hey everyone in today's video i wanted
to talk to you about buying a property
in france
and i wanted to share with you my
experience with
buying properties in france and to
provide you with some information and
some
suggestions that might help you when
you're buying a property in france or if
you're just curious how the process
works
so my wife and i have had the privilege
of being able to purchase two properties
in france so far we purchased our
first property in the summer of 2019
it was a one bedroom apartment in which
we had been living for
uh four years prior to buying it so we
bought it directly from the owners
and the second property we were able to
purchase was
just last year a two-bedroom apartment
that um we actually purchased
through an agency that we were with whom
we were visiting properties
so those are two different cases we were
able to keep the first one
and to rent it out and to move into a
slightly bigger apartment
and those two sales actually gave us
some good
personal experience with buying a
property in france and
also just to preface this by saying that
i worked on the marketing team for three
years for a luxury real estate
uh buyer's agency in france and actually
their
their business model revolves around
helping
affluent international buyers buying a
property in france
and while working for that company since
it was a small company
in terms of employees i was also helping
with
setting up sales mandates and also
providing a
sales support for our team in the field
and that also allowed me to really learn
quite a bit about the french buying
process
now the first thing you want to
consider when you want to buy a property
in france is to
determine how you're going to finance
your purchase so if you're a cash buyer
that's an easy one uh moving on to the
next
point for those cases unless obviously
you're a cash buyer but you
have a currency other than euro well
then you're going to have to look into
a foreign exchange you know trading
expert that can help you trade your
currency into euros for the best price
and that is definitely well advised um
but in my case in our case with my wife
and i uh we financed
both of our uh purchases uh
virtually fully through uh you know
credit with uh
with a french bank or a french mortgage
so
in our case and i think in the large
majority of cases when you're financing
your home primarily through
a mortgage uh you have to meet with your
banker
your your your bank advisor and to
schedule an appointment this is
something that is done frequently you
schedule an appointment with your
account manager at your bank and you
determine with
he or she your purchasing power with
your your ability to obtain a credit so
it's basically an
estimate and they will
take into account several factors
including your age
uh your salary your
field or your your career field and with
that they will determine what your
lending capability is and so for each
time for both purchase
for both properties that we purchased
each time we made sure that we knew what
our maximum budget was
uh so we had a you know a maximum budget
knowing that
up to a certain budget we had a very
good chance that the bank would lend us
the money
so once we had that in place the next
step
is obviously well for me it's
to find a notary for the first purchase
especially we didn't have any note
any notaries uh in mind because in
france
uh it's a very well regulated system for
purchasing real estate
and uh the process goes through a notary
and i think a lot of people may tend to
make the mistake if they're a first time
buyer
to um to make the purchase
going through the seller's notary
because
um the compromi de vant which is the
uh sales promise is written
by the buyer's notary if there is one
and the sales deed all right let me say
that in the reverse actually the
compliment of
the sales promise is written by the sale
by the seller's notary and
the normally the buyer's notary is the
one that would write the sales deed so
the final
uh sales deed of purchase so we had a
recommendation from a friend in
marseille who suggested
a phenomenal notary and he's still our
notary today we've used him for both
purchases and we've also used him for
other services and the advantage of
having your own notary
is this as a general rule of thumb the
buyer pays for
the notary fees and if you have
a no matter how many notaries are
involved in the process
they split the same fee amongst
themselves so it doesn't matter if you
have one notary two notaries
or i guess in certain cases you could
have more than two uh the fee will
always stay
the same it's a percentage of the price
and it's more it most it varies but it's
mostly between seven
seven to maybe ten percent of the sales
price
so for us it's no extra cost included
and when you have your own notary as a
buyer
that notary is protecting your interests
whereas the
seller's notary is more inclined to
protect the interest
of the seller so normally obviously they
have to
have to follow the rules and the laws
but there are cases where having
having your own notary as a buyer can
protect you
an example would be for the first for
the first purchase
uh there was some expensive uh building
projects that had been voted on by the
co-ownership
of the building and that involved
re re-isolating the roof so redoing the
roofing and also
to redo the facade which is very costly
and so my notary representing my
interest
negotiated to make sure that there was a
clause in the company the vault which is
the
sales promise also can be called promise
devonte it's the same thing
promise devon company is virtually the
same things
uh so just keep that in mind but he
was able to negotiate on our behalf that
any costs
voted on by the co pro property
prior to the date of the signature of
the sales promise
would be covered by the previous owner
so the seller in this case
and we would only incur costs of the
co-ownership of the building
that would be voted on after the signing
of the
promise of sale and that we would also
have the ability
to therefore vote in the upcoming um
co-ownership meeting so that's just one
case
but um yeah it's definitely
worth having your own notary and rest
assured it won't entail you paying more
notary fees because once again those
notary fees are split among the seller
in the buyer's notary so don't worry
about that
but definitely find your own notary
that's very
uh very much advised so
then after you find the property that
you want
and you uh you you want to make an offer
on the price
you can make what's called an offradasha
and you basically in writing put down
the amount that you wish to offer to the
seller
um if the seller doesn't accept then you
can negotiate from there but let's say
the offer is accepted
uh and the normally the seller will
write on will sign the
sales offer uh and we'll say that he
agrees to the offer and at that point
uh the seller is binded to the sale if
he's agreed to that purchase offer
uh in writing in signature in most cases
he's binded to the sale
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whereas the buyer has
many occasions throughout the buying
process
to actually decide to note to not
proceed
with the sale and will not incur any
penalties so in that case in france
which
what what i really like is that uh the
buyer is very protected
but on the contrary uh the seller is uh
quite quickly binded to the sales so uh
sellers beware make sure that um
that uh you're sure of your decisions
when you're proceeding with the with the
selling process of your property
so once the offer is accepted you need
to go
to your your notary for the um
for the notary that you've chosen to
represent you as the buyer and you need
to
inform him that the offer has been
accepted and
at that point the notary will then begin
uh writing up the sales promise the
compromise
and he will or she will ask you for lots
of different information which you will
have to provide
and he or she will also be working with
the seller's notary to
have all that information because the
seller's notary is the one who
registered or recorded the sales deeds
so they will have
a lot of that information already
available
the seller will also will have to
provide
to the buyer's notary uh the diet the
diagnostics of the apartment which
includes you know the the state of the
apartment in terms of electricity
plumbing
uh square meters you know an exhaustive
list of things that's a legal
requirement
and at that point you can also begin to
inform your
bank about your your your bank advisor
your your account manager that
you plan on making on requesting a loan
and so that they can proceed with giving
you
um what's will get with locking in an
estimate for you
uh perhaps they already did when you
were estimating how much you could
borrow
but you want to make sure that the
banker is aware that you're ready to
move forward
and so that they can proceed with
locking in the rates for you
in the terms and you'll have to
provide the banker with the signed
company devonte which can take a couple
months
it can take at the earliest a month and
a half so you'd be looking at about a
month to three months for the
complimentary vault
to be created and signed
and once that's signed you take that to
your bank advisor
and you um and with that they're
able to uh what's called the offer
so the credit offer the mortgage offer
and that is actually the
you know the finalized terms that
they're offering you
and that can only be done with the
complimenta vault also you can go
through
a third party service that can help
contact different banks not necessarily
your own bank but they can
contact different banks in order to get
you the best rates possible so that's
also something that we looked into
we actually used in the first purchase
but in the end
our bank had better rates than what the
third party was able to get us
um so in the end we went with our own
bank but you don't have to
if you find better rates elsewhere
you're definitely free to uh
sign with whoever you want so that was
the the process of
securing the loan from the bank once the
loan has been approved which can take
up to you know for us it was each time
it was about a month or so
the first time was a month the second
time was two months but there was covet
in the mix too so that made things more
complicated
once you are able to sign the documents
finalizing the mortgage at that point
you have to inform your
notary the buyer's notary which is in
your case you're the buyer
and that way he can know that a date can
be scheduled
for the signature of the sales deed and
he will then proceed with creating the
sales deed as the buyer because you will
become the owner so
since he represents you he will make the
sales deed
and he will keep it registered in his uh
his office of of notary so once
everybody is in agreement to the date of
the sales deed you meet
you go over all the clauses together and
at that point you sign and it's at that
moment that you officially become the
owner of your property
and you want to receive the official
sales deed
until about 10 months after but you will
have a a certificate and
you know like an attestation like a
certificate basically
to show that you have uh ownership while
you're waiting for the publishing or the
other publishing of the
official sales deed
so that's basically the gist of it it's
um
we learned a lot it's quite it's it's a
very good process
there's a lot to take into account but
um
it's a well it's well worth the process
and the fact that it's so rigorous in
france means that
you're you're quite protected from you
know volatile conditions
for the most part so uh i hope this
video was helpful for you
and if i missed anything or if you have
any further questions definitely drop a
comment below
and i'll be glad to help as as best as
possible
obviously this is just my experience and
this isn't uh legal or official advice
but
with having purchased already two
properties i i've gained
a good experience with that and um will
like to help you as best as i can
uh also please do subscribe if you
haven't already and like and click like
if you like this video and
i look forward to seeing you in the next
one thanks guys
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