Real Estate: Buy/Rent, Ads, Portals, Services, Information

Vocabulary and explanation of French property terms:
- my French-English dictionary of French real estate terms.
- france-property-and-information.

See my page about renting property in France, including housing benefit.

Locate a parking space for short or long term use online: oumegarer.com

CIL (Comité Interprofessionnel de Logement). Schemes associated with Action Logement to help renting or buying property, particularly when moving because of work. The CILs are regionally organised. This link has a directory of the CILs.

Alliance Sud Expertise. Real estate specialists in Gard, Hérault and Vaucluse: Measuring, reports (lead, asbestos, termites), valuations etc.
Batirenover. Help and advice for building renovation.
Bluebluesky.net. Help and advice for building renovation and property purchase.
Parisrealestatefinders.com. House hunting service (rent & buy), help and advice for property purchase in Paris. Former lawyer and former doctor from New York find property to your specifications.
Directory-france.com. Directory listing English-speaking businesses and individuals offering services related to French property or France
French Property News. Information in English about French real estate.
Mopimmo. Index of many estate agents. Links to regional real estate ad sites.

Risks related to property

Water quality. This government site shows the test results of drinking water for all public water networks.
Risk Map. Maps and lists of risks commune by commune for the entire France. Flooding, earthquake, industrial, forest fires etc.
Map of polluting sites.
Radioactivity map. Map of radioactivity levels.

Official crime figures for France by département (county). Before renting or buying property, it may be a good idea to find out how the crime figures are for that area. However, within a given crime statistics area, crime may obviously vary a lot with local conditions. Talking to the locals is sometimes the only way of finding out if a particular area is in a crime area.

Transferring Money to France for Buying Property

When purchasing a property overseas you will need to transfer money. Your local UK high street bank is usually one of the most expensive ways of doing it. Exchange rates and commissions provided by UK high street banks are significantly less favourable than those typically offered by specialist foreign exchange brokers, and many banks are not transparent about the amount of commissions directly or indirectly debited. In addition to a flat fee, you would typically lose about 3% of the amount transferred by a UK bank. For £100,000, that amounts to £3,000. Ask your bank for a quote and compare their rate with the European Central Bank rate to check this. Your bank may tell you that this is the interbank rate and that nobody can obtain that. But for some reason, if you use a Danish bank to transfer and change pound sterling, you will lose only about 0.2% plus a flat fee of a few pounds. Ask yourself what happens to the 2.8%.

Unfortunately, you can't use a Danish bank to transfer money from the UK to France, so the next best solution is a currency broker such as Foreign Currency Direct. An estimate of the typical savings are in the region of 1% to 2%, or £1,000 to £2,000 saved for every £100,000 transferred.

Also see the section about mortgages, money transfer etc. for more links and information about money transfer to France.

Information about buying and selling property in France

Buy-property-from-owner. Information about buying directly from the owner without an estate agent (realtor). In English.
The French Property Daily. Online news about French property. In English.

Property Price Statistics

According to an article on 19 May 2011 in UFC Que Choisir - the most important French consumer association - referring to the French statistical office INSEE, property prices have increased by 141% between 1998 and 2011 (i.e. if a property was worth €100,000 in 1998, it would be worth €241,000 in 2011). Compared with households' available revenue, property prices have increased 40% over the same period (i.e. a drop in purchasing power). Rent increases, on the other hand, have been closer to salary increases. These figures are national averages. There can be significant regional variations.

UFC Que Choisir conclude that for this reason, it is no longer attractive to buy to let. The annual return on investment in terms of annual rent was only 4.6% of the purchase price in 2006, whereas it was 7.4% in 1996. These are gross figures before deduction of property tax (taxe foncière) and other charges, notably maintenance.

Property prices by region. Feature provided by Le Figaro, based on 2011 property prices.

Capital gains tax on real estate

Please refer to my tax page.

Building Standards and Quality

French standards for buildings, particularly thermal insulation, electrical safety and other safety matters may seem to a Nordic to evolve at a snail's pace. Someone from a Nordic country may often find himself set back 20 years or more when comparing French and Nordic building quality. For many French owners, particularly those who have constructed to rent, the motto seems to be to systematically use the cheapest materials. If they can save €50 on a circuit breaker that isn't strictly mandatory, then they'll rather save the €50 and risk that the house burns down because of a short circuit or that someone is electrocuted.

There is no obligation to bring existing electrical installations up to standard when new standards are introduced. That means that there is a number of old houses with very old and hazardous electric installations because they haven't been touched since the installation was put in. You can find fuses where the fuse is a lead wire that has to be screwed in manually, popularly called fusibles tabatières. On such an old installation, it may not even be known which power rating the lead wire fuse has to be, and a careless person who finds it difficult to find these rare lead wires in shops could easily just screw in a piece of copper wire that won't melt in case of a short circuit, meaning a cable elsewhere in the house could go on fire.

Even on a house built as recently as 1995, I realised that only half the installation was protected by a 30 mA differential circuit breaker. That means that if a child put a finger in a bulb socket, there would be no security to save the child from electrocution. According to the electrician who put in another circuit breaker to protect the entire installation as soon as I realised this, that was legal in 1995.

Both buyers and tenants need to beware of such potential safety issues. For a buyer, the issue is the cost of bringing the installation up to standard. For a tenant, the issue is convincing the landlord to bring the installation up to standard. Even though the electricity norms don't oblige the landlord to do it, the tenant car refer to Law number 89-462 Article 6 that says that rented property must be of a "decent" standard that doesn't expose the tenant to health and safety risks, and Decree number 2002-120 that details the standards for a "decent" dwelling. However, if the landlord appears unwilling to respect his obligations from the start, it is better not to rent his property, as the relations risk being troubled from day one.

Real Estate and Lettings Listings

For holiday rentals, please go to the travel part of this site.

Note: In principle, estate agent sites would fit here, but because of the vast number of estate agents in France, it is impossible to include them. In order not to discriminate, I will therefore not list any, although it cannot be guaranteed that a few will not slip through the net. Any site that can reasonably be characterised as a portal or property search or information site of general interest will be listed.

Open Directory (DMOZ) listing of French property advert sites.

NOTE: I discourage paying any fees, whether by credit card or premium rate phone numbers, for watching ads or obtaining contact information, something practised by a few sites.

TIP: On some of the sites below, such as for example seloger.com, you can only obtain contact details for the estate agent if you call the site's premium rate phone number, or if you wait a few days until the contact details are shown. Annoying, isn't it? Either it's a rip-off, or someone else gets in front of the queue. Well, there is a way around it which is entirely free and legal. Seloger.com tells you the company number of the estate agent. It is 9 digits long and is either called RCS or SIREN. Sometimes, it may be called SIRET and be 14 digits long. The SIRET is the same as SIREN/RCS + 5 digits. So if you have a 14-digit SIRET number, the first 9 digits are the SIREN and also the RCS. Armed with the SIREN/RCS number, go to www.infogreffe.com, www.manageo.fr or www.societe.com to look up the company name. Sometimes you may also find their phone number there. Otherwise, use the yellow pages at www.pagesjaunes.fr to look up the phone number. If that doesn't work either, try to Google them or guess the name of their website.

Bilingual sites in English and French

Main country-wide sites with good search facilities and choice

LesClesDuMidi.com. Property to buy and let. Same company as Mopimmo.
La Fôret. Large estate agent chain. Property to buy and let. Multilingual site.
Immostreet. Property to buy and let. Certain ads the same as Seloger.

Sites with specific focus or with simplistic search facilities, little choice or regional only

Agent-immobilier-france. Property to buy. 
Demeures. Property to buy. Specialises in larger properties, historic buildings, châteaux.
Demeures-de-charme. Person to person. Property to buy. Specialises in larger properties, historic buildings, châteaux. Part of De Particulier à Particulier.
Emile Garcin. Estate agents. Prestigious real estate in Provence, Paris, Côte Basque, Riviera, Deauville, Bordeaux, Lyons.
France-property-and-information.com. French property for sale. Multilingual.
French Connections. Property to buy.
French Property. Property to buy and let.
French Property Links. Property to buy.
French Property News. Property to buy.
GP Immo. Also known as Pierre Immo. Property to buy. GP Immo lists many agencies' properties on a commission basis so the agents you contact will actively search for you. This is inspired on the American model.
ImmoFrance. Property to buy and let. Multilingual.
Immogo. Property to buy directly from the owners without estate agent (realtor). Multilingual.
Property-France. Property to buy directly from the owners without estate agent (realtor). Multilingual.
Seymour James. Property to buy. Limited choice and only crude search facility. 

Sites in French

Main country-wide sites with good search facilities and choice

A vendre A louer. Property to buy and let.
Appelimmo. Person to person (no agents). Property to buy.
Le Bon Coin. Free classified ads. Property to buy and let.
Cheznous. Property to buy and let.
Explorimmo. Property to buy and let.
FNAIM. Large organisation of more then 8000 estate agents. Property to buy and let. The other language versions of this site are severely incomplete.
L'Internaute. Property to buy and let.
Logic Immo. Property to buy and let. Site regrouping ads from several agents.
Mon-adresse. Property to buy and let.
Openmedia. Property to buy and let.
SeLoger. One of the most important sites. Property to buy and let. Certain ads the same as Immostreet.
Topannonces. Property to buy and let.
Wikipit. This site crawls the web for property ads and lists everything found.

Sites with specific focus or with simplistic search facilities, little choice or regional only

123ici.com. Property to buy and let.
123immo. Property to buy and let.
4immobilier. Estate agent network in parts of France. Property to buy and let.
A3inet. Property to buy.
Abonim. Property to buy and let.
Adoos. Free ads. Property to buy and let.
Agoradom. Property to buy and let. Covers only parts of France.
Annoncenet. Property to buy and let. Part of the Mixad network.
AnnoncesJaunes. Property to buy and let from the publisher of Pages Jaunes - the French Yellow Pages.
Annonciade. Property to buy and let. Part of the Mixad network.
Aparapar. Person to person (no agents). Property to buy and let.
Appart-in-france. Property to buy and let.
Bureaux-commerces. Commercial property only.
Centreimmo. Property in Auvergne, Bourgogne, Centre and Limousin.
Chateaux-belles-demeures. Property to buy. Specialises in larger properties, historic buildings, châteaux. French version of property-for-sale-in-france.fr.
Colocation. In French. Share rented property with others.
Craigslist France. Free classifieds.
Directgestion. Property to buy. Focus on real estate for investment.
Entreparticuliers.com. The company owning this site, and its director, were fined 165,000 euros for misleading advertising on the 2 July 2009 and ordered to pay a total of 36,865 euros in damages. Only use this site for browsing ads. Do not post ads (which may end up being much more expensive than you thought) and do not call premium rate phone numbers.
Eurimmo. Property to buy and let.
Evannonce. Property to buy and let.
Focusfrance. Property to buy.
Gratissimmo. Person to person (no agents). Property to buy and let.
Immo-free. Property to buy and let.
Immoabc. Property to buy and let.
Immoannonce. Property to buy and let. Part of the Mixad network.
Immorapide. Property to buy and let.
Immo-web. Property to buy and let. 
Journaldesparticuliers. Property to buy and let.
Kel-koloc. Share rented property with others.
Lodgis. Apartments in Paris for sale or rental, furnished or unfurnished.
Maisons du Sud. Property to buy in southern France.
Micimmo.com. Property to buy.
OLX. Free. Property to buy and let.
ORPI. Organisation of estate agents. Property to buy and let. Only few ads.
Ouestfrance-immo. Property to buy and let. Only Bretagne, Basse-Normandie, Pays de la Loire.
Parténaire Européen. Person to person. Property to buy.
Particulier. Person to person. Property to buy and let. 
De Particulier à Particulier. Person to person. Property to buy and let.
ParuVendu. Property to buy and let.
Proprietes de France. Prestige real estate to buy.
Reflex-immo. Property to buy and let.
Residences-secondaires. Secondary homes to buy.
Le Site Immo. Property to buy and let.
LeSiteImmobilier. Property to buy and let. Owned by Priceminister.com
Sitimmo. Property to buy and let.
Sudouest-immo. Property to buy and let. Aquitaine and neighbouring areas.
Trefle. Free ads.

Sites in English

Main country-wide sites with good search facilities and choice

1st-for-French-Property. Property to buy. Multilingual.

Sites with specific focus or with simplistic search facilities, little choice or regional only

123immo. Property to buy and let.
Creme-de-Languedoc.com. Languedoc-Rousillon: Property to buy.
Easyfrenchlife. Property to buy. Aims to list only owners advertising directly without agent.
Findhomeabroad. Property to buy.
Francepropertyshop. Property to buy.
Franimo. Property to buy. Focus on older, authentic properties, often in need of repair.
Property-for-sale-in-france. Property to buy. Specialises in larger properties, historic buildings, châteaux. English version of chateaux-belles-demeures.com.
Myfrenchproperty. Property to buy and let A network of estate agents in south west France. 

© Copyright Finn Skovgaard 2001, 2011. All rights reserved.