oing, going…gone!

We’ve all ‘ bin there, dun that’ We’ve all been through the pain & eventual gain of buying a house in France, whether as a holiday home or as a maison principale

We bought our first house in France way back in 2004 when we were still living in England It was about 20 minutes from the coast & in need of some TLC (surprise surprise!) The house hunting process was a bit more complicated in those days, partly because we were searching remotely, and also because we only had a limited time to view properties before returning to the Uk for work We were also surprised to find that no houses displayed an A vendre sign outside, so we couldn’t even drive around our chosen area picking out potential properties to view

Of course we could search for houses on line but the majority of immobiliers weren’t fans of the internet in those days; they much preferred to display glossy photos in their shop windows, and show you files of a selection of properties that were always just above your stated budget! We even employed the ser vices of a property finder at one stage who lined up several possibilities

Karen Taylor

for us to visit during our holiday to save us time when we arrived

In the past 20 years though, the sales process has changed dramatically and there are now a host of different ways to search for a property, including surfing the internet for private sales on sites such as leboncoin, as well as cruising around spotting For Sale signs Estate agents over here are also much more tech savvy than they used to be, some even offering 360° virtual tours of the property!

So when we put our rental house on the market last year, we decided to use all the options available to us, other than a sign outside the house as we had tenants in residence and felt that it wasn t really appropriate

Interestingly, we had the chance to compare the whole sales process in France with the system in Australia when we visited my sister-in-law in Perth a few months ago They ve definitely gone to the next level in sales pitches The sale of her home was in the hands of one sole real estate agent who managed the whole process from start