BUYING PROPERTY
.. the search ..

Once you found all your websites and agencies to search for your new property, you most certainly would have some ideas, what you are looking for. So in this article I will be looking into what we experienced during our search.

There is no 'standard' or simple rule to follow

Quickly you will realise, that there is simply no one rule on how to advertise a property. Whilst you would think that all websites use the same search patters (room, space, budget), most of them have their own interpretation what they see as a relevant feature and how they translate it on their website. Some use the term "jardin" (garden), others the term "terrain" (land). Whilst you may think that a garden is a bit of green land, and general land could be used for anything (i.e. parking, terrace, etc.) some websites use both terms loosely (and so do the property agents, by the way) and it's always recommended to clarify this with the seller. This applies to many other aspects, including rooms (this a topic I will talk about separetely), garages or parking availability or the fact that a house with one room can simply be a shed or a barn.

Rooms

Let's start with the obvious and most confusing one. This is a lengthier topic, so I will devide it into subsections.

Rooms that are not actual rooms

I mentioned before, that rooms don't always mean... actual rooms. Particularly when you are searching in rural areas, you will often get 1-room "houses", which are in fact a barn or a shed, which either can be converted to a house (in this case, the text will often mention that planning permission was given already) or in fact really is just a barn, but advertised as a house.

Originally I decided to be smart about it and filtered all the houses with just one room (1 pièce) but especially in rural areas, there are big barns that often have separations which apparently then are considered multiple rooms by some of the sellers.

A room (pièce) is not always a bedroom (chambre)

I grew up in Germany. When trying to find an appartment or house, you will be told how many rooms this new place will have, including how many squaremeters the total of the accomodation has, and often each room. But, in generall rooms are declared just as that: a room.

In the UK, you will be used to the fact that hardly anyone will tell you how big a flat or a house is. In the UK, anything goes by the amount of "bedrooms" and "any additional rooms" (i.e. living room, kitchen, will be listed separately).

France is a bit different. Generally you will notice that most (I think even all of the websites I encountered) will list rooms (pièces) and bedrooms (chambre, but technically also means room) separately. 
The idea is as follows: the house alltogether has that many rooms (pièces) but only x-amount of these rooms can be used as bedrooms (chambres). So if you have a 5 pièces and 2 chambres house, the other three remaining rooms could be storage closets, office space, living room, dining room; most of the times they are not defined and you have to rely on photos what the current tenant or owner is using the room for. Sometimes property agents give a rough idea what to use the rooms for. However, this may also result in the fact, that some of them have a different classification of the rooms and therefore amount of "pièces" and "chambres" for the same house are different on multiple platforms depending on the agent.

I have now also noticed, that some property agents put some effort into it and provide the size of separate rooms, rather than the overall squaremeters for the whole property. Which leads into...

m²

In France you generally will be told the size of the property that you are planning to buy. But even here we noticed that numbers seem to differ, and you will notice that very quickly when a property has been advertised by more than one agent.

This issue will apply to all areas depending on what an agent sees as a garden or as a parking, the other agent just sees it as one big surface. You will also notice that some just provide the m² per floor and sometimes when you add them add, it doesn't match with the provided figure for the whole house. It's probably best not to put too much weight on the figure itself. As long as the overall size of the house is to your liking, the best would be to see what each individual room looks like. This is where the photos come in handy, if you can see a bed standing in there, you will get a rough idea, how big the room is.

Photos

Now this is something you need to be very careful about. You will notice that - particularly - in rural areas the description of the house sounds perfect, the photos inside are wonderful and a little note will point out, that some work might be expected after acquisition of the house. Be sure to ask for photos from the outside, and you will see that the house might be on a busy road or a ruin with walls broken, the roof looks like it needs resurfacing (which can get very expensive due to some roofs still containing asbestos).

Potential issues

Canalisation

If you grew up in Germany or in any more populated area, you will be in for a bit of a shock, as many houses, particularly rural ones, will come with a septic tank, rather than a connection to the canalisation system. So if it wasn't mentioned in the text, it's not obvious from the photos, and you're not quite sure whether that area would be connected, always ask. We even noticed with bigger villages, that some of them are not connected at all, or the main road is, but all the side roads are not. In most houses that come cheap and have "a bit of work" to be done, there is a high chance, you will have to get a new sceptic tank in (laws and standards have changed recently) and some of the original owners may already have a quote what it would cost to have the sceptic tank renewed. And this will be expensive. Most quotes we've been given so far were around 10.000€. Some may already have a notice from the local "Commune" whether their house will be connected to the canalisation system in the near future (or not).

Particularly if you are using the house as a holiday home, this will be quite important for you. With a sceptic tank, the house cannot be out of use for too long or the function of the sceptic tank will be disrupted. There are plenty of helpful links and explanations how these tanks work, so make sure you get all the information you need.

Viager

Plenty of time, houses look incredibly cheap and too good to be true. Not always, but often, that is indeed the case. The reason, as the headline already pointed out, is the fact that the house is being sold with a "viager" clause. It basically means, that whilst the landlord of the house will sell their property, they will in fact stay in the house until they either move to a retirement home or, let's face it, die.

Many elderly use this option, as they might not want to go to a retirement home, but may be to frail to take care of the house or a renovation project is just not something they have money for or can deal with. As the property owner, you will be responsible to keep the house in shape, quite often this also includes renovating the house, bringing it back to standards. There are different types of "viager" contracts. Some may just sell their property to you and become a tenant (without paying rent). Some sell the property really cheap, but they expect you to pay a monthly "retirement fund" to them. We also came across one option, where the owner would stay in the house (no rent, no retirement payments) with an 8 years contract. We were told, that if this person would not have died by then, they would turn into a normal tenant.

Whilst this may seem a good option for you to invest in a house for the future, or maybe your future retirement home, there are things you need to consider.

• You will basically become someone's landlord with all the pros and cons.
• Whilst you may get the house cheap, you will not be able to use it.
• It is also possible, that the house is in a state that needs renovations, so additional hefty costs can be expected
• Not always will the tenant stay their just "for free". Some of them expect you to pay a fee to them every month. Now this might sound horrible but is to be considered: if they move out (or let's face it: die) within the year you got a house half price and good for you. But in our area, also even in our family, people get really old.
• You may have to consider, you might retire and die before your tenant does (this happened in a nearby village of ours).
• If this person is expecting you to pay a lump sum to them every month, and they live there for another 10 years, you will actually have paid much more for the house than it was worth originally.

So there are many different issues that would come with a house and a "viager" clause and I highly recommend to look into this in great detail.

Also be aware, that even if some websites offer you to excluder viager properties, most of them do not have a filter for this. Some property agents also bypass this by not tagging the property accordingly and you think you found your dream home for cheap but in the very last paragraph or even very last phrase it will point out that this is actually a "viager" deal.

Asbestos

Many houses, particularly in the rural areas, are very old. Whilst some have been hundres of years old and had some renovation done. It is important to know when these renovations took place over the years. Many houses will in fact have roofs redone in the 60s-90s and asbestos was a very common material for roofs, PVC flooring and as we found out in our house, for water pipes.

Some hosues may sound cheap, even with the little tag that states that "some work is to be expected". What they however do not say in the ads is, that whilst a little work would not be a problem, even a roof might be totally feasible, but if it's asbestos your costs will multiply. It's a toxic material, it needs special equipment for removal, it needs a special way to be sealed and transported and of course needs to go to a specialist waste facility. All this will cost money. Some "commune" may offer a free waste disposal for individuals, but not all towns offer this service and this usually means you're allowed to get rid of - let's say - 100kg per year. Most likely you will need a specialist taking care of this and commercial waste removal comes with hefty price tags.

If you can, ask the property agent or owner of the house for a diagnostic report, it will contain loads of information including what needs to be refurbished. For example our report has details about the electrical wiring (with a warning not to use some power sockets!), asbestos evaluation and géological risks like earthquakes, avalanches, pollution, radiation (natural occuring, like Radon), and in France you will also get the information whether you are within the radius of a nuclear power plant.

Ask for the report, if they have it at hand, read it carefully. However, you should get the report the latest before signing any documents!

Auctions

Once more, this is about a price of a property being too good to be true. Do read the text, quite a few agents use an auction to sell a house but still advertise it on the everyday property websites. When you see a note that says "starting price" that usually means it's an auction, sometimes they will mention the website where it is being sold (i.e. price-immo.com) sometimes they won't say anything until you get in touch.

We had the experience we my brother won the action but the property agent accepted more offers by email after the auction had finished. She didn't tell us and also didn't get in touch after the auction was won. When approached she pointed out that better offers came by email and as this was not an "official auction with an auctioneer and a gavel" but just a website to attract more interest, the whole auction was nothing but a sham. Be very careful with this!