The French Property Buyer's Guide Ebook

The French Property Buyer's Guide

When we bought our French house I was confused by the process, mystified by the paperwork and worried about my limited language skills.
Worse than that, I was scared that any mistakes we made could end up being very, very expensive! 

 I have to assume that the fact you're reading this means you're interested in buying property in France.

Maybe you're buying for investment.

• Perhaps it's a holiday home?
  
• Or perhaps you're looking for a permanent move. Getting out of the rat-race or going somewhere where your savings will stretch a bit further?

  Doesn't really matter, the challenges and pitfalls are the same.

  For a start, if you're anything like me your French isn't what you'd call fluent. When we moved here it was more than twenty years since I'd learned any French at school and I wasn't exactly an 'A' student then!

  We'd been here quite a few times on holiday and my French had definitely improved but it still wasn't great.

  Maybe that's not you. If you speak good French you have a great head start. If you don't you'll be needing some help.

  But who do you turn to for help? English representatives? French estate agents? So-called "consultants"? It's difficult to know who to trust when obviously a lot of them have their own interest at heart and financial rewards at stake.

  Then there's the legal stuff. Oh boy, the legal stuff. We've all heard horror stories about how much the French like their paperwork and their forms. It would be bad enough in English but when it comes in a language you have trouble understanding... need I say more?

So the idea of buying in France is great.
Unfortunately for many people the actual process can be very stressful, fraught with worry and financial concerns.

It doesn't need to be. Maybe we can help.

  I have to say at this point I'm not an estate agent or property consultant or anything like that. Nor am I a conveyancing solicitor or lawyer.

  So how come I wrote The French Property Buyer's Guide? Well it's funny how things turn out sometimes, isn't it.

  Not long after we bought our lovely old French farmhouse, some friends moved to France. Of course we were in a great position to help them, which we did. Then we helped some friends of those friends. They insisted on paying us for our time and trouble. On that occasion we accepted a few bottles of wine but before very long word was getting round and we had a thriving small business on our hands!

  To be honest with you though, profitable though it is, it's not what we came here to do. We've got our own interests and the business meant we were spending more and more time sorting things out for other people and not doing our own thing. Rewarding work when you see the smile on someone's face when they're getting the keys to their new French home but, as I say, not what we came here to do.

  The thing is, you don't want to let people down, do you.

  The solution? Well my wife said we should write some instructions. That way we could help but wouldn't have to be directly involved.

  Good idea, I thought. Trouble is, when we started writing it all down it was soon ten pages, then twenty, then thirty....

Hence this ebook, The French Property Buyer's Guide (which incidentally ended up at sixty pages). It's all the things we could think of that you need to know when you buy a property in France, all in one convenient place. It's not full of fluff and property-speak, it's full of what we've learned.

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