90 days out of 180 allowed in France

This shouldn’t have come as a shock though, to me it’s pretty clear - become a full-time resident here or just accept the Schengen rules and time your visits to maximise the 90 day allowance.

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It has been well known from the early days that this would be an issue
To be fair they may introduce ways round the issue,such as paid for long term visas etc, nothing will be straight forward though

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Eddie …thats what Im hoping that new ways round this are introduced. I suppose its a bargaining chip at the moment as there are a lot of us with feet in both camps and choosing is not an option. There is a good article on french-property news. It states …“As a result, though the property rights of second home/holiday homeowners will not be affected by the UK leaving the EU, it will constrain their ability to visit France. One possible solution is to apply for a visa de long séjour temporaire, which would grant a right to live in France for up to six months.” This is ok for us but I hope theres no need. I think the next round of talks are mid august.

Don’t hold your breath…

Very unlikely but you have to see this from the authoring company’s perspective, they want to continue to sell properties :wink:
One final thought… as Michel Barnier quite rightly said of Brexshit, «you can’t have your cake and eat it»

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I’m not sure the French government is going to be willing to issue possibly 0000’s of long stay visas just so UK holiday owners can spend more time here, it’s not really the purpose of these visas which are meant to be for students, workers or for a family emergency.

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Cant give up uk as family need us there.

Dont shoot the messenger but do they need you more than you need them?
Fence sitting will no longer be an option by the end of this year. 2020 will be forever remembered as the new normal and Brexit is part of that.

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I’m afraid it may just have to do for you and every other Brit who will become ‘non eu citizens’! Brexit means Brexit and Britain was idiotic enough to vote for it. France have no obligation to allow easy long stay visas to Brits just because they have a holiday home, it just isn’t going to happen.

If you are genuinely spending long times / 1/2 the time here why don’t you change your residency to France and ‘visit’ the UK?

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‘Choosing is not an option’
I was going to say How can you say this? But I realized in fact you are right. Choosing is not an option, it is an obligation.

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We have several holiday home owner clients who like to spend between 3 and 5 months here usually from April to September, without exception none have even considered that this simply won’t be possible from next year onwards without some serious planning.

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Why should it change? What obligation has France to turn itself upside down for a small number of non-EU foreigners who want to have their cake and eat it, and who are part of a political system that chose to leave the EU?

And the negotiations are fairly fraught, with critical things such as airspace safety, environmental standards and so on still to be resolved. Not sure that a few hundred second home owners will be of any interest to anyone.

I have found that France has been fair and generous considering the trouble we’ve created. They are making it relatively easy for people who want to live here to do so on slightly more generous terms than other non-EU citizens. But if you don’t want to live here and contribute to French society as a resident, then your choice is to sell up or accept the new way of life.

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I don’t understand why it should be a bargaining chip, people with feet in both camps are a bit of an irrelevance really from our (French) point of view - we don’t have loads of eg retired or semi retired etc French people wanting to live in the UK so it isn’t a big deal for us.

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Maybe we can cut people asking questions some slack?

Yes Brexit is a HUMONGOUS shitshow and I dread to think what it will be like next year but I doubt the OP is responsible!

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Sure, but it is a bit mind boggling that 4 years after the referendum people are only just realising it will have a personal impact. What in heaven’s name did people expect to happen?

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It’s possible OP voted remain. Benefit of the doubt? :thinking:

Note: Android thingie proposes using these little figures to symbolise remainers :ok_woman::ok_man::person_gesturing_ok:

Cute or what?

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Jane, we knew! Its no surprise, weve been here 20 years. Understand the feeling behind all the views especially as most responders have opted to live here but i dont agree there are only a few hundred second home owners, there are a lot more. It may have some sway financially once the hard feelings lessen. Anyway I have my answer to my question, it seems the majority feel its a stay or go situation. Failing anything else we will have to make the 90 out of 180 work. Glad we are not running a gite business. We have a great support team here in France.

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Peter, i did vote remain and felt sick at the result. Just looking for rays of hope from people who know the French mood better than me.

Gay

Seriously, you might be best off to apply for CdS Resident Permanent… then you can stay here or anywhere else in EU bloc…

and visiting UK as and when… even leaving France for years, without losing Residency rights…

You have the chance to do this before the end of December 2020…

In my view this is a chance to be grabbed at…

but we can only give our own thoughts/advice… you do have to choose.

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@Gabriella I would écho Stella’s counsel. She is “an old hand” and her advice is highly valued on this platform, on all manner of issues to do with life in France.

There are all sorts of ways life could be simpler if your were resident, and you are not severing significant ties with UK by doing so, unless your tax affairs are complex and UK-anchored.

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May i ask why?

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There are about 3 million second homes in France, and only around 250,000 are owned by foreigners. Of those 75% are “European” split between Holland, UK, Italy, Ireland in the main with chunks owned by other nationalities. So ok, it’s more than a few hundred, but even 60,000 or so is really not sufficiently significant to devote a large amount of negotiating capital on. Fish are much more important.

The more important issue is those who work from a french base (and pay taxes in France) but need to be able to wander around the EU for their work.

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