This video made me think
October 28, 2007 by Tony · Leave a Comment
I got this from a person I respect on my facebook pages – like Kev, it is the only video (so far) I have looked at on facebook and like Kev, I think it is worth watching. It has changed my personal opinion and attitude to the Global Warming debate/question from “I don’t believe anything they tell me” – to – “I am going to think about this and try to learn more”.
I recommend you look at it and, like the author, I welcome comments and your opinion.
An Apple a day
October 27, 2007 by Tony · Leave a Comment
My next computer will be an Apple – although I have had a fair innings with XP, I am not going to try Vista. A lot of my reasoning is that people I respect in the IT industry have said a lot about the problems they have experienced.
This video may be unfair http://www.blimptv.net/mostpopularV1.html and I am sure Apple are not perfect, but I will be giving Apple a try.
Fractional Ownership in France Problems
October 24, 2007 by Tony · 7 Comments
I have been researching and writing about Fractional Ownership in France for the last eighteen months – there are not many examples of properties sold in France in this way and I thought we would set up a new website to offer this so we created www.HarmonyOwnership.com to offer properties and give help and advice.
I have removed a lot of the offers from that site as the more I looked into this subject, the less “comfortable” I was feeling about the way it is being presented.
All the people I found who are selling shares seem honest, trustworthy, sincere and enthusiastic – but – I believe most will face serious financial and legal problems with their shareholders when the implications of the French tax liabilities come home to roost.
There is a recent post in my which blog touches on a couple of the points I am worried about, a writer recommends an International lawyer who I respect, but although his firm claims experience with six thousand Fractional Ownership contracts, at present they have only completed two in France.
I know of properties for sale in France which, due to bad advice, instead of reducing their capital gains each year, actually have an increasing annual capital gain liability because they bought their property in an offshore company share structure.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe Fractional Ownership is a very good way of having efficient and viable use of a property, but I consider it a luxury purchase, not an investment and I think it should be done simply and totally within a French structure with no complications of overseas ownership or associations.
Villages in France
If you are looking for a place to stay in France then you may want to know what sort of town or village it is, how big, what shops and services, what sort of population and type of people, jobs, layabouts etc.
I get a lot of questions asking me if there are restaurants, how many English speaking people are there etc. etc. – to be honest, I don’t know the answers, but I can look very clever as I simply use this brilliant site which which has details of over thirty thousand places in France – the example on this page is Pouzols Minervois, a small hilltop village between Beziers and Carcassonne.
The information is usually to or three years old and comes from government statistics, but is does give a very good idea of the size, services, income, changes etc, especially if you use the comparison service
Facebook pinging and friends
October 23, 2007 by Tony · Leave a Comment
I get a lot of mail asking for introductions to other people with similar interests – it occured to me that if anyone interested in asking about anything to do with France, property or rentals were to join me in Facebook, and we used that to set up specialist groups, then this would be a big help.
I was looking to see if I could mail thousands of my subscibers from Facebook to invite them, but this does not seem to be possible, although I think Facebook may be missing the chance to get a few more members.
Pinging sounds painful, like flicking towels in the locker-room, but it is a useful way of pushing out some news to other pages and websites. If some of the community sites get used as home pages, then having RSS feeds will not be needed, one source could send and collate information and news much more efficiantly. I would welcome any comments on this.
Nizas French France
October 23, 2007 by Tony · Leave a Comment
It is a silly title, but says it all. I chose Nizas as the name for a website about France as it is a perfect French village in languedoc, in the heart of the South of France.
I made the originalNizas.com website nearly ten years ago to keep a record of the village I lived in as it changed from a rural community to a 21st century commuter town. Luckily it is still a charming, small group of homes, but it is growing and changing every day.
Sites like msn are beginning to list the Nizas pages and I plan to make these full of information for vacationers, homerowners and renters.
Rentals France – back to the future
October 22, 2007 by Tony · 15 Comments
Ten years ago I started a vacation rentals Internet site which grew and grew to the leading site for Rentals in France – two years ago I teamed up with a bunch of incompetant fools and the site is now a worthless waste of space. Well, my non-competitive restrictions are over and I plan to start again and make a better site offering more services and, best-of-all, it will be free for everyone, owners and renters.
Here is an outline of my plan…
I have simplified all my thoughts and focused on one objective – I want to create (recreate) a vacation rentals service website.
The aim is to build a community service where anyone who has a property they wish to rent for vacation visitors will use the service and tools – free – and a site where anyone wanting to rent a vacation property will come to look for them.
Revenue is from display advertising – there are no fees or charges for owners or renters, large corporate “owners” will pay for advertising – there can also be extra services which can be charged for, such as credit card services, online accounts management, central booking services etc.
I wish to start with France as I know the market and have personal contact with over 1000 owners I can prime the pump with.
Another aim is to “brand” the service, so the trading name is critical – the first job is to fix the name of this brand. I have a number of URLs registered and some are eight years old – I prefer to avoid generic words, although I am always tempted by the seo advantage – a simple and established url could be www.nizas.com – means nothing but is the epitome of a holiday village. I also like www.2337.com (spells beer) as numbers are getting popular now. I have registered www.AllRentalsFrance.com and www.AllFranceRentals.com plus the usual raft of other daft names I get carried away with
A lot of the features of my old rentalsfrance.com site are what I think should be included from the start, except there is no fee or payment for the listing or lead processing. The feedback and lead sharing features as well as calendar and booking services.
With no fees or charges to anyone, this means someone looking for a rental can make one application and also ask for their enquiry to be “posted” as a more general enquiry for similar properties of similar dates – no direct contact detail are displayed of course and responses are sent back though our pages to these enquiries from owners – this of course amplified the page views and as the demographics of the owner and enquirer are known then advertising relevance is strong on these pages.
All listings are available as feeds and syndication to other paid sites can be offered as a service – I have spoken to some and we could negotiate a discount of up to 50 percent for bulk advertising, passing some of this on to owners – so one service could be “list with five leading advertising sites, only enter your details once with us and get a 25 percent discount off their normal charges and use our central calendar and booking engine to handle your enquiries.
My aim is to make a real community site where feedback, friendships and shared knowledge can be developed – people looking for rentals can team up – comments on properties (moderated) can be shown – through other apps services to Facebook and some of the travel Web2 sites, shared information about places, restaurants (chefmoz) festivals etc etc can be integrated with every property and town listing – this is organic and done by the members through the community interface, not done by us, there are numerous (hundreds) community and wiki sites out there with specialist stuff about places, services, eating etc which can be integrated and which we can feed as well.
The hidden agenda to this rentals services site, especially in France, is the real-estate sales opportunities that can be developed synergistically from this – most property purchasers start as vacation renters – build and hold this community and you can have a strong loyal client base – I always wanted to develop in parallel with rentals the real estate services and I would like this thought to be kept to the forefront of this project.
The first step is to replicate the old rentalsfrance site and input the owners who have stayed loyal to me – about 600 who have confirmed acceptance of this plan and where I have all the database tables. This primes the pump for the first part of the site – I can then invite about 1200 more to join. Next is to attract through my contacts with major vacation companies a couple of big advertisers with a hook of special rates and I can get some leading portals to take the first feeds to give them a rental section on their site (shared advertising commission on click-throughs from their site.
So, that is my brief outline – now I need some people to work with, if you are interested in working with me on this please contact me.
Bargain French Property in Languedoc
We (about us) have been living in the South of France, in Lyon and Languedoc, for the past seventeen years. We first moved into a rambling tenth century ruin in Nizas and then three years ago into our 19th century home in Montblanc.
I have said that, apart from wine there is only tourism in Languedoc – well, that is changing – the region is booming, commerce, distributuion and industry are now following the massive investment in road, rail and air connections to the South of France.
This is creating a growth in the housing market, on average, prices have doubled during the last six years, and, unlike some other regions, there is still strong growth indicated in most areas of Languedoc Roussillon.
However, pressure on the market in other countries and regions of France is encouraging some owners to drop their property prices in Languedoc.
Here are three properties which are very attractively priced…
Pezenas Town House
A classic town house in the heart of Pezenas – fully modernised, sold fully furnished – you can move in tomorrow – a very comfortable family home with the unique feature that it can be very easily adapted to three self contained apartments – this is a gem for a family home or an investment for 180,200 euro
Sorede Family Home
This 19th century property has been made into a spaciaous and confortable home – from the kitchen terrace you can see the Mediterranean and you are in the center of Sorede, one of the most popular towns in Languedoc Roussillon 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, huge garage, garden, this property has the lot and the price has just been reduced to 260,000.
Pouzols Minervois Medieval Houses
If you want a real bargain and an exciting project, then this is a very special offer. Not one house but two medieval properties in the center of a fortified hilltop village in the Minervois, between Beziers and Carcassonne one house is ready to live in , part is needing revovation and one is original with the old stone sink and original Languedocian fireplace. There is more, the main house even has a swimming pool on the huge roof terrace looking over the vineyards from the highest point in the village. The owners are sad to part with this home they love, but it is all on offer now for 160,000 euro for all the properties, gardens and courtyard.
Searching for Nizas
October 22, 2007 by Tony · Leave a Comment
I am working on some websites for property services in France – an important part of this is making the pages suitable for and visible in the Search engines.
A great deal of care has to be taken not to do anything which Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc will consider against their rules.
The Internet depends on links and finding pages in searches like this..
It is interesting how different search engines find and list content.
Hands across the sea
October 22, 2007 by Tony · 7 Comments
There are strong links between Canada and France, although I do remember seeing a French Canadian film in France once which had to have sub-titles so people in France could understand the French spoken in Quebec.
Here is a mail I got today. If anyone in France would like to write to David and Kathy, please write a comment on this blog or contact me
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Tony
We really like your site. Lots of information. We are living in Canada but would like to find a home in France. Our question to you is. Do you have any Canadians that you know of living there and in your database? We would like to get the perspective from their point of view as we’re not just a quick link across the channel.
Many thanks,
David and Kathy
Barrie, Ontario