Two views from the old walled city of Angoulême in Charante.
FRENCH
ESTATE AGENTS
Estate agents in France are called agents immobilier and the person who handles the legal aspects of the transaction of buying a French property is called a notaire. Some notaires also have books of properties for sale. Whilst you will find the offices of immobiliers easily in most major towns, it is a lot harder to find notaires. They are frequently tucked away in an obscure back street and quite often do little or nothing to advertise the fact that they have properties for sale.
There are many more immobiliers than there used to be because of the increasing demand for houses in France from foreign buyers. Many of the immoblier are bilingual or employ English speaking staff and there are also quite a lot of British estate agents working in France.
If you chose to go through one of the Internet French property web sites to look for your house in France, they will normally book appointments with French estate agents, on your behalf, to view the properties displayed on their web sites. Some of them can also provide discounted ferry prices. The Internet company I used did not charge me a fee for this service and so was presumably paid from the commission of the immobilier I bought my house through. If you are purchasing an expensive property it would be as well to check whether this results in a higher overall fee from the immoblier in order to cover the commission of the internet company.
On the question of commission, it is quite normal in France
for the
purchaser not the vendor to pay the fees and
this includes the immobilier, and the notaire. Expect fees
from the immobilier of between 5%-10% of the net purchase price.
The displayed price of the property often includes these fees &
will be marked F.A.I., (Frais d’Agence Inclus), but if you are unsure
just ask the agent.
COMMENTS
Don't assume because you are paying the immoblier's fees that
they are
working for you. They aren't. They have been
engaged by the vendor
and they are in business to sell property. I found that, as
in England, they had a tendency to play down the defects in a property
and
talk up the virtues in order to secure a sale. The usual applies,
Caveat Emptor, or buyer beware.
When buying in France, it is wise to get the opinion of the
immoblier about whether to offer less than the asking price for the
house. Too low an offer could be considered as an insult by
the vendor, but it is common in Normandy, and this may be true across
France, for the vendor to indicate a minimum price he is prepared to
accept. If the property has been on the market for some time
he may be prepared to sell the house at that lower price so always ask
the immobilier what the minimum price is.
It would be convenient if you could find out the addresses of some of the French properties you were interested in from the immoblier and drive round and view them from the outside as this would allow you to eliminate the undesirable ones from your list without wasting time. Unfortunately the immobiliers are usually very reluctant to give out the addresses and will normally take you round for viewings in their car or arrange for you to follow them if you want to take your own car.
