Finding Property in France
After choosing the region you want to live, your greatest challenge is to find the property yoy want. Like in the UK, most property is sold through estate agents known as immobilier or immo for short. Unlike the UK there are few large chains of estate agents. Most property is exclusive to small local immobilier so if you want to find the right place you need to get out there. Fortunately there are enough agents on the internet that you can start your search in google before you leave. In areas popular with the English the larger immobilier are likely to have an agent who speaks English, but the smaller ones will not. One of the greater frustration for the English is not the lamguage but the slow pace at which things are done. Do not expect to be able to walk into an immobilier and immediately sit down to discuss your requirments. You may be lucky but it is more likely that they will want to take your name and arrange an appointment for a few days time! Enevitably it is going to take several visits to find what you want and you will have to be organised to arrange appointments before you go. On your first visit to a region look out for the free magazines outside some of the immobilier. These usually cover a whole region and help you locate other agents quickly. You can also subscribe to them when you get back home so that you can plan exactly what you want to look at next time out The french are much more precise than us at specifying a property, They almost always give accurate figures for habitable area of a house and the land accompanying. They also have a classification system that is very useful to know. If you see T1/T2/T3 or F1/F2/F3, the number is the number of rooms excluding kitchen and bathroom, while T and F losely mean flat and house. 4 faces means detached, 3 faces means end of terrace or semi-detahced, 2 faces means terrraced. Most of these are written in French and even if you speak a little of the lingo, the immobilier have their own way of saying things, so here is a glossary to help you out with some of the more commonly used words and phrases.
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