From property purchase through renovation

I am considering making an offer to buy a house, due to language issues I was going to make the offer by email.

This would be our second house in France so we have been through the process before - just this time without an estate agent to limit the costs.

I have been told the email should contain certain stock phrases to limit liability.

Does anyone know what these stock phrases are.

Surely when you make an offer you are just stating what you are prepared to pay. At that point nothing is binding. Itā€™s only after the seller accepts the offer and you sit down and sign things that the wording becomes crucial.

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I was thinking much the same thingā€¦ we agreed over the telephone, then went off to meet the Owner (face to face)ā€¦ and sign the ā€œpromisā€ so neither of us could back out except by invoking the all-important get-out clausesā€¦:blush:

@Mat_Davies ā€¦ surely you need to be at the house, with the Sellerā€¦ to discuss just what is included in the priceā€¦ ???

@Stella

If only anything was included! The house is a wreck so fixtures & fittings etc arenā€™t really an issue!

just wonderingā€¦ are you sure you understand what you are taking onā€¦ ???

Are you sure you will get permission to doā€¦ whatever you are planning to doā€¦ ???

If you intend making an offer without any French then you are taking a huge gamble. At least you should find yourself an interpreter so you understand all the issues. After the offer is accepted, how will you cope with notaires etc?

He must have some French, this will be his second house purchase in France.

Really? enough to conduct a complicated real estate transaction??

I was replying to the ā€˜without anyā€™ comment. Thatā€™s quite different to insufficient or too technical.

So, OK as Stella says you make an offer then fo to the notaire and sign a comprims de vent. At what point do you need to understand some French?

Actuallyā€¦ I do hope the gentleman has enough French to know what he is undertaking ā€¦

Things are not always as straight forward as they might seem to beā€¦

Well I have made an offer and we wIll see what the result is = exciting stuff.

I am not phased by the English/French issue as we have been here before as @Aquitaine has correctly suggested, I was just after any stock phrases that it is sensible to include in an offer to purchase a property.

In terms of the house it is almost identical to the house we already own, just in a worse state. In have had two known builders go around the house to give me a 2nd and 3rd opinion.

Iā€™m sure we all wish you well in this venture Matā€¦

Perhaps you could come back with a new Topic, telling us how things progressā€¦ that would be really interesting ā€¦and it would be encouraging to others who might be (almost) as brave as you are. :blush:

How did it go?? Iā€™m anxious to hear, if only because I"m in the process of making an offer on a place. Thanks

Somewhat frustratingly we are still waiting to hear if our current offer has been accepted, there have been several lower rejected offers.

It seems to be a very slow process.

Other lower offers from yourself or others?

It has been a very long time indeed - I apologise for not replying sooner.

Eventually our offer was accepted (Mar 18) and things progressed quite quickly with the Notaireā€¦

At this point the doubts started to happen as to the overall viability of the project.

We eventually pulled out of the contract before the Acte de Vente was finalised, we lost our deposit which we knew would happen. It was an expensive episode but better to limit the expense at that point than proceed with the project.

We are continuing to look at alternate houses.

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Mat, I have to say that I had a similar sort of experience; I didnā€™t get to the point of paying the deposit. However, the experience with the local carpenters was excrutiating and puzzling, and downright disrespectful. And, perhaps it was because I was looking at property with similar issues as concerned viability of the repairs needed. I even had a structural engineer come in and look at it, and he found some obvious stuff that needed immediate attention that the carpenters/contractors hadnā€™t bothered to look at or mention. It wasā€¦complex; as Iā€™m sure yours sounds to have been.

But, itā€™s not going to stop me. It does make things interesting and a bit challenging, no? A few more gray hairs.

Itā€™s smart to have been serious enough to get to the point of making the deposit, but then I feel also smart to have had the guts to pull out. Not an easy thing to do, bravo to you. Sometimes I wonder if we would get the answers/responses, if we hadnā€™t actually acted to that extent. I chalk it up to my education costs :slight_smile:

Rather than losing a deposit, for my part, Iā€™m in danger of losing my french horn which I foolishly stored in the property (thinking I was surely going to buy it). I go back to retrieve said horn, in a few weeks. :blush:

I for one would be interested to learn what your next steps might be, and I would be happy to update on my discoveries and decisions for purchasing. Iā€™m now looking at Bourgogne, perhaps near Auxerre, in the Morvan forest preserve. There seem to be a lot of properties in my price range thereā€¦

Cheers! Onward.

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We have only gone and done it again!..

On Monday we have signed on the dotted line once more but for a different houseā€¦hopefully we wonā€™t have to pull out this time.

To give you an idea of the challenge ahead:

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And to top it off - this all happened on the day of Sterling falling to its lowest level in 3 years!