Our customers often come to us and ask “how do I go about buying a property in the Alps?”, our initial response is along the lines of “it’s no harder than buying a property in the UK”, though I imagine that does not really answer the question!
It would be tempting to point people towards our comprehensive, though condensed buying guide that we have online. It someone wanted something a bit more in depth and from an independent source, there are a number of books available on the subject, try this link to amazon.co.uk for “buy, property, France”, this reveals 3 books on the subject.
Though who says you can trust these books? They may be out of date. Another place to look could well be the Notaires website in France. One imagines that should at least be correct and may very well be up to date! Here is a link to the property section of the Notaires website. It’s even in English!
Though even here there are over 20 pages of advice, rationally you would think when investing enormous amounts of personal money in a foreign country this sort of research would be mandatory. In reality this is not going to be the case. Even when buying property in the UK most people are fairly clueless about the actual legalities and rely on their estate agent and lawyers for up to date advice.
So here is the very condensed version of “how to buy property in the French Alps”.
- Research the area of the Alps that you are interested in. I don’t mean spending ages on the internet and reading books. Take a holiday there, visit for the weekend. Have a look around in Winter and Summer. This knowledge will be essential when the right property is presented to you.
- Find out how much money you have to spend. If you are not taking a mortgage then this is easy! If you will be financing the purchase with the help of a bank then Alpine Property can suggest a couple of online bi-lingual French mortgage providers. Otherwise when you are visiting with us we can arrange for you to speak with a local bank. Don’t forget to take into account the Notaires fees and Stamp Duty in a purchase. These are often quoted together as “about 8%”, go to this cost calculator for a more accurate estimate. Make contact with a currency broker, or at the minimum speak to your bank about exchange rates. The currency broker may encourage you to “hedge” your currency purchase by making a pre order. This may make sense.
- Get to know the agents. Once you have made contact via the website then arrange to meet with them a view the properties in person. From our website we have a Google map with all the properties marked. It would be tempting to visit using just this information! With a modern GPS you could drive right to the door of many of the properties without our help. Don’t do this! You’ll miss out on the nuggets of information like “this owner really needs to sell, the asking price is xx thousand euros but I spoke to him yesterday and he’ll accept a lot less”. OR “I’d like to show you this property, it’s not on the website yet but the owner has told me they want to sell”.
- Have a look at a range of properties; 2 years ago this was hard to do. Now there are literally twice the amount of properties available (written in April ’09), within a couple of days you will know as much as anyone about the true and current value of a property.
- When you find a property you are interested in work closely with your agent to negotiate a good price. Remember they are paid a commission for a sale (this commission is always included in the price we advertise) and negotiation is part of their job.
- Be prepared to sign the first contract “compromis de vente” and pay over a 10% deposit to the Notaire. This can happen within a few days of agreeing a price on a property and goes a long way to securing the property purchase early on. There is no gazumping/gazundering in France! Some agents use an off the shelf copy of this contract and will ask you to sign in their office. We won’t do this. We will ask the Notaire to draw it up. This contract is the most important part of the process. In conjunction with the Notaire we will advise you on the key issues involved in the purchase. These issues may include rights of way or “droits de passage”, the possibility of new building on neighbouring plots of land, or the local taxes payable. It is usual to make your committment to buy conditional on one or more other events, such as you being able to obtain a mortgage. This conditions are referred to as “clauses supensives”. We will frequently visit the Notaire together with a buyer and settle many of these questions on the spot. Doing it this way costs no more. The only downside is for us. We might not get you signature immediately and the delay might mean we lose a buyer thanks to “buyers regret”, we often have to post the contract to the UK, this gives another advantage to the buyer.
