Buying a house in France is a serious business for anyone. Whether you're selling up lock, stock and barrel and moving to France permanently, or you're fortunate enough to be searching for a French holiday home, the expense is still considerable. So why do we see so many people treat buying a house in France with so little common sense? It's not a pair of shoes - you can't take it back if it doesn't fit right!
Yet month after month we hear the same stories. Someone who has bought a French house on a whim and is now starting to find problems. Who are these people? They must be pretty wealthy to just go round buying French property as the fancy takes them.
The crazy thing is, nothing could be further from the truth. Often - in fact more often than not - these are people putting their life savings, their whole future, into their French dream house.
And a frightening number of them haven't got a clue. They've done next to no research, they don't speak the language and they've sought no expert advice.
Then when things go wrong they start complaining about the system, the language, the French, the agent... just about anything and everything is to blame but themselves. They treated buying a house in France like buying a lottery ticket and now they're complaining because their one-in-a-million gamble didn't pay off!
Now maybe you think I'm being a bit extreme. I'm not. I know one couple who you would think of as very sensible and level-headed who signed an agreement to buy a French property while on holiday. They weren't even looking for a house when they left England but they fell in love with the place.
What they didn't know was that by the time they got back to the UK ten days later, getting out of the deal would cost them 12,000 Euros.
I can give you another example of a couple who bought a French property to live in part and turn the rest into gites. They wildly underestimated the renovation costs (because they didn't ask) and now live in a place that needs a new roof. They can't finish the work so they've only got small pensions to live off. The house is in a bad way so they can't afford to sell and return to England either.
It's all very sad, really. I hear one of these stories about every other month and it's such a shame. Now I'm no saint, I've made plenty of mistakes myself living over here and renovating an old French property, but fortunately my mistakes have been fairly minor because I've always checked and double checked the big things.
Which is, when you strip it all back to basics, all anybody has to do.
The French property market offers a wealth of opportunities and buying a house in France is neither particularly difficult nor particularly complicated. The problem is that unless you're French or you've bought French property before it IS different. There will be things you haven't come across before. There will be things that don't go quite according to plan.
The important thing is to get some knowledge behind you. Search the internet, buy a book or two, ask questions - and don't stop asking questions until you're satisfied with the answers.
France is a great place to live but it's not dreamland and miracles don't happen very often. If you stumble around blindly in the French property market you will get hurt. Do your homework however and buying a house in France will be a delight - which is what it should be and what I wish for everyone who comes here.
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