Paying cash

[SaligoBay]

Someone (French) suggested that as part of the negotiations to buy this 'ere house, I should offer the propritaire some cash.

I don't mean a lot, she was suggesting something along the lines of "if you knock 15000 euros off the official price, I'll give you 10000 in notes". Figures at random, but you get the idea.

My question is, would an offer like this be of any interest at all to the propritaire? In what way would it benefit him? There are no immobiliers involved.

Merci,
SaligoBay

[Iceni]

LAST EDITED ON 13-Jul-04 AT 11:25 AM (BST)

Unless I am mistaken the Gendarmes would also like to be told of this as it is highly illegal and when you sign for your property the Notaire will actually ask you if this is the correct price and that there were no other payments made. It can be a way for him to avoid tax - there was a thread on this not long ago on LF.

Tis a backhander, dash, each country has a differnet name (Teamedup - what is it called in France?).

Di
http://www.iceni-it.co.uk

[Suandpete]

When we first saw our house it had been on the market for several years and the sellers were pretty keen to get rid of it so we made an offer substantially lower than the asking price and it was eventually (grudgingly as they had paid tax on the valuation) accepted. We did everything totally above board and paid whatever fees and taxes were asked of us.

Totally out of the blue 2 years later we got an 8 page letter from the Hotel des Impots basically comparing the price that we had paid per square metre with three other houses of varying types which had been sold within a pretty big radius of ours and over a period of several years; they also compared the price we had paid with the price our sellers had paid and factored that up for inflation.

They included a full A4 page quoting their rights under a wide range of laws and asking us for an extra 1000 euros in tax which would have been due had we paid the amount they say we should have! Of course we have appealed - with the help of a letter from the notaire and a lot of help from our agent who has done a detailed comparison of our house with the others quoted and pointed out that there is actually no comparison.

We have not yet heard the result of the appeal - but it just shows that even after a number of years they are still going back over old paperwork and checking prices etc. Apparently they have up to three and a half years after completion to charge this money if they think it should have been paid - so beware of paying what might seem to be an artificially low price! What is annoying is that the clear implication is that we paid some money under the table and we certainly did not!

Su
www.inchocks.com