Until now, owners of second homes saw their property exempt from capital gains after 15 years of ownership.From 1 February 2012, will double this time: it will take 30 years before selling a property hoping to make a capital gain tax free.
With this new measure, the gains will be subject to progressive reductions over the years.The first five years of ownership, no exemption: the gain will be taxed in its entirety. Then, between 6 and 16 years of ownership, the reduction will be 2% each year. Beginning in the seventeenth year of 4%. And beyond 24 years and up to 30 years: 8%.
Currently, from five years of ownership, the system reduces the taxable gain on resale of 10% per year.The calculation is done quickly: after 15 years, the exemption is total … It will be quite different for the deeds signed on 1 February 2012
I have had a busy week – chatting to the British Prime Minister, developing websites in Manderin Chinese and finding the correct plumbing fittings in Bricoman (well, to tell the truth, actually they were not the correct plumbing fittings and I have to go back, yet again).
I keep reading in the press that the Chinese travel market is the biggest in the world, I know that one person in five on this planet is Chinese, but that ratio does not seem to apply here in Languedoc. So does this mean that we should be anticipating floods of tourists from China in the near future. My question is simply, ‘Why would someone from China come to our B&B in Villa Roquette ?’
I understand the attraction of Languedoc’s long beaches, wine, the sunshine, the food, mountains, wine, thousands of years of culture, wine and yet more sunshine (and wine). If you have any thoughts on this I really welcome your feedback.
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We live in the village of Montblanc in the South of France, the ‘other’ Mont Blanc is the Alpine mountain. By a strange coincidence, my son (who is also called Tony but that is another story) owns a super ski chalet there. If you want great accommodation, skiing and snow, have a look at his site, he has self-catering accommodation for up to eight people Chalet de Montalbert
Bring me Sunshine, in your smile,
Bring me Laughter, all the while,
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness,
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow,
Make me happy, through the years,
Never bring me, any tears,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.
Bring me Sunshine, in your eyes,
Bring me rainbows, from the skies,
Life’s too short to be spent having anything but fun,
We can be so content, if we gather little sunbeams,
Be light-hearted, all day long,
Keep me singing, happy songs,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.
Words – Sylvia Dee, Music – Arthur Kent
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It looks like Facebook and Google are really squaring up, this can only be good, I suppose – I never did get a reply from the british PM last week on Google plus, he could at least have called in when he went to Libya. I shan’t write to him again….
Thank you for all the advice and comments I had about what I can offer Chinese visitors to France – It seems what is wanted, is help with wine tourism, in English. I am meeting and talking to several groups about this, it could keep me busy.
Last week I mentioned my son’s Ski duplex in the Alps and gave a bad link, here is a good one – If you want to book a great skiing location in the French Alps this winter – Chalet de Montalbert
Do you want to get away from a cold winter? Why not come and stay with us in Villa Roquette sunshine for a few days, weeks or months – our low season rates are already fantastic value, but ask me for a special deal, you may be surprised. I am already stocking up on Champagne for Christmas and our December oysters from the local lagoon are the best in France – piles of logs are ready for the fire. We only have one apartment and two B&B suites left for Christmas and the new year, so Contact Me now.
One big event here in Herault is the Christmas Cracker Fair organised by WOW l’Herault – Whats On Where is a very informative website with news and events in our Department
Sitting here in the heart of the South of France, it is impossible for me to remotely comprehend the feelings of people living in the troubled areas of the UK. The news in France leads with details of the destruction, looting and violence – I scan the Internet for information and find this sadness is broadcast almost everywhere in the world.
I left the UK over 20 years ago because I was looking for a place where I could build a life and make a good home for my young family. We had very little money, I was earning my living by travelling and selling goods and services anywhere I could. My plan was to settle and teach photography through courses and workshops, this is still my aim.
Having decided to quit the UK, we had many choices, France was the most convenient, I spent a month with a rail pass often asking at a ticket office “What time is the next train?” – being asked “To where?” I would reply “Anywhere” – I got a lot a lot of funny looks, but I discovered many places – so we came, our children have grown up here.
My reason for leaving was simple. I had seen the standard of education in the UK decline and society being divided by distorted values. France is far from perfect, but, for us, in a small village near the Mediterranean I believe we have offered our three children a better grasp of family values, civic pride and a much better education than we could have done in the UK.
What can I do to help? Perhaps by us offering a miniscule oasis of calm, a small retreat in rural France, others can stay with us and gain a fresh focus to share when they return to their homes. I wish I could do more.
My mum came to live with us in France seven years ago – she has her own apartment and is completely independent. Luckily for us she has a talent for baking and we get regular Victoria Sponge, Chocolate and coffee cakes and great Christmas cakes (and pudding) birthdays are never missed, with a cake for all occasios.
I have slowed down on the building work and we take trips out. Last week we had lunch in a cafe on a campsite by lake about 20 minutes from is in Villa Roquette.
A beautiful spot with an abandoned village on the doorstep.
Now I have got the last blog post off my chest – it is getting easier to write again about life and living here in France so – out with the old and in with the new – -
I have a lot of projects I plan to be researching, places to visit and people to meet. Our building work at Villa Roquette is all done although there are a lot of additions and improvements I think about, all the accommodation is ready and we are filling up with clients.
I hope soon to be sorting out my schedule for photography – my thoughts have been to shuckle down to doing only something like collodion wet plate work with the aim of a sort of meditative concentration on one image at a time rather than blanket opportunistic recording – but, who knows what will evolve – perhaps some innovative thinking, using applications of new developments in physics and chemistry – laser scanning onto a three dimensional wet collodion spherical box perhaps
I also have the transcripts of my Mothers diaries from 1939 to 1945, plus some photo albums and records to make into a blog for her – I have done one brief introduction on the blog at Twiku but I may put this into a new structure to keep it together. She has recorded her life as a WREN and in the land army during the second world war when she was in Egypt and Palestine working on communications. She still keeps a daily diary of her life here with us in France.
A project I wish to pull together is a new website to coordinate listings and booking requests for all the private B&B and guest house accommodation here in Languedoc – in the summer we get hundreds of requests for our own accommodation which we cannot accept because we are full, but some excellent places have few bookings because they are not visible or the local tourist offices do not know about them. This is not another advertising site or a hotel booking site, but a shared cooperative group of owners working together and, hopefully, having some simple software to help show options alternatives and availability – the idea is to get this as a mobile app.
Other projects I will be moving on are the solar heating and energy storage and saving ideas I wish to apply to our home.
But slowly and steadily – it feels good to be thinking again.
For the last twelve years I have been writing online about our life in France – I was blogging before there were blogs, since 1996, through websites I made.
A lot of my stuff is still on one of my first websites at Nizas.com - I wrote most days and got a newsletter out every week to a mailing list that had over thirty thousand readers.
I do this because I love sharing our love of France with people and found that I can help sometimes with advice gained from our own experiences living in France.
But last year, 2010, was bad year for me – not for our business which is our Guest house at Villa Roquette , this is full of guests and doing well – but with a series of setbacks due to people I trusted, and once respected, abusing this trust.
I don’t expect life to be always sunny and bright with bluebirds twittering around me and sparkling wine flowing freely (or Guinness perhaps) – but I got so much abuse heaped on me at once that I began to doubt myself – this led to a complete block on anything creative and all I could do was mix concrete and work on mind-numbing, exhausting building projects.
I tried repeatedly to start blogging or write my newsletter, but all I could do was look at a blank screen – occasionally I would start a moan about the crooks who were persecuting me, but that is not interesting for anyone else to read.
My advice to myself was to “move on” ignore them and “get on with it” – but - easier said than done.
But now a ray of sunshine has broken through - one of the perpetrators of my misery has had their knuckles rapped by the French legal process by attempting a malicious action, they have been told this is an “action vindicatif” and told to pay me damages – another is now being investigated by the UK financial Ombudsman for forging my signature .
This still leaves the crooks who bankrupted the Paris rentals business by “skimming” , a cheating accountant who invented invoices but never did a stroke of work and an Internet company who have not paid me a cent on my old websites for six years – but two out of five is hopeful and perhaps now I can get on.
If I can read this online, then it means I have hit the “publish” button for the first time in six months and that can only be a good thing
I mentioned in our blog on Villa Roquette that my Mum has dusted off her diaries from 1938 and is writing her life history form the details, memories they trigger and her photos.
From 1938 to 1945 she went from a schoolgirl in the Masonic school at Rickmansworth – to getting married to my Father in Palestine when she was a petty officer in the Womens Royal Naval Service (WRNS)-
Pamela
I plan to put her notes in a blog, with her photos of the time, from school – the land army – joining the Royal Navy – posted to Egypt and Palestine, working on coding and communications, avoiding submarines and the life of a young girl in the war.
Some things are hard to imagine – helping in hospitals putting cigarettes into a hole in a head bandage of someone completely burnt in tank warfare so they could “have a puff” - missing a troop ship to which as torpedoed and lost – getting secure signals of Naval actions (the sinking of the Bismark, she was one of the first people to ever hear the news).
Pamela in Palestine
I will try to serialise this and select some photos and help her make a blog – it is living history
Villa Roquette is in Languedoc, near Adge, Beziers, Narbonne Montpellier and Pezenas. – tourism agencies here call this area “Sud de France” to explain, we are South of the South of France and get more sunshine (lots of sunshine makes great wine).
Call it what you like, Languedoc gets more days of sun (and has more good wine) than the rest of France
So it seems daft not to use it for heating. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but never got round to it, until now – next week (if it is not raining) I will start on building and installing a heating system for our Swimming Pool.
Through the Internet I have got plans and designs which are simple, inexpensive and work – I found a calculator online which takes into account pool size, latitude, sun, shade, and a host of other factors and reckon I need about 15 square meters of solar heating to give me a very comfortable pool temperature and this will extend the use of the pool from April through to October.
Making and fitting the system is not complicated, materials cost abut 100 euro, I already have most of the items in stock, piping, plastics, tubing, mountings etc – so, hopefully the cost will be very small and the befits enourmous.
I will make notes and write up the progress.
Here is our pool as it is – next time I will outline the first stages of construction and installation of the heating system.
At our Guest House we get many visitors who have travelled by air before staying with us. It is incredible how may of them are ill, sometimes with bad viruses and illnesses for several days or sometimes for weeks when they arrive.
This is very sad as it ruins their vacation and also their partners and friends suffer.
A recent article confirmed by belief that aircraft are a petri dish for germs and listed the six worst areas on a plane to avoid, literally, like the plague. Briefly they are :
GERM ZONE: Water and ice cubes for: E. coli, a common culprit behind stomach cramps
GERM ZONE: Seat Pocket for: Cold and influenza A, B, and C viruses
GERM ZONE: Tray Table for: MRSA, a deadly superbug
GERM ZONE: Airplane Meal for: Listeria, a microbe known to cause gastrointestinal illness and meningitis
GERM ZONE: Airplane Pillow and Blankets for: Germs like Aspergillus niger that cause pneumonia and infections
GERM ZONE: Airplane Lavatory for: A smorgasbord of threats like E. coli or fecal bacteria
The strong recommendation is to carry antiseptic wipes and use these, not soap and contaminated water – I would also suggest only drinking from sealed containers such as wine, whisky or beer
For years I have avoided these areas when flying and rarely suffered any illness on arrival, but you cannot avoid breathing – I have seen filters, which are supposed to clean out the cabin air which is constantly recycled, clogged solid with filth – but I guess if I tried to board wearing a gas mask they may be a bit suspicious
