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Estate agents in France – Part 1
I promised myself I’d write about Immobiliers and it’s a promise I am determined to keep. We met good agents and terrible agents. Every time we had to endure a session with one of the latter I vowed that our suffering would not be in vain so here goes in two parts. This part deals with the general situation. The next part will give examples of some of the best and worst experiences.
We had compiled a list of criteria for our ideal home with key factors like location e.g. - near a village with bar but at least 100 kilometres from a nuclear power station - and “ancienne” not modern. In fact there were about 20 key criteria. The good agents got a feel from our criteria and in most cases managed to give us a selection of their properties which were worth looking at. The bad agents were generally too lazy to do this. Most agents have their property filed in huge lever arch files organised in price ranges. They would let us look through these at our leisure but quite frequently when you picked one out they’d say “sorry that one’s sold. It should not be in there” Great!
Before embarking on the search for a house we had contacted several agents in the general area of our search and arranged a rough itinerary. This was essential as the search area covered whole departments of the Lot, Lot et Garonne and Tarn et Garonne. We soon fell into a pattern of spending at least three whole days a week with agents looking at property. Taking into account the travelling time to agents, the distance to and between properties and allowing time for “le lunch” it was only feasible to look at a maximum of five properties a day – maybe three in the morning and certainly no more than two in the afternoon. At the end of these sessions we would arrive back at Lacanal absolutely shattered and usually fairly depressed after the day’s events, thinking that we would probably never find a place remotely like we had envisaged.
Because of the favourable prices compared to UK, Netherlands and Germany, there is a hot property market for typical stone built “incomer” properties. Many French people prefer modern property. Prices for “ancienne” property are escalating everywhere as some unscrupulous immobiliers look for business by promising potential sellers that some idiot foreigner is just around the corner willing to pay a king’s ransom for the pig pen at the end of their farm. Sellers also have unrealistic expectations. We know of some who have different prices for French buyers and foreigners. What many sellers and Immobiliers do not understand is that typical foreign buyers of those “renovation projects” will probably need to spend at least the price of the house again on renovations so if your budget is,say, 150,000€, there is no point in looking at houses where that is the purchase price!
The foreign interest has led not only to prices rocketing and immobiliers all over France rushing to set up web sites for an international clientele but it has also created a growth industry in fringe immobiliers particularly from UK and Netherlands. They are “fringe” because the operation of immobiliers is strictly controlled in France and the fringe players need to work under licence of a properly trained and qualified immobilier. This has created a market in loose franchise arrangements whereby established immobiliers take a fee for allowing fringe players to operate under their aegis. This is not all bad. Some of the fringe immobiliers do understand their clientele better than some of the French immobiliers but some do not. These are bullshitting entrepreneurs who have just seen an opportunity to make lots of money without much work. The commissions enjoyed by immobiliers are truly staggering compared to the 1-2% charged by UK Estate agents so these self-employed foreign entrepreneurs have gleefully leapt into a market where just 4 sales per year can earn a respectable salary. Not a problem if you have met one of the good ones. Very frustrating if you have encountered one of the bullshitters.
Innocently we stepped into this viper’s nest. We saw properties which needed hundreds of thousands of euros spent on them cheerfully presented as “liveable-in.” Yes, if you wanted to live on a building site for two years. Yes if you wanted to camp in a mobile home whilst basic sanitary facilities and electricity was installed. Yes if you wanted to risk living under a roof with supporting walls sporting 3 inch cracks from floor to ceiling. House hunting for ancienne property in France is for the brave of heart.
posted by Larroque Gites at
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