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Internet sites for French property?


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Josey - the site to which you link does indeed look new, at least it doesn't seem to be signed up with many proper French agents.

Another thing which makes me a bit suspicious is that there is a long-established English agency, that deals with many local French agencies, called http://www.1st-for-French-property.co.uk. The similarity in name may be not entirely coincidental. I note as well that there is yet another company (about which I know nothing) advertising with LF's sister title French Property News called '1st French Property'.

By all means give the newcomer a chance, but it's probably best to contact one or two of the better-known companies too, such as that mentioned above, or those who advertise in Living France magazine.

If you do go through an English agency then make sure you use one which deals only with genuine French agences immobiliers (who must hold a carte professionelle) and be very wary indeed about being asked to pay any money to the English agency.

(post edited by Will)

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Hi

I keep a pretty close eye on sites in English selling French property.

Will is correct. The link he gives is long established (well at least 3 years !). I've not come across the other one before.

Doesn't mean they are dodgy, but CAVEAT EMPTOR ?

Peter

 

 

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Doesn't news travel fast!

We only started adding property to the French Property 1st site last week.

Thanks for the concern about the web site name! We have been in communication with French Property 1st and have no issue about the web site name.

As one of your correspondents suggests we(1st for French Property) have been trading for some time (since 2000), and work with French Estate Agents in France. Indeed, we are happy enough to put our property on the web site for extra exposure for our estate agents in France.

Their model is similar to French Property (News) and other similar sites offering Immobilier/Notaires in France the opportunity to market French properties to an English clientele for an advertising fee.

Changes in status of agent commercials are afoot - already some "agents" cannot re-register. These "agents" will have to become salaried employees of Immobilier in the forthcoming months. I suspect that this change of "law" will be tested in EU courts as it appears to be a restrictive practise. But in the mean time, check that your estate agent contact has a carte professional, and even better is registered with one of the "societies" such as FNAIM and similar.

Howard Farmer
1st for French Property

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Thanks Howard. It's good to know that all seems to be above board, and there are no 'dirty tricks' in this instance.

Thanks too for the reminder about agents commerciaux - something which we have discussed here before, but many will have forgotten or not been aware of.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My advice, from spending a long time browsing web sites and printing details off before heading out to view, over two years, is this.

Take the details of any of the the properties with a large dose of salt, and whatever you do, keep your sense of humour because it can be desparately disappointing. 

The house that you have seen on the net for weeks and weeks may (strangely) not be on the office books when you arrive - having spent lots of time and cash getting to the immobilier this can be frustrating!

They will, however, show you pictures of many properties on their books.

My particular favourite was one which, after 40 minutes of driving, ended up to be a closed down disco. It had purple lava-like walls with tiny mirrors inlaid. A bar and a dance floor with spot lights and glitter ball greeted us as we entered the 'main room of the house'. The icing on the cake for me was when the agent showed us the separate toilet facilities. However, he couldn't show us the small living accommodation (which would be excellent to live in whilst we converted the rest of it back into a house) because someone was still living there, and they were at work.

We laugh about it now.

We finally found our house by word of mouth - bypassing the agents altogether, saving loads of money and wasted journeys.

Good luck!

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There are one or two French agence immobilier web sites which show whether an individual property is still available, under compromis, or sold. It's worth treating most of the others, as a previous poster has suggested, as a guide to what might be available (or was available some time ago) rather than an accurate representation of what's for sale now.

Still, with the current buyer's market, resulting from far more houses for sale that there are prospective purchasers, things are not moving so quickly. So you are now more likely than in the recent past to find property on web sites that is actually still for sale. Don't fall in love with a picture on a web site or the necessarily brief details, as, even with the best will in the world and no intention of misleading purchasers, agents want to show houses for sale in their best light and reality can often be a bit different.

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i am trying to build a "free to list" website.

 

a previous post on this forum was deleted by the "moderators" so i can't put the domain name without paying for that privelage!

can anyone help with website code for this service. as said, it's completely free and non-profit, so i couldn't pay anything for the help, but, one good turn deserves another!

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[quote]i am trying to build a "free to list" website. a previous post on this forum was deleted by the "moderators" so i can't put the domain name without paying for that privelage ! can anyone help ...[/quote]

As Living France magazine, and thus this forum, depends on advertising income for its existence I don't think it is unreasonable to discourage free advertising. In fact many property advertising sites are themselves advertised via paid-for ads in magazines like Living France and French Property News as this is a proven way to gain visitors to those sites.

Judging by the URL chosen for the free listing site mentioned above (which included the words 'French barn for sale'), it sounded as if its prime purpose was to sell a particular property rather than to offer a free listing of houses for sale - if we got that wrong then I am sure a request made through the proper channels to place a free advertisement on this site will be considered by the site's owners.

I hope it may be helpful to point out that there are other French sites run on a different basis from this one on which one can place certain sorts of advertising without charge. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
We find www.paruvendu.fr and www.seloger.com very useful for finding property to look at.  Paruvendu updates every thursday I believe and we haven't come across many that have been sold by the time we've called.  We also found our current rented house through paruvendu. It includes houses from agencies and private bids.  Its usefulness may depend on the area you're in, but is definitely worth a look....
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  • 2 weeks later...

I spent hundreds of hours on the internet last year searching for a house in France.  I initially looked at the English property agents but soon found that the best way to find a house is through a French estate agent. Take a look at http://www.fnaim.fr/ which will help you find estate agents in the area you are looking at.  You can also buy property through the Notaires at http://www.notaires.fr/notaires/notaires.nsf/V_TC_PUB/GBIMM  and http://www.immonot.com/

Once you decide on the area then decide on the town you can search exhaustively  using www.google.fr until you find any other agents to contact.  After almost a year and 7 visits later we found our dream house in the Gers but I had to visit so many unsuitable properties first. 

Happy hunting.

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A note of caution:

My experience from trawling the notaires.fr site for property in the last couple of days is that about 30% of the email addresses they have for notaires advertizing property are incorrect!  Of the ones that appear correct (ie don't bounce back) it seems that a large proportion don't actually bother to pick up their email regularly or at all - makes you wonder why they bother to use the Net in the first place!  On the other hand, some respond almost instantly...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would second what shropshire lass says. I spent many hours looking last winter, and found the same property on several english and french sites. Would it surprise you to hear that in every case, the english site had a higher price? Sometimes by as much as 20%. And I am talking like for like in terms of fees etc.

A couple of other french sites which were very useful. Searching by departement etc were -

www.openmedia.fr

www.lesiteimmobilier.com/annonces

www.abonim.com which has private ads on it, but you have to pay a small fee to get the details in most cases.

Also, always check what the terms of the price quoted are, including estate agency fees (FAI) or also including the notaires bit (TTC). As I am sure most know, these make a considerable difference to the end price if they are ot included.

www.immonot.com also has a calculator to work out the notaires fee and taxes.

Brian.

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When I was surfing round to learn about the various agents and it was interesting to see the variety of websites. It is amazing how little information some give about their houses. It is worth going to the property exhibitions not so much to see what is for sale but to meet the agencies and judge how helpful they might be.

So much of the property advertised on the internet turns out to have been sold long ago and only represent the kind of thing the agent offers. What they really want is to get you in their office and sell you what is actually on their books.

Still I have a fondness for those agents whose descriptions that end with, 'imagine enjoying a glass of wine (or two) admiring at the sunset from your patio'. Which translates as 'the garden is the size of a bathroom towel'.

The first thing to do is work out where you want your property to be, in our case this was the Charente Maritime, then it was a matter of seeing who was offering what.

I liked Christopher Kay at www.kaydreamhomes.com.fr for several reasons. The houses on hs site are actually all for sale, once an offer is made the house comes off the site. The prices he quotes include his agencies fees and that of the notaire, so you know what you actually are going to pay. He is part of a large agency and he only picks the houses for his site that his experience tells him that the British are likely to want to buy.

His site also gives you a good feeling for the guy and gives the correct impression that there is a good aftersales service.
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