OT: estate agent house descriptions

[Mary Fisher]

....

Well, it depends what you want ... for starters I'd want a house, not a property :-)

A son in law is a builder, he admits that he calls a brick in a field a propery.

Mary

[Lobster]

Another example of synchronicity between your two professions, Dave?

David

[Andy Hall]

As a matter of interest, what does an estate agent charge and to whom do they charge it?

[David in Normandy]

I suppose we're fortunate in having a house that we love. It needs lots of work though, so I'm always foraging on here for useful DIY tips. The garden is over an acre. As we are both keen gardeners and have a loathing for town life this "property" suits us ideally. It is great to look out of the windows and to see fields and woods stretching for miles with just the occasional farm house dotted amongst them. The only down side is the garden is perhaps a bit too big (eyes bigger than belly syndrome) so at times it seems we are not so much gardeners as "park keepers". Not complaining though :-)

[Andy Hall]

You're a grave man (with apologies to William)

[David in Normandy]

Everything to do with buying and selling of houses in France is different to the UK. Agent fees can be very high in France compared to the UK and are supposedly paid by the seller, but in practice are added to the sales price to recoup. There are also higher taxes to pay when buying a house. However, these fees are usually more than offset by the price of homes here in France. If our house/garden was magically moved to anywhere in the UK it would be worth at least five times as much as here.Or to look at it the other way around you get a lot more house here for your money than in the UK. That is a generalisation of course - city properties can be expensive here too.

[Andy Hall]

OK.

I heard that there is a way to recover TVA on improvements to homes as well as new builds but only if done by a "professional". Is that right?

As to agent fees, it should be no problem if they do a proper job. In the U.S. 6% is typical.

In the UK, EAs are generally wideboys who just play the numbers game.

[David in Normandy]

As a DIYer I cannot reclaim any VAT (TVA) on building materials. Occasionally the government give tax breaks on various types of work - last year it was the fitting of wood burning stoves / heating. However it must be fitted by the relevant professional tradesman to get the tax break.

There are lots of laws in France that differ to the UK. Some seem plain weird. In France all building / renovation work etc must be done by a properly French registered tradesman or such improvements cannot be offset against the subsequent resale of a property. Many of the laws are "protectionist" towards trades and heavily penalise those doing DIY.

So for example if someone buys a property here for 100k, spends 50k on DIY materials for renovation but ends up having to sell the property at a "small loss" at say 140k. The loss of 10k is not recognised by the tax man here. As far as the tax man is concerned you bought for 100, sold for 140 so made a 40k profit and will be taxed on 40k profits!!!

It gets worse! If you sell within two years you have to share the "profit" with the previous owner of the property. In the example above this means you have to give 20k to the previous owner! You don't get any choice in this - the taxman (notaire) handling the sale (and money) deducts this and other taxes automatically giving you the remainder.

There is a lot of "buyer beware" in France, and buying a property is not something to be entered into lightly without lots of research before hand.

[Peter Lynch]

Yes this is the single biggest pain with buying in the UK. When I was looking for this place I kept asking "how many square feet?" and I never got a sensible reply. All they seem to care about are the number of bedrooms. One reason I think is that if you measure the _usable_ area of an average UK house, it's pityfully small. The one I eventually bought (where I'm writing this from) has about 750 sqft of space - excluding that taken up by the staircase. But it is 3 bedrooms ......

[Andrew Gabriel]

The other thing to be really careful about is what happens to a property if a husband or wife dies. It doesn't simply go to the surviving spouse automatically.

[David in Normandy]

Yes, inheritance laws are very different in France. In England you can leave what you want to who you like, with the default being everything passes to the spouse. In France the law says your children take a varying proportion. If there are estranged children from earlier marriages it can become quite a tangle with the spouse getting very little. Inheritance tax is also steep in France and kicks in at a very low threshold. All of which can sometimes leave the surviving spouse homeless and virtually destitute.

[Andy Hall]

So Sego didn't lose after all.

Meanwhile, Sarko has explained to les Americains how to conduct business honestly.

Never mind about all of that. I still like to make visits on the Route du Cidre.

[sm_jamieson]

They always use a wide-angle lens to fit everything in, especially rooms. This has the effect of making close things look larger, which in turn increases the sense of perspective, which results in the thing in the photo looking larger overall. Simon.

[djc]

which is the better: a beautiful house with an ugly view, or an ugly house with a beautiful view?

[Man at B&Q]

The latter, unless it's listed or in a conservation area.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

But Octarine walls just don't sell as easily as Magnolia.

MBQ

[Mike Clarke]

Not us! We're halfway up the side of a valley in the Yorkshire Dales, you'd need binoculars to find those opposite and very powerful ones to know what they were doing. One of the main reasons for choosing this house was the wonderful view.

[Mary Fisher]

We used to want something in the sticks too (NY Moors), until we realised how desirable it was to be within ten minutes of St James with its superb coronory care, urology and cancer departments. And LGI with its neuro-surgical facilities. I go for my mammograms and follow-ups to the hospital at the bottom of the street - easy walking distance even at my age.

Mary

[The Natural Philosopher]

You and your mammograms.

I recall the guff on my house garden was described as a 'wildlife haven' = No, not the local dogging spot, merely an acre of hawthorn nettle and elder scrub, full of the previous occupants lost golf balls.

[Owain]

I'm surprised it wasn't described as a golf course, or rough shooting.

Owain