Property Prices in France
May 20, 2010 by tony · Leave a Comment
With a stronger dollar and a weaker euro, interest in buying a home in France is strong. For me, having lived here for 20 years, it is obvious that France, especially Southern France, is the best place to live.
If you are thinking about buying property in France then the first question is – how much does property cost in France. A better question, perhaps is – how much do homes sell for in France.
All French property is sold and valued by the area of usable living space in the main house, not garages or utility rooms, but main rooms, bedrooms, living rooms etc. This is shown as the price per square meter, it does not include the land or outbuildings. This habitable area is very precise and will be shown on the legal documents, tax assessments and all paperwork for a property. All property in France is sold through a Notaire and this price is reported and the cost per square meter is calculated from actual sales made.
There are now a number of websites offering help for you to find the price of French real estate. I have written about pap.fr before they have search form you can identify the cost paid per square meter.
On Facebook today I discovered from a really good blogger PollyVousFrancais another really slick site http://www.meilleursagents.com/ – it even has a mobile app wher you can point your phone at some proeprties in France and get the price properties have sold for in that location.
It is important to stress that these are not valuation or even estimates of the price of a specific property in France – but aggregated figures on historical sales.
The two sites above are OK for a quick snapshot of price indication, but If you are thinking of buying property in France do some deeper research into trends from sites like….
Immoprix
Paris Notaires
National Institute of Statistics and Economic studies
Notexpert
Other sites good for researching data on properties and places in France include….
http://www.lescommunes.com/
http://www.fallingrain.com/world/FR/
The botom line is that any property is only worth what someone is prepare to pay for it – but don’t make the mistake of comparing prices in other countries with prices in France.
A Plague Upon Their Houses
October 13, 2009 by tony · Leave a Comment
I had a mail from an associate asking about real-estate advertising websites and earning commissions – I have been deeply involved in this over the last ten years and have strong feelings about it.
In my blogs, I have been less than polite about realtors dealing in France, I have had some of these parasites threaten me with legal action – but I have also met a few, very few, (in fact one), gentleman I would recommend .
Here is a reply to an email today, it is at the end of a thread about realtors etc, but it has encouraged me to set out a little more clearly what I am trying to do – Vlad, if yo are reading this we must get this software sorted, if you don’t have time then Richard and Raj, please work with me to make this your next app !!
===
Hi Steve,
My feeling is that real-estate dealing, and all aspects of property sales in France, is, at present, a “commoditised” business and is only attracting a rats-in-a-cage scenario. People will always make money out of selling what is to be sold, but, for-me, this is a bad/dead business.
As all property in France has to be sold through a Notiare, the value of an immobilier is zero – they do not act as true brokers, they do not assist either the buyer or seller, their only interest is to get a mandat and/or get a bon de visite and ensure an immoral level of commission for nothing – a plague on all of them and away with the scoundrels.
What is needed is a true brokerage service (buy it and resell it) or a true marketing/sourcing service (act for the buyer/seller) which clearly sets out the service offered and charges a fair price for the work.
However, to be able to offer any sort of viable and useful service in this area in France, a universal listing facility is needed and the corrupt and disgusting cartels done away with. Dream on.
I am working (too slowly) on software to scrap the useless listings of myriads of agents and simply give a complete “mashup” of all properties listed from existing Internet sources – then use techniques to identify these properties and give information about the seller/owner/agent dealing with it.
So in simple terms, anyone looking in a specific area or for a particular property can see, in one search, all properties, in detail, with full contact information, everything on the Internet which is relevant – this will represent about 80 percent of the relevant search criteria and be many mny times more relevant, efficient and time saving than trawling through the thousands of uninformative agency sites and for iPhone or Facebook would cost a user a very small amount. This concept is an “app” costing from zero to perhaps 4 euro. There are over 500,000 target clients for this.
OK, that is my aim – I cannot see any viability in any “new” listing site, only heartache and wasted time – those early Internet days are nearly gone.
Fractional Ownership is mostly marketed for the “almost” rich people who want a slice of something they cannot really afford – interestingly, in my opinion, it does have a place and is a good product and I would like to find the right marketing angle for this.
Without a license or correct registration, any commission you get on a sale is discretionary – 10 percent is the usual for a non-registered person, you can only do this two or three times with impunity – as an agent commercial I would demand 50 percent of the commission, most gave me 60 to 75 percent of their commission.
Lots to talk about
Paris is Planning for the Future
June 8, 2008 by Tony · Leave a Comment
A recent article in the Telegraph by Henry Samuel, announced Sarkozy’s ambition for a new Paris – President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has tasked a group of top architects, including Britain’s Richard Rogers, to dream up a Grand Paris to rival Greater London that could stretch as far as the Channel – Read the Full Article.
I find this very interesting and exciting – Paris is forced to be a small city, the peripherique is a beltway containing the posh and touristy bits inside and much of the real world outside. Public transport is absolutely brilliant inside the peripherique but poor to non-existent outside.
Over the next few months I am going to be spending a lot of time in Paris on some new projects, so the opportunities simply thinking and planning an initiative like this open up are perhaps those which come only rarely in a lifetime – watch this space.
Finding Properties for Sale
On my blog at www.FrUK.eu I am writing about setting up ways to find what properties are available for sale in France. This is not an easy task. A reader sent me information about three websites in Australia which offer direct introductions from seller to buyer or buyer to seller…
G,day Tony,Herewith web sites for reference : http://www.goprivate.com.au http://www.owner.com.au http://www.NoAgentProperty.com.au and http://www.diysell.com.au Best o’luck,John – these seem to be a sort of classified advertising site, there are some like this in France like http://www.pap.fr
It would be interesting to make a list of these services in other countries, so if you know of any sites which eliminate estate agents in the property sale process, please write to me
A Little Village House
May 22, 2008 by Tony · Leave a Comment
Tony,
OMG, as they say today, some 20 years ago I camethisclose to buying a house in the village of Puilacher, Languedoc. A friend in New York (I’m a Brit who went to NYC in 1970 and worked for The New York Times for 29 years) talked me out of it.
Well, you can imagine how I felt for many years. Until, that is, I went back about 8 or so years ago and saw that a vineyard company, I believe, had kind of taken the village over. However, my lifetime dream has been to live in Languedoc. Don’t know why, but it feels like home.
And you, you lucky *****, are living my dream!!
Is there any chance that a cheap, rundown kind of place might be available, do you know?
This shared ownership thing, which I read about in the NYT (as I’m sure thousands of others did), I’m not really sure about.
Does it really work?
Would love to hear about some place in those lovely hilly villages just west of Pezenas, a place I like a lot.
Oh my, of course I should have acted way back when. But it’s never too late, I guess, even if you are 69, as I am.
Best of everything to you and your family,
I hope to hear,
Terry
==
Hi Terence
I have just been offered a property in St Nazaire – just west of Pezenas – it is a very interesting offer and has masses of potential at a low price 130,000 euro – the village is perfect.
I have not put it on a real estate site yet but you can see the photos at
http://flickr.com/photos/cathar/sets/72157603703148866/
and
http://flickr.com/photos/cathar/sets/72157603707582939/
and a video I use to make notes before writing the details at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_0-C3zh-w
Let me know if this is interesting
Fractional Ownership does work very well and is well established
Hope to see you over here
Best wishes
Tony
==
Hi Tony,
I guess at today’s prices, 130,000 is a low number, but when it comes to renovating the property then the numbers would of course climb substantially.
It is in fact everything I asked for, so no criticism on that score. But on second thoughts, maybe Fractional Ownership might fit my budget, not to mention my age, a bit better.
Oh, and when I said west of Pezenas, I should have said east! That’s the area I spent most of my time in over a number of years, and with which I am more familiar. (The first place I stayed in was Lacoste, up near Clermont-l’Herault).
Thank you for taking the time to bring the St. Nazaire property to my attention, but, as I say, perhaps I should be thinking Fractional Ownership.
Best,
Terence
==
Hi Terence
It will be hard to find anything reasonably comfortable for under 200,000 euro now – you are wise to avoid renovation – it will double the price.
Fractional Ownership is only working effectively in Paris – there may be some offers in Nice soon, but for village homes I do not advise it – prices start now at about 100,000 for one month in a good apartment.
The other option is to buy a place and then sell shares
Hope this helps
best wishes
Tony
The Future of Realtors in France
In my blog over at New Bricks and Pantiles – I am taking stock about the work I am doing in selling real-estate.
I mention some of the techniques on the Internet which a buyer can use to search for a home and I say this will be soon available online from websites offering these services. Well today it is happening in the USA and every day more cities are added to the system. This post by Trulia shows one super tool agents are beginning to use.
This street mapping is not in France yet, but the writing is on the wall. Unless agents in France get real about their commissions and operate a Multi Listing System, then they will be out of business because no one in their sane mind is going to pay tens of thousands of euro for what can be a few pleasant afternoons on a laptop.
Finding the perfect house should be as easy as sitting in a pleasant cafe, searching through all the listings from compilation websites offering a mashup of agents, owners and mapping services – then with some deductive software and directories, finding the address of the owners, emailing, phoning or skyping the owner (or their keyholder) you select and calling round to look at a property.
You can sort through hundreds of offerings in an afternoon instead of the stressful and wasteful four or five you are offered, often blindfold, by agents in France.
All other “services” offered by agents, mortgages, selecting a Notaire etc, can be done online while you sit by the pool and you can get professional advice and comparisons of rates while your glass is refilled.
The many thousands of euro you save in commissions will more than pay for the five star treatment you are giving yourself and you may still have saved enough to buy a new car.
How To Buy A House part 1
Perhaps I should title this “How To Find a House To Buy” as buying a house is easy – you simply pay for it and it is yours (more or less).
But finding a house means looking, researching, meeting – part of a whole lot of stressful factors and you will never know that what you are offering to buy is really the best one for you – the perfect house may be just round the next corner and at a better price than the one you decide on.
When I was a teenager and we had a lot of parties – this was an interesting time, sex had just been invented just for our benefit and there was really only one purpose of going to a party (or going anywhere really).
My technique was to up to the first girl and ask a simple question – if the answer was no – I went to the next one – and so on. Usually within a couple of minutes of arriving I had a result (and I was still sober, usually) – however, this took some learning, at first I would look around the room and decide which was the “best” girl there, at the same time I would have a few drinks to relax – by the time I had started a “chat-up” line my choices were reduced and my judgment was getting cloudy, I often ended up in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, or in the kitchen, discussing metaphysical poets with weird people of indeterminate sex when what I really wanted was to be at the top of the stairs with someone whose sexuality was in no doubt.
I remember one party where my “infallible” technique was too successful, I had several “yes” responses and, you guessed it, they all found out and the sum result of a lot of yeses is one no. Which may prove a new mathematical theorem that two or more pluses can equal a minus.
What has this to do with finding a house. Basically it is the same problem, set your objective and go directly to the source looking for a result, one result. Don’t mess around waiting for introductions, don’t waste time looking at impossible dreams, decide what you are looking for, look for it and when you find it make an offer and stick to it.
The trick is (and the subject of part 2 of this series) “How to Find A House To Buy” – I said that should have been the title.
Tags: buyingproperty, house for sale, french property, property in France