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Some things you need to know about how French property estate
agents operate.
Apart from private and individual property owners, only registered
estate agents (individuals or enterprises that have Carte Professionale
status) and Notaires can sell French properties to you.
To be able to offer a property to you, an estate agent in France
must first have received, in writing, permission from the owner(s)
of the property to offer it for sale. This is known as a mandate.
French estate agents are regulated by law in France and it is difficult
to start-up as one without going through a wealth of bureaucracy
(well it is France). Estate agents must be licensed and hold
indemnity insurance.
To be licensed, estate agents
in France must have a Carte Professionale. To get a Carte Professionale,
the individual must either have professional qualifications or experience
of estate agency in France. The Carte Professionale must be renewed
annually and its number and place of issue should be shown on the
agent's letterhead at their office and in advertising etc.
To be able to take and hold a deposit from you, estate agents in
France have to be able to offer you a guarantee for at least €75,000.
To do that, they have to have a guarantor (usually a bank) and this
guarantor should be on display in the estate agents offices and
on their letterheads.
Otherwise (and if you prefer), any deposit money should be paid
in to the Notaires account.
Estate Agents Commission
- This is usually added into the published asking price,
so it is you, the buyer, that pays it, rather than the seller.
It is imperative to check, therefore, exactly what the price quoted
by the agent comprises. Commission is generally higher than in the
UK often as high as 7% or 8%, although in this buyers market, expect
this to be reduced. If not, you can always ask. This commission
level reflects the increased amount of background work needed to
be carried out by the agent, as opposed to their UK based counterparts
(checking title by the seller, for example).
When researching French properties for sale, either on the internet
or, indeed, window browsing when you are in France, you need to
bear two things in mind.
The property may well be on sale with another agent at a lower
price.
The property may already have been sold.
Obviously, no estate agent would deliberately set out to mislead
you, but often one of the problems of multiple estate agent listings
by a property owner is confusion over pricing and when, in fact,
a property is sold. Often, perhaps after an agent has persuaded
a seller to drop the price, this new price is not communicated to
the other estate agents handling the property. Similarly when a
property is sold, the seller sometimes neglects to notify all the
agents they have appointed of the fact, and you can be sure that
the successful agent will not waste time informing all their competitors.
Sadly, another reason estate agents list properties for sale on
their websites and in their windows, even though they have been
sold already, is to lure you in.
As part of our property search for you, we will make sure that
the properties we present to you are, in fact, still for sale and,
if handled by more than one estate agent, which one has the lowest
price listed.
Having decided upon a property to view, if through an estate agent,
you will be asked to sign a document called a Bon de Visite before
proceeding. Sometimes known as a Bon de Recherche et de Visite,
signing one for each property to be visited, is standard procedure
and does not place you under any obligation to actually buy the
property. What it does do, is safeguard the agent from you negotiating
direct with the owner (or another estate agent). It locks you into
buying that particular property or properties from the estate agent
whose Bon de Visite you have signed.
It is normal practice in France for the estate agent to accompany
you when visiting a property, regardless of whether the owner will
be present. Indeed, it is fairly unusual in France, for the estate
agent to hold the keys to all the properties they have on their
books. This is mainly because the property will probably on the
books of several estate agents and the owner is unable, or unwilling
to have several sets of keys cut. This is quite understandable when
you consider that some of these keys can be 200 years old and more!
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