French Estate Agents
The worst and the very worst. Everything you need to know about French Estate Agents (Immobiliers) operating in France.
The first thing when considering buying property in France is to remember that French estate agents exist to make money out of you and nothing else. They are not interested in your well being or finding the perfect place or what happens afterwards. All they want is commission and a fee and they will spin any tale to get it. Whatever you want to hear they will tell you.
Let us start in looking at the background of French estate agency from the point of view of the seller.
To become an agent requires nothing at all. You can be working as a shelf stacker or a bouncer one day and the next you can be an agent. You can set up yourself as some do or you can work for one of the many ‘English’ specialist agents. The agencies that target the English speakers are the most expensive and least trained as a rule. They will accept anyone working for them if they can speak a few words of French.
These agencies will charge from six to twenty percent on top of the asking price and they hide their embarrassing fees in the overall cost so many unsuspecting buyers never realise how much they have been fiddled out of until they are sat in the lawyers office signing the very last sheet of paper. Too late by then.
Many of those who work for these agencies arrive on a boat from the UK and finding no work available decide to use the only skill they have which is basic French and many do not even have that. As long as you can show someone where a property is and you have a car and can read and write a little bit then as a general rule you are hired. These sub agents then split the enormous commission with the main agent a few days after a sale is complete.
In the main these agents and the agencies they represent are slow, forgetful, ignorant and arrogant in that order. Things start well enough and following an initial telephone call an appointment is made. Often this appointment is broken at the last moment but sometimes they arrive on time. What follows is a standard predictable hour or so during which some measurements are taken and some dreadful amateur photographs and finally the start of the paperwork. This paperwork can continue for days or even weeks.
The agent will slip in the usual questions about “How long have you lived here?” - “Who did you buy it through?” “ Which lawyer did you use?” - “ Why are you selling?” and so on. These weakly disguised and apparently innocent questions are intended to discover certain bits of information that will help them back at the office where they will make inquiries to find out exactly how much you paid for your property. They have contacts in the legal profession and the Notaires, other agents, translators and Mairies all work hand in hand to pass information officially and unofficially. In short when they tell you they need time to go away and make a proper analysis of all the information to get you the best price what they really mean is that they need a few days to find the exact amount you paid and when and where and with whom. They will then suggest a figure a bit higher than you paid.
If you are still committed to use the chancer concerned ( whoops we mean agent ) then you will have to sign a document instructing them to act for you. If they think you are green as grass they will get you to sign a document that commits you to them as sole agents for 12 months. You must insist on a multi agency agreement otherwise they will go after you for commission even if you find your own buyer. Always insist on the multi agency agreement. The forms are absolutely identical except for one single word. Surprise surprise. The one you want has the added word ‘SANS’. It is as simple and as dangerous as that. Beware. French agents cannot be trusted and if you so much as shake hands with one of them make sure you count your fingers afterwards. Trust in nothing they say and ignore any promise they make. They will lie through their teeth to sign you up.
Also consider what many of these half baked amateurs do during what passes for a ‘valuation’. These agents have no real clue to a properties worth and rely on what the seller tells them. If you tell them when you bought it they will look up the price you paid and work from that. They will look at properties nearby ( even if they are nothing like yours) and use them as a base line. They usually know nothing about property and will have no background or proper training in real estate. No knowledge of what buildings are made of or the state of repair. No background knowledge in legal matters or conveyancing. No knowledge of building materials, costings or even the slightest clue as to how a building is constructed. All they have is a few hours induction course and a smattering of basic French. You can therefore take any valuation they give or advice with a very large pinch of salt. These are not qualified professionals and you would do just as well to ask the local window cleaner what you property is worth.
Assuming you have decided to take what we could call the brave step of using an agent in France then you might wonder what happens next. The answer in a lot of cases is absolutely nothing. Your paperwork can sit for weeks gathering dust and awaiting approval from one person or another in the office or could be lost altogether. You will be searching the internet for an advertisement but find nothing. You will check the agents window and find everything except your ad and those promises about press advertising and large newspaper coverage are long forgotten.
Naturally you will eventually telephone or send an email. The email is most likely to be ignored in France as they are well behind the times and the telephone call ( if you get an answer) will become something that will be either, passed on to another who will fail to make contact, or forgotten about until you ring again and again. Eventually you will be assured that everything will be sorted out soon and in the next week your file will be dealt with. More often that not this will turn out not to be true due to days off, illness, office closed, holidays and so it goes on. At some point however your property will appear on a website and that will be it as far as advertising goes unless you are the type that will pester the life out of them. That single short website ad is what they charge buyers tens of thousands for.
When the advertising does appear you will want to have it changed due to the usual series of errors and omissions made between the agent, the agency, the person loading the information and the website operator. When you call you will be faced with another round of calls and emails and waiting and more calls and more waiting around until you get worn out with it. It is around this time that the agent and the agency become fed up with you because you have telephoned too often. They will not recognise their errors, shortcomings and general unprofessional and amateur ways and like all amateurs they will blame you and become annoyed.
They are not that keen on sellers anyway because in France it is the buyer that pays all of that wonderful commission and massive fee to the agents and to date the agents have failed to make the simple connection between buyer and seller. They need both to survive and each is as important as the other. It is simple enough but you will not get that fact past the heads of most agents who can only see that commission cheque which comes from the buyer. It is for this reason that as soon as the seller is signed up with an agency they really do not want anything more to do with them. They will contact you if and when someone is interested and until that time (when the charm is switched on again) you must not be a nuisance.
This is when the seller usually wants to go to another agent and, providing they have not been duped into signing the wrong paperwork, they usually do. Unfortunately the next agent is every bit as bad as the first and another six months is wasted.
The best advice is try to avoid using an agent. If you do then under no circumstances use one of those specialist ‘English speaking’ agencies. When you find an agent talk first about what they charge. They will immediately tell you that their service costs you nothing as a seller. This is another lie. The commission on top of your sale price is so massive that it makes your property very expensive and in the end you will have to take a big drop to get back to a realistic figure. The buyer will want to drop as always and the agent will never drop. As a rule of thumb no agent should be paid any more than two and three thousand Pounds as an absolute top figure. Whatever you are selling £3,000 is the max they should charge on top. Any more than that and you are being ripped off big time.
Now let us take another look but this time from the side of the buyer in France.
What about those buyers though ? After all they are paying thousands and thousands, tens of thousands in fees to these agents. They must be treated like Royalty right ? The answer is no. The agents remember are not professionals and have little or no training other than a brief induction course which is aimed more at making sure they do things the agency way and that the ‘right’ papers get signed. They have absolutely no interest in buyers other than ensuring they pay as much as possible for contacting them. Agents leave one country after a career shelf stacking or car washing and re invent themselves on the overnight ferry crossing. On arrival in France they see themselves as professional estate agents and they sign up with the first French agency that will take them.
The property buying process in France usually goes like this;
Someone sees a few properties they are interested in. They have seen a lot of television programmes on parts of France and read about all the fantastic bargains to be had and so off they go on the search to find that pot of French gold, the hidden gem everyone else missed, that special and perfect place which is an absolute bargain to boot. The Shangri la where they can spend days walking and stopping at typical old café’s for coffee and evenings eating romantic dinners with friends sipping glasses of delicious red wine. Sounds great.
Believe none of it. Nice property in nice parts of France are every bit as expensive as nice properties in the nicest parts of England or anywhere else. Any real bargains have already been picked up by the locals in the usual under the table deals that go on every day. The families and friends get in first followed by the local neighbours and then the agents and Notaires buy up anything they can. Then the builders and property developers and those that buy to let clear up what is left. There are no bargains left by the time it arrives on the internet or in an agents window. Bear that in mind. People are buying properties advertised at the right price or over.
This leaves many disappointed buyers with small budgets who end up buying a ‘project’. Big mistake. That pile of old stones with a few acres or that falling down barn that could be great one day or that former cow shed in need of renovation are always an error on a monumental scale. In France the cost of renovation is unbelievable and the cost of labour and materials is as well. Renovation and rebuilding and refurbishing ruins is a specialist field and what is more it is illegal to get unregistered labour to do it.
Employing family and friends is an offence in France unless they are properly registered and insured with the French authorities and local people can and do inform the Police etc. People get arrested for it and fined a fortune. The military Police ( Gendarmes) can and will turn up and demand to see the relevant paperwork and if they discover wrong doing arrest on the spot is the outcome.
It is not practical to ship everything over from the UK and those that do so find they spend a decade or more working themselves ill with make do and mend and become so sick of it they sell it half done or roughly complete for less than they paid for it. Do not buy a renovation project or even something needing a makeover. It can cost serious money in France because it is a country that does not understand the meaning of why anyone would want to do it.
The French buy a house to live for the rest of their lives. They do not move around or do places up for a profit. They are not interested in making money or improving their wealth through property. It is not on their radar and so that great big bag of nails you can pick up for next to nothing in the UK becomes a very small plastic bag of low grade bendy nails that cost thirty times as much. DIY is not a French thing and DIY is very very very expensive in France. Buyers beware.
The agent will of course want to sell the buyer the rubbish they cannot get rid of and the English speakers are seen to be wealthy idiots who are there to be ripped off. When the unsuspecting buyer with cash on the hip arrives at the agents office they will do their utmost to sell off the trash and hide the jewels. It is easy to sell a decent property at a bargain price because they sell themselves with no effort and so the agent will always do what it takes to get the rubbish off the books first.
They do so by selling the positives and never revealing any of the negatives. They know full well if a motorway is planned nearby or a new ring road or a big factory or whatever but it will not be revealed. They will not mention dry rot, woodworm, subsidence, damp, bad electrics or septic tank problems. Anything that might hinder a sale will strike them either dumb or leave them offering a vague not too sure sort of look. They will always sweep away problems by saying it is not in their remit and that they are only the agents and that the buyer should seek other professionals. This is untrue and unprofessional and is compounded by the fact that most agents have only been agents for five minutes and they genuinely have not got a clue what they are doing.
You will have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince in France. ( No pun intended ). That is to say that you will need to reject all of the property that is rubbish and discard all the lies and clever double talk the agents have to offer before you get to seeing something worth looking at. Then you will begin to arrive at what is really on offer in France which is decent property at a reasonable price. Remember there is no such thing as a bargain and so the cheap house is cheap for a very good reason and the expensive one is also expensive for a good reason. Location location location.
The French do not want to live or own a shed or an old barn that is falling down or a pile of stones that collapsed two hundred years ago. They do not want to spend years having battles with the authorities over planning and electricity and sewage and water and gas and so on. They do not want to start employing expensive tradesmen and firms to put up a new roof or new floors, bathrooms, kitchens, septic tanks etc and the days of doing it all yourself are over because like all other EU countries France is now very much in line with regulations and it has become an offence to carry out work that is regulated and requires a qualified sign off.
DIY can make your property unsaleable and you can end up being sued years later unless the correct papers can be produced. The French authorities are coming down hard now and the French prefer to buy without the hassle and so should anyone else. Ignore that pile of stones or the old cow shed. It simply is not worth the money, trouble and inconvenience any more. Buy a proper house that started life as a house and not someone's abandoned DIY project.
Bear this in mind when viewing. So many houses have been bought up and renovated by amateurs that you can end up with a can of worms. Pipes and electrics along with rot and infestation and poor workmanship on every level can easily be hidden behind walls and plaster. So many people have bought up renovated sheds and buildings only to start to discover one problem after another. Lintels that should be steel made from cheap soft wood propping up a hundred tons of stone work. DIY electrical wiring that is a fire risk. Plumbing with UK connections and pipe work instead of French which causes problems for years to come. Home made cess pits, soft wood roof joists, cement floors without damp proofing, walls made of all sorts and gas fitting that is potentially lethal.
Be very aware of the DIY guy unless he is qualified ( which virtually none are despite what they might say) and also any signs of renovation without proper French documented paperwork which is always supplied by the properly accredited French professionals. Without it there can be major expense and more trouble than you can shake a stick at. Agents operating in France will not mention any of this although they know the problems well enough.
So we come to what to buy. The first thing to look for is property advertised without any agent involved. The French look in the newspapers or they look on something called ‘Le Bon Coin’. The other route the French take is to go directly to the Notaires office ( one in almost every town and some villages ) and ask to see what is available. This way there are no agency fees except the Notaires fee which is still a fee for property sales. You will save many thousands this way. If however you go direct to a seller through a newspaper ad or Le Bon Coin or other similar places you have no fee to pay other than legal fees and government duty the same as the UK. The fees are fixed and fair to everyone.
Agents and agency fees are not fair to anyone except the agent and can be staggeringly high. Some agents charge 6% but that is rare. Most will try to hit you with a hidden 10 or 12 % and some will go as far as 20% if they can get away with it. The very best advice to save your money and a lot of misery is ; DO NOT USE AN ESTATE AGENCY OR ANY AGENT ATTACHED TO ANY AGENCY IN FRANCE UNDER ANY CIIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER. You will be ripped off and deceived from day one.
Assuming you have wisely cut out the thought of dealing with agents you can proceed without caution. Telephoning and setting up a viewing privately is easy enough. Remember these people want a large lump of money for their property and that incentive usually brings out the ability to speak English so even if you are not a French speaker or your are limited in French you will still have few problems. Most people in France speak some English and those that do not know plenty who do and they will be willing to do what they can if it means a sale of their property.
Top tips;
Always avoid using any French Estate Agency ( Immobiliere) or any person working for one or attached to one. You will be ripped off for thousands if you do and they offer a very bad service (if you could call it that). Avoiding French estate agents cannot be emphasised enough and if you decide not to heed the warnings then you will be one of those that finds out the hard way.
Buy private or through a French property lawyer (Notaire). These legal professionals also sell on behalf of clients and their fees are set by government and regulated. They are qualified professionals. Even if you buy private you will still need their services.
Do not waste time and money going through English based solicitors. They have no jurisdiction and no legal status in France. All they do is have documents translated and tell you what it says and charge a fortune for it. Easy money taken from mugs. Don’t waste your hard earned cash. English lawyers are no use at all in France and the French legal profession scoff at them and have very little time for what they see as the English interfering in matters they know nothing about. They are as much use as a Japanese lawyer trying to deal with the British legal system. Expensive, silly and another rip off. If you buy in France use a French Notaire. Quick, reasonable and very professional. They act for both parties at the same time and have everything all at once on the desk.
Do not part with any money unless it is with a Notaire.
Never sign anything in France unless it is with a Notaire. The French will always want a certain innocent bit of paper signed for some reason or another. Refuse every time. Sign in the presence of a legal professional only.
Never make any agreements even verbal ones in France.
Do not purchase old ruins.
Do not purchase property without electricity or telephone lines.
Do not purchase renovation projects.
Do not purchase very remote properties.
Buy in a town or village properties in good order with all mains connected.
If you insist on going through an agency or an agent ( madness ) then offer to pay only 2% maximum of the purchase price. Ignore what they might say about their fees being fixed and nothing they can do. Put it this way if you see a property advertised for 400,000 you do not want to pay another 80,000 on top do you ? Or 50,000 or 30,000 or 20,000. These are crazy amounts but this is what agents are after and they get unsuspecting people to sign little bits of innocent looking paper every day that puts the law on their side and against the buyer who ends up being ripped off. Between two and three thousand is plenty enough.
Make sure that the agent is reducing their fee and not getting the seller to reduce their price in order to secure a sale. This is another dirty little trick the agents play. They promise a review of the massive fee they ask the buyer to pay and then pester the daylights out of the seller to reduce their price instead. Then when the seller says no and has had enough the agent comes back and says the sale has fallen through or they have sold to someone else. More lies. Watch out for that one.
Well that is about the long and short of buying and selling properties in France. Frank and brutal but far better to know the pitfalls. The rest is up to you.
Good luck!
