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  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 ...
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Selling a house in France just got complicated

The French government has a habit of throwing spanners into the works when it comes to selling a house in France.

Sometimes it feels as though a new rule is introduced, everyone tries to work out how it is supposed to work in practice, and the finer details are sorted out afterwards.

One example was the change to the rules surrounding the information buyers must receive about natural and environmental risks affecting a property.

So, what are Géorisques?

If you have bought or sold property in France before, you may remember the ERP, or État des Risques et Pollutions.

Before that, we had the ERNMT. Then the ESRIS. Then things were supposedly simplified with the ERP.

The terminology has changed over the years, but the basic idea is relatively straightforward: a buyer should be informed about certain risks that may affect the property or its immediate area.

These can include things such as:

  • Flooding

  • Seismic activity

  • Subsidence and ground movement

  • Clay shrinkage and expansion

  • Radon

  • Certain types of soil or industrial pollution

  • Other officially identified natural or technological risks

None of that is particularly unreasonable. In fact, giving a buyer this information is quite sensible.

The interesting part is when they have to receive it.

The important change for property buyers

Historically, much of this information tended to appear as part of the paperwork being prepared for the compromis de vente or promesse de vente.

There was an obvious problem with that.

A buyer could visit a house, fall in love with it, negotiate the price, agree a deal with the owners and only afterwards receive detailed information about risks affecting the property.

Finding out about a significant flood risk after agreeing to buy the house is hardly ideal.

It isn't particularly good for the seller either. A buyer discovering something unexpected at that stage may reconsider the purchase altogether.

So the principle behind the change introduced on 1 January 2023 was actually quite logical: information about the risks should be made available much earlier in the buying process.

In certain circumstances, the État des Risques must therefore be provided to potential purchasers from the first visit rather than waiting until the preliminary sales contract.

And property adverts changed too

The rules also affected the way French property is advertised.

Property advertisements now include wording directing potential purchasers towards the official Géorisques website, where information about risks affecting properties can be found.

Again, perfectly sensible in theory.

There is, however, a rather French-property-shaped hole in the system.

To investigate the risks relating to a particular property properly, you generally need to know where that property actually is.

And French estate agents don't normally publish the exact address of properties in their advertisements.

There are good reasons for that. Publishing the precise address would make it extremely easy for potential purchasers to bypass the agent and contact the owner directly.

So we have a system designed to give buyers more information before visiting a property, while some of the information is difficult for them to investigate properly until they know exactly where the property is.

Welcome to French bureaucracy.

Does this make buying a house in France more complicated?

A little, yes.

But the principle behind the legislation is difficult to argue with.

If there is a known environmental or natural risk associated with a property, a purchaser should know about it before making a decision rather than discovering it after agreeing a price.

For sellers, it also means that preparing a property for sale involves more than simply taking photographs, writing an advert and waiting for buyers to arrive.

There is an increasing amount of information that needs to be gathered, checked and made available at the correct stage of the transaction.

And that is one of the reasons why selling property in France can sometimes be rather more complicated than it first appears.

This article is based on my video “Selling a house in France just got complicated”, where I explained the introduction of these changes and what they meant in practice for French property buyers and sellers.

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