Getting the Goods on You

I have been writing recently about some of the frustrations of buying property in France – these frustrations are both for the buyer and myself trying to find the right property for someone.

I work with Coast and Country , a very reputable estate agent based on the Cote d’Azur, I am trying to help with their Internet presence and I also offer for sale some nice properties where I live in Languedoc.

People from all other parts of the world dream of living in France and many contact me, plan a trip and ask me to help find a suitable property. I am happy to do this as I meet a lot of nice people and, if they buy a home, I can share part of the commission from an agency. To be able to do this I have to be correctly registered.

I have mentioned in this blog the big problem of finding what properties are available – there is no central listing system and all agents are competing to sell the same properties – the agents are also competing against the owners of the properties, so if they advertise them properly a buyer, using the Internet (Google Maps and Yellow Pages) will easily find the address and make an offer direct to the owner, cutting out the agent and saving an average of 15,000 euro (the average commission on an average property price).

So when a buyer pops into an agents shop or through their website, the agent will not tell them where the house is, often not even which town or village it is in – the agent often insists on accompanying the buyer and usually demands that they sign a “bon de visite”.

This “bon de visite” (my interpretation is “Getting the goods on you for the visit”) is to protect the agent that in the event of the prospective buyer then going direct to the owner and negotiating a purchase, the agent can sue the owner for the commission they would have had.

I find this insulting both to the buyer and to the owner, I never ask for a bon de visite – sure, there are people who would abuse this trust and on an expensive property this can be the price of a new Jaguar or Mercedes (or more) but it makes it impossible for anyone looking for a home to know what is available in any town at any time. The only way is to visit every single agent (there are three times as many agencies as there are bakers shops) and to read every singe classified advert every day (nearly half the properties sold are not sold through estate agents in France) also to search every Internet portal every day (many websites are advertising portals for a number of agents and I have found over 2,000 of these) plus it is necessary to ask every Notaire in the area if they have any properties for sale.

I have a client at the moment who wishes to buy a home in Pezenas – he is very specific about his requirements and one is that it is within 15 minutes walking distance of the town center. In Pezenas I deal with all the agents (currently 27 with offices in a town of less than 15,000 people) take into account agents in other local towns covering Pezenas and the fact that people may move in France on average once in 7 years (the French homeowners move less frequently than this) this implies that there are in any one year a maximum of 400 properties offered for sale (about 15 per annum per agent) – take out the ones sold direct by the owners and on average an agent in Pezenas with an office is basing their business on ten properties to sell each year.

Most agencies list from 200 to 400 properties as owners will sign non-exclusive agreements with as many agents who ask them – the end result is that no agency can fully promote or advertise the property as a buyer will simply go direct to the owner – but a buyer will never know what is available and cannot quickly eliminate properties in the wrong area or with the wrong services to them as they can in most other countries, so a huge amount of their time is lost and someone on a trip from the USA or Australia to find a home is frustrated.

For my client looking in Pezenas I am asking agents I know to please tell me where the property is – many are refusing to do this, implying I will go behind their backs – what I do in fact is to ignore them completely and as the same property is likely to be listed with many other agents, I keep asking until I can either book an appointment to view for my client, or say with certainty it is unsuitable.

The solution needs changes in the way people work – it means a cut in sales commissions from the current 6 to 10 percent to the more (world-wide) normal 1 to 2 percent – it means sellers working with one agent to rely on them to fully promote, advertise, sell and network their property for them – it also means a lot of agents would go out of business and perhaps do something more useful.

Meanwhile, if you have a three bedroom house 15 minutes from the center of Pezenas or Clermont Herault, with a nice outlook, garden (pool preferred) for under 400,000 euro – please let me know.