purelyfrance

Property search - cutting through the morass

I use the word ‘morass’ as a polite term for ‘les conneries’ which in itself is a polite word for ‘merde’. (I think!)

How to find and select your dream French property, without being driven to drink? (that can come later)  By now you will have chosen which area of France appeals to you most, and if you have been diligent you will have nutted out a property spec. (see previous Post)

Our next step was to undertake some research via the internet. There are obvious advantages in this; it is relatively quick; uncostly; gives you an independant ‘feel’ for what is on the market within your budget; you can do it wearing your slippers; and you can find property sites in english if you have a need for that.  We ended up with a list of 24 properties that we thought would be worth inspecting. Location ranged from Chablis in the far north of Burgundy to the area around Cluny in the south.

The major downside of being guided by the property descriptions are the descriptions themselves.  As most people are aware, a special University exists from where real estate agents worldwide graduate with a P.h.d. in the ’science’ of writing property descriptions. These descriptions of course bear no relation whatsoever to reality.  ‘Charming’ usually means the property needs total renovation; ‘panoramic views’ equals the house has no endearing features; ‘good development opportunity’ will normally require huge amounts of capital and 3 years of your life. I am sure you are all adept at interpreting such descriptions.

So, armed with our internet list we set out to view the properties in person.  I must say we generally found all the ‘immobiliers’ to be helpful, patient and reasonably efficient.  Like anywhere in the world they were keen to ‘make a sale’.  A number of them continued to feed us information on further properties after we had returned home.

Of the properties themselves, as you could expect they were a real mixed bag. Some we crossed off the list as soon as we walked through the front gate, others were discarded when we could see how much renovation was required. We saw one pristine property with a number of outstanding features and at an excellent price but its isolated location made us nervous. It stayed on our list but was eliminated later on.

In spite of all this analysis and research, ironically we literally tripped over the property we bought.  We were rushing to a rendezvous with an immobilier in Beaune. As we passed another immobilière, (haven’t quite worked out what there are most of in France, boulangeries, coiffures or immobilieres) Anne caught sight of some photos in their front window. A visit was hastily arranged for the next day and voila, it was one of those scenarios where we knew immediately this was the property for us.

Our search was relatively painless, it only involved three weekends. So our homework, analysis and research all played an important part in narrowing down our search. However, as you read in the final outcome, nothing beats being on the spot, wearing out your shoe leather and keeping your eyes and ears open.

Related Posts:

• Buying French bricks and mortar
• Buying French bricks and mortar (5)
• Buying French bricks and mortar (6)
• Buying French bricks and mortar (7) - Renovations
• Buying French bricks and mortar (3)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 10:46 am and is filed under Buying French bricks and Mortar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.