Buying property in France

The first experience we will share with you is how we bought our first property in France. Having experiences from Sweden we found that the French system was very much in favour of the buyer. Unlike Sweden the real estate agent has a very minor role in France. They merely find the objects and connect the buyer with the seller. In Sweden they also do all the legal stuff, which, due to a quite bad reputation among some of them, is not very safe for the buyer – or the seller. In France everything are taken care of by “le notaire” who is a trusted legal advisor without any stake in the transaction. “Le notaire” checks that everything is correct legally, like ownership, mortgages and debts. “Le notaire” also initiates certain controls of the property, which depend on the area and the age of the house. (When we bought our second French home in Corbières it was mandatory to check for lead in the construction and fittings and for termites). Off course “le notaire” charges for this service, but it is a set percentage of the prize and it depends on the age of the building. An older building means more work for “le notaire”. Our first home was a little studio with a fantastic view of the Mediterranean – it was just a fair drive from the balcony (golf drive). This was in 1991 and we went down to look at a different object that we did not like and found this new building just at the old fishing harbour, facing the pier with the light house and the guest harbour – lovely! The rules were that we could make a small deposit and reserve the studio until we had checked our financial resources with the bank. We got a few weeks to think it over and if we had not decided to buy or had got problems with the financing we could have pulled out, only loosing the interest on the deposit. They said this was the French way of dealing with the problem of people signing contracts on property without really thinking it over properly. Maybe the sun, the good feeling of being on vacation or a very smooth talking salesperson makes us a little irresponsible. This had resulted in quite a lot of legal and personal problems when the buyer “wakes up” and find themselves owner of a property they can not afford or do not like. This might not be the only possible procedure for buying. You can find more information on http://www.french-property.com/ which was the website we later used to sell our studio in Sète.
Anyway, we bought the studio, loved it and had many fine summers. Our friends and children spent time there with us (cramped) or by themselves and everybody came to love the fantastic city of Sète. I will come back with more information on Sète later. We really bought the little flat just to see how we would like to be in the same place every summer and also try out if we would like to move to the area permanently after retirement. We kept the flat in Sète for ten years and through friends we found our house in Corbières. We sold our flat (we got over 60 answers on our web add) and the money covered the prize for our house.