Househunting in France

I received a comment this morning which is prompting me to do some worK.

A reader sent me a question on my About Us page, asking how to find the name of an owner of a property when they know the address.

First this is reminding me to put some up-to-date photos on the pages – Jack is a young man now and I am older, Carole seems to be getting younger though, so it all balances out.

I have also been reminded of my idea to create a website service to identify, map and give owner’s details of all properties for sale in France.

In most countries there are services giving multiple listings and full details of properties for sale. In the United States sites like Trulia.com and Zillow.com plus blogs like futureofrealestatemarketing.com, or using trade aggregators like Realtor.com can give a buyer some good indications of the total proeprties for sale in any area.

In France it is different. There are several ‘groups’ and trade associations of estate agents. However, most properties for sale do not have any kind of central listing and the advertising done by agents selling properties give very little information, usually never the address and often not even the general area of the property. This is because most properties are listed with many agencies and the agent would lose their (huge) commission if a buyer went direct to the owner to through another agency.

As the purchase and sale of every property, by law, must be done by a Notaire, there is a fixed charge and tax on every purchase. This is around 6 percent of the purchase price (less for a new property) – add to this the estate agents commission, usually around 6 percent again and there is a big incentive for a buyer to deal direct with the owner of a property, if they can find out first which properties are for sale and second, contact details for the owner.

There are a few websites which list properties for sale direct from owners in France – probably the largest is pap.fr/, this site also has some tools giving indications of the values of properties sold recently by department and town.

Privacy and secrecy are taken seriously in France, but there are ways of finding information, addresses and names. The most obvious one is the online telephone directory, there is a reverse look-up facility for individuals at PagesBlanches

By using other Internet tools like Google Maps the local French property rating maps .cadastre.gouv.fr and information about towns from sites like linternaute.com and FallingRain – a researcher can, with a lot of work, find out information and clues as to what properties are for sale and local values.

For a couple of years I have been wanting to make a ‘mashup’ of services and create a site which can use search tools and come up with a list of property for sale, owners and values services etc about any area. I believe I could target over 90 percent of all properties on offer – bearing in mind that many are still not offered through real-estate agencies, this would be a useful application for a mobile phone.

One day soon it will be done, it would be nice if it was me doing it, I could do with the money.