BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE - BUY FRENCH PROPERTY - TALES FROM FRANCE 1

Above: View of the Loire, France.

Above: The Loire view 2, France.

INTRO

On this and the following pages are a few of my observations on buying and owning a house in France. Generally I regard the whole experience to be a great adventure and even the few negative experiences have been part of that adventure. It is good fun to practise and to improve your French, and I have found the French people to be very friendly.

If you are just starting out on your own adventure, I hope the information on this site has been of some help to you.

TIPS

Here are a few miscellaneous facts I have picked up, regarding owning a house in France, which don't fit under any of the other page headings.

• If you buy a house in France by law you must have building insurance in place the moment the property passes into your possession, it is often possible to take over the cover from the Vendor rather than starting from scratch.
• If you employ a worker to work on your French house you should make sure they have a siret number, (registration with the French Authorities), and be aware that, unlike in Britain, if you pay them cash in hand and they are working 'on the black' and get caught by the authorities, you can be prosecuted as well as the worker.
• In France it is required by law that, if you use an open fire in your house, you must have the chimney swept once a year.

SOME PRECONCEPTIONS DISPELLED

BUILDING SUPPLIES IN FRANCE

Before we bought the house in France I wondered how easy it would be to get building materials for renovation, and I had this picture in my head of driving down an unmade track in the middle of nowhere to a collection of ramshackle buildings where the people serving behind the counter would deliberately misunderstand my French.
The reality turned out to be that, even though we are in a very small town, there are merchants where you can buy joinery, plumbing supplies, electrical fittings, etc. literally about 5 minutes drive from the house, and the staff are polite and very patient with my attempts at speaking French.
At the nearest large town, there are also branches from chains of builders merchants across France such as Pointe P.
I actually have to travel a lot further for my building materials here in Hampshire.
Bang goes that preconception.