When we bought our French house I was confused by the process, mystified by the paperwork and worried about my limited language skills. Worse than that, I was scared that any mistakes we made could end up being very, very expensive!
Hi. My name is Jeff Seems and although English by birth I now live full-time in France. As I write this my wife and I 
have been here for just over five years and we love the place. Best move we ever made.
But it wasn’t without drama and unfortunately it wasn’t without considerable expense – most of which could have been avoided if we knew then what we know now. I wrote The French Property Buyer’s Guide so you don’t have to go through the same sort of grief that we did.
But let’s start at the start…
I have to assume that the fact you’re reading this means you’re interested in buying property in France. Maybe you’re buying for investment. Perhaps it’s a holiday home? Or perhaps you’re looking for a permanent move – getting out of the rat-race or going somewhere where your savings will stretch a bit further?
Doesn’t really matter, the challenges and pitfalls are the same.
For a start, if you’re anything like me your French isn’t what you’d call fluent. When we moved here it was more than twenty years since I’d learned any French at school and I wasn’t exactly an ‘A’ student then!
We’d been here quite a few times on holiday and my French had definitely improved but it still wasn’t great. Maybe that’s not you. If you speak good French you have a great head start. If you don’t you’ll be needing some help.
But who do you turn to for help? English representatives? French estate agents? So-called “consultants”? It’s difficult to know who to trust when obviously so many of them have their own interest at heart – and considerable income might be at stake.
Then there’s the legal stuff. Oh boy, the legal stuff. We’ve all heard horror stories about how much the French like their paperwork and their forms. It would be bad enough in English but when it comes in a language you have trouble understanding… need I say more?
So the idea of buying in France is great. Unfortunately for many people the actual process can be very stressful, fraught with worry and financial concerns.
It doesn’t need to be. Maybe we can help.
I have to say at this point I’m not an estate agent or property consultant or anything like that. So how come I wrote The French Property Buyer’s Guide? Well it’s funny how things turn out sometimes, isn’t it.
Not long after we bought our lovely old French farmhouse, some friends moved to France. Of course we were in a great position to help them, which we did. Then we helped some friends of those friends. They insisted on paying us for our time and trouble. On that occasion we accepted a few bottles of wine but before very long word was getting round and we had a thriving small business on our hands!
To be honest with you though, profitable though it was, it’s not what we came here to do. We’ve got our own interests and the business meant we were spending more and more time sorting stuff out for other people and not doing our own thing. Rewarding work when you see the smile on someone’s face when they’re getting the keys to their new French home but, as I say, not what we came here to do.
The thing is, you don’t want to let people down, do you.
The solution? Well my wife said we should write some instructions. That way we could help but wouldn’t have to be directly involved.
Good idea, I thought. Trouble is, when we started writing it all down it was soon ten pages, then twenty, then thirty….
Hence this ebook, The French Property Buyer’s Guide. It’s all the things we could think of that you need to know when you start looking to buy a property in France, all in one convenient place. It’s not full of fluff and property-speak, it’s full of what we’ve learned.
Usefully you can order it now, online, and download it straight to your PC or Amazon Kindle. So there’s no waiting for the mail. What’s more, if you take your laptop, Kindle, or iPad on your travels it will always be with you to refresh your memory what to look out for.
But let’s get down to a bit of detail. What’s in the book? It’s only a tiny investment (all of $4.95*) but you want to know what you’ll get for it, don’t you.
- The first thing we realized was that unless you’re very fortunate you won’t have been able to spend a lot of time in France. Perhaps you’ve been to Paris or holidayed on the coast or up in the mountains but there’s a big difference between going somewhere on holiday and searching for a house.
- Then you need to know where to look – online and off – and how to sort the good from the bad. There are literally tens of thousands of websites for French property, how do you know which are honest?
- Then you need to know how to arrange to see the properties so you don’t waste your time. It’s no good going hundreds or even thousands of miles and just turning up unannounced.
- Then you need to know exactly how to make an offer – and what you’re getting yourself into when you do.
- Then there’s deposits, surveys, notaires, inspections and all kinds of other things that can happen.
- Then finally the purchase itself and a few things you’ll need to do right after to make sure everything’s sorted out – whether you need to return to your own country or you’ll be staying in France.
It’s quite likely you already own a home. You’ve probably been through all this at least once before. You’ll remember the stress and the frustration you feel sometimes. Imagine all that with a property market, legal system and language you are unfamiliar with.
That’s precisely why we wrote the French Property Buyer’s Guide.
I can’t promise that it’ll solve all the problems that can occur when you buy a house in France. That would be a daft thing to say.
But I will make you two promises:
- I promise that this ebook will give you tremendously useful know-how to avoid many of the pitfalls – and equip you to cope well with many of the situations that might otherwise cause you difficulty.
- I promise that what you learn from this ebook will save you money – no doubt about it. Certainly hundreds, maybe thousands.
Well that’s about enough from me. I honestly believe the few dollars you need to part with will be repaid many, many times over. Good luck and hopefully we’ll see you over here some time!
ORDER NOW, BE READING IN MINUTES – It’s JUST $4.95*:
The French Property Buyer’s Guide is a digital ebook that you can get direct from Amazon here.
If you prefer, you can download the PDF version straight to your computer from here.
Please note: At this time hardback and paperback versions are not available.
* Because of the way Kindle books are sold this price might vary depending on where in the world you are. If you’re in the UK, order from Amazon.co.uk, not Amazon.com. From other countries, if the price you see is more than $4.95 (or equivalent) you can always choose the PDF version – the content is the same.
