Posts

-
Image
  BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - Where to buy in Dordogne If you asked most international buyers to picture their ideal corner of rural France, there is a fair chance they would end up imagining something remarkably close to the Dordogne. Old stone houses, medieval villages, rivers winding beneath châteaux, bustling market towns, long lunches on restaurant terraces and enough countryside to disappear into without necessarily feeling cut off from civilisation. It is hardly surprising that Dordogne has been attracting British, Dutch, Belgian and German buyers for decades, with increasing interest from Americans as well. But Dordogne is a large department, and deciding that you want to buy a house in Dordogne is only the beginning. Where in Dordogne should you actually buy? That was the question I looked at in my video, “ BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - Where to buy in Dordogne ” , filmed while walking around Terrasson-la-Villedieu. Dordogne or Périgord? First, a little geography. Dordogne is ...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
  BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - What about the climate? When people start looking for their dream home in France, the wish list tends to be fairly predictable. A stone cottage beside a river. A chalet surrounded by pine trees. A villa on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean. A swimming pool, plenty of land and perhaps no neighbours anywhere in sight. All perfectly understandable. But I think there is another question we increasingly need to ask when buying a house in France: What about the climate? I recently looked at this subject in my video “ BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - What about the climate? ” , because after more than three decades working in French property, I think some of the things buyers need to consider are changing. Not because France has suddenly become a dangerous place to live. Far from it. But the weather is becoming less predictable, and that can have a very real effect on where we choose to live and even what type of property we choose to buy. The dream property ...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
  Is France Really Falling Apart? Understanding the French Political Steamboat If YouTube is to be believed, France is permanently about three days away from catastrophe. France is burning. France is bankrupt. France is going far left. France is going far right. France is finished. And naturally, there will usually be a French flag, something on fire and a suitably dramatic face on the thumbnail. I've become rather fed up with it. Quite a lot of this stuff is clickbait, and increasingly it seems to come from faceless channels pumping out AI-generated videos about countries the people behind them may not even live in. Now, I'm certainly not here to fly any particular political flag. France has political problems, just as Britain, America and pretty much everywhere else does. But French politics doesn't work quite the way some of these videos suggest. And if you're considering moving to France or buying a property here, I think that's worth understanding. Prefer to wa...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
  Buying a House in France: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide Buying a house in France can seem complicated, particularly if you're coming from the UK, the United States or another country where the property-buying process works very differently. But it doesn't have to be. I've been working in estate agency in France since 1986, and over the years I've helped international buyers through just about every stage of the process. This guide originally started life as a seminar I gave at the French Property Exhibition in Birmingham. Afterwards, quite a few people asked me if I could send them a copy. As it's rather difficult to email someone a live seminar, I recreated the whole thing as a video. Now I'm doing the same thing in writing. So, from the moment you first think, "I'd quite like a house in France", right through to signing the final deed and getting the keys, here's my step-by-step guide to buying property in France. Before you start looking...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
  715,000€ Really? Don't Get Stung When Buying a House in France Every now and again, I like to have a look online and see what new properties have appeared for sale in my local area. Recently, one caught my attention immediately. Not because of the property itself, but because of the asking price: €715,000. Now, this particular property is in a commune where I lived for many years, so I know the local market extremely well. And when I saw €715,000, my first thought was that there are probably only half a dozen properties in the entire commune that could realistically justify that sort of price. And I know most of them. So naturally, I had a closer look. When the description sells a dream The property description certainly didn't hold back. It talked about a "unique 3-hectare estate", "two elegant and interconnected residences", a "rare and confidential domain", "untouched nature", "high-end features" and even described the prop...
Post a Comment
Read more
-
Image
  Crowd funding renovations - What happens when you need to sell? There is something undeniably compelling about watching somebody renovate a ruined French château on YouTube. You know the sort of thing. It is a cold winter evening, you are sitting comfortably at home, and on the screen a courageous couple are battling leaking roofs, rotten windows, collapsing floors and a renovation budget that appears to have developed a life of its own. At the beginning, it is difficult not to admire them. They have looked at a building that most people would quietly walk away from and decided, somehow, that they can save it. And increasingly, they are not doing it alone. I looked at this question in my video “ Crowd funding renovations - What happens when you need to sell? ” because while crowdfunding a château renovation can seem wonderfully straightforward when the money is being raised, the situation can look rather different several years later if that property has to be sold. But for thos...
Post a Comment
Read more