Archive for: April 2007

Investing in rental accommodation in France seems the best of two worlds - owning property in the French countryside, or near the sea, which is steadily rising in value and also having a property you can rent out to a few of the seventy million visitors to France every year seems a simple way of making money and having a good quality of life.

Perhaps buying an established Bed and Breakfast business or starting one in a beautiful corner of France will combine a good living with an idyllic lifestyle

But - as I have said three times in recent blog posts - there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

Renovating an old house, compared to building new, will certainly cost from five to fifteen (or more) times as much. In most of Languedoc, houses were made the same way with similar techniques and materials for over a thousand years, in fact it is hard to date some houses by looking at the style or construction.

The dream to do a “make-over” on an old stone house has emptied many savings accounts and some dreams have turned into nightmares, but if you do it right, the rewards are worthwhile.

At least noise is a form of pollution which does not affect the ozone layer - but it is something to be seriously considered if you are thinking of buying a house in France.

The most common cause of complaints about noise in France is the barking of dogs. The French claim to love dogs and from the huge piles of evidence left on the streets this seems to be true, but apart from releasing their pet pooches to contaminate the environment, the concept of exercise and walking their dogs is usually confined to driving to the nearest unpolluted corner with the dog in the back, stopping for ten minutes while their “pet” runs around the car, and then driving home.

The Easter Bunny does not come to France because the local drunken hunters are shooting anything that moves early Sunday mornings, so our chocolate eggs are delivered by a bell- I hear the wretched thing ding-donging away at seven in the morning and obviously dropping eggs by the mega-tonne all over our garden, our dogs were in a feeding frenzy for a while , but enough were left for me to be worried about my next check-up in a couple of weeks time - so out with the bicycle before I see the doctor.

An alternative to looking for a “traditional” house or seeing endless clusters of modern housing estate “villas” is to build you own home on a plot of land.

There used to be a really interesting International Salary Calculator online, but is seems this has been grabbed and all the links now point to a sales page for a transport company.

I have found some useful links which may give some guidance,

I get a lot of letters from our websites asking for advice or comments on life in France - I am happy to share my experience and to give an opinion but I always recommend that, especially for a financial or legal question, the person should get good professional advice - however I will say what I believe and many people have done very well from my comments and suggestions.

I am sharing part of an exchange of emails I had today, if you have any similar questions please ask or comment on this blog.

We are in the process of changing most of the information on our sites due to the owners requesting a structure for ownership we are not accepting. The changes will be completed in the next few days, some of the offers will be removed and some new properties will be added.

We have “made haste slowly” with our Fractional Ownership sales in France as I have been very concerned about the correct legal structure relating to how shares in a French property can be allocated or resold. This has delayed our marketing some of the offers.

My concern has been over the responsibilities for taxation.

My son Jack and I and had planned to build a wall in the garden over the last weekend, but for the first time in months we had heavy rain and being unused to this strange phenomenon we stayed indoors and played “Boggle”, but as he spells better in both English and French, I came second.

The rain has been followed by some warm and sunny days so everything is growing at an alarming rate, it is like triffids have invaded the garden and I may have to hack my way through the advancing forest of weeds to get to the front gate tomorrow.

I got this mail from a regular reader, drop me a line if you are near them and I can pass it on.

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Hi Tony,

My name is Keith and my wife’s name is Dawn. its great you started up again. I enjoy your news items. I would be grateful if you could publish this letter.