllll who knows what tomorrow may bring at least if everything

goes belly up in the UK we have somewhere to live"

I must say that losing the mortgage and actually owning our

property came as a great relief. I have an inherited horror of debt (I

wonder if there's a gene for it?). A friend of ours is on a company

assignment in Japan at the moment and has told us that an eighty year

mortgage is not uncommon there. Somewhere else I read that some

institutions in the UK are now offering 50 year deals. Given that

increasingly people are using equity release to pay for retirement or

to give children a leg up on the property ladder, actually ever owning

property seems to be a dying pastime and is being replaced by renting

it from banks...

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[quote user="le bouffon"]What did the breton estate agent charge you,normally it is around E7500 per E100000,go on how much time did you spend with the agent,and what did they do to earn that5 grand, a couple of viewing,and how long had you known your immo??before they took you in to thier confidence.Five grand for what????????????/[/quote]

Le Bouffon, I have to say I have great difficulty understanding your posts mainly because of the lack of sensible ponctuation (commas, spaces and full stops). All the words just follow one another and any comment you make is very hard to decipher because of this. [*-)]

May I suggest you press "return" at the end of your sentences, so I (and others, I'm sure) can read your posts more easily?

Please? Pretty please?

[A]

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Ah, but don't you remember reading not so long ago that an awful lot of the more esoteric stream of consciousness stuff in Ulysses was actually due to it being typeset in France by people who didn't understand English?  That really did make me laugh out loud, having being forced to spend ages poring over it in order to 'interpret' it........
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Jond wrote -

"I have an inherited horror of debt (I wonder if there's a gene for it?)."

I think there may be. I share it and I can prove it's in the family. In a will dated 1624 one of my ancestors left some property to his brother and two sisters and wrote "I hope he and they will be careful to save."

I couldn't understand Ulysses either and since I wasn't forced, didn't bother.

Hoddy
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[quote user="le bouffon"]What did the breton estate agent charge you,normally it is around E7500 per E100000,go on how much time did you spend with the agent,and what did they do to earn that5 grand, a couple of viewing,and how long had you known your immo??before they took you in to thier confidence.Five grand for what????????????/[/quote]

 

About that figure yes.

But where did I say the immobilier was Breton? I said the lady from the immo was Breton [;)] The actual "boss" owner was British and totally useless!, more in a minute [;)]

We spent quite a lot of time with them over a 6 month period from when we started looking and went on around 10 viewings with them, a lot more we just drove around and looked at locations as that is , to us at least the first and most important aspect as we had no intentions of buying a house in the middle of a chicken farm(yes we were shown one like that LOL) the deal was they would help us with setting up a bank account, insurance, sorting out phone, electric and water etc.

Now then....... the only real help we got was from the Breton ladies that worked for the immo, the Brit lady that worked for him was supposed to set up the bank account and despite giving her the neccessary info it never got done until one of the Breton women took it in hand and sorted it, the immo went bankrupt before we completed and we only found out because the same lady contacted us and let us know and carried on helping us deal with the vendor over getting a new septic tank installed and sorted out dealings with the notaire and arranged dates for signing with no thought of what if anything was in it for her, she even came with us in a personal capacity for the final signing and helped with the insurance and services etc. without asking for a cent for her time even though she was still owed wages from the immo. The notaire was not happy that we still had to pay the immo the second stage of the payment as we had not rec'd the full servoces from them and he looked into whether or not we could get out of it, unfortunatley we couldn't[:(]  Yes we did give this delightful lady some money and a large bouquet of flowers for all her help and kindness as without her we would have been in deep kaka !

 

So bouffon if that was intended as a snide dig at the French immos I'm afraid it backfired as the person that ripped us off was a Brit and the one that saved us was French[:)]

 

At the end of the day we are happy, we did get the house of our dreams, in a stunning location and compared to some horror stories I have seen and heard did quite well thanks to Sylvie [H]

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No snide dig,not my style,Having just paid best part,enough to say a large wegde for doing very very little,3 views and putting our names on some forms and then sending them to the notaire some 100m up the road.Sure I resent paying them.Glad it worked out for you,just goes to show want the quaility of some of the brit immos over here in france,we had the similar things happen to us years ago when looking for a house,in the end we went straight to the vender and cut out the immo.
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Yes Bassman some with us a Brit also tried ripping us off but were saved by a Frenchman.  The Brit is question called himself a construction project manager.  We took him to our small village house which needs total renovation.  My husband is a construction worker both on the tools and white collar.  It was obvious to us both this guy did not have a clue.  He was only talking aesthetics to us and not looking further than that for underlaying problems.  Complete cowboy!  Anyway, a few days later, he came back with a quote of 230k€.  My husband had estimated 50k€!!!  My friends husband then put us in touch with his best mate who came in not far off hubbys estimate.  By the way we did not tell him we were in the construction industry.
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[quote user="Val_2"]Remember this case well as it was the talk on all the local Brittany forums and in the local papers. You are not that far from us then Bassman but beware there are still brit rogues working as agents in the region.[/quote]

 

You mean the case of the disappearing  Brit Estate Agent [;)] It seems we were the last people to actually buy through this agent [^o)] If I could have got hold of him he would have been very visible [8o|] LOL Thankfully  Sylvie came to our rescue and made sure all went well with our purchase but it did stick in our and the notaire's throat that we still had to pay him[:'(]

 

Do you have a link for the local Brittany forums please?

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[quote user="le bouffon"]No snide dig,not my style,Having just paid best part,enough to say a large wegde for doing very very little,3 views and putting our names on some forms and then sending them to the notaire some 100m up the road.Sure I resent paying them.Glad it worked out for you,just goes to show want the quaility of some of the brit immos over here in france,we had the similar things happen to us years ago when looking for a house,in the end we went straight to the vender and cut out the immo.[/quote]

 

In which case I apologize for the suggestion that it was, it was just the manner of your posting that led me to that conclusion[;)]

TBH I resent paying estate agents in UK even more as they seem to do even less for their money and often become more of a hinderance than a help in my experience. They have never accompanied us on viewings when we have bought houses nor brought viewers to houses we have sold, the 2 houses we have sold in the UK sold themselves to the first viewers the EA sent round, in the first case even before the detail sheet had been printed and approved, this was a person they had already shown 50 properties to without success , I think maybe they should have paid us for getting her off their books [I]

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As a footnote to the debate, I was listening to a discussion on radio 4 yesterday about the current French dispute with students. Some French politicians brought up the subject of our thread, Margaret Thatcher and her handling of the industrial unrest in UK. They spoke in admiring tones of the achievements that period brought. They lamented it could never happen in France. The reason they gave was interesting. The said no French politician from the PM down has that amount of political power. It was even said that the President of the Republic did not have sufficient power to force through the reforms France needs. The collective nature of the political system seems to lend itself to inertia. It seems no French politican in power can survive for long with street protests against ideas or reforming laws. It appears that's just how it works here. The mobs rule - OK!
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It is an interesting distinction where in France, with the Bonaparte code, citizen subservient to state (i.e. nothing is allowed unless permitted by the state) the government has problems getting things through due to the citizens. However in the UK where the state is subservient to the citizen nobody can stop Blair pushing through whatever he wants (not even his own party). I wonder which whose citizens actually have more control over their governments.

Ian

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