Can someone please enlighten me on the house buying procedure after you have viewed and are wanting to make an offer, but have been presented by the immobilier a 89 page report in french to read through? I want to live hear to learn the language, but this is beyond me. Any uself ints, tips or names of officials would be great please. We are looking at a property in the Charante.
Hi, welcome.
Are you looking for a notaire who speaks English or another language?
Oops Hi and thanks who speaks English
Is this the DPE? The obligatory energy report?
If so you can go page by page using google translate.
You are probably better off hiring a transÄşator.
Yes it the DPE report, and yes i guessed i might need a translator maybe, but its the deciphering of what it all means in layman terms and thanks for your help.
Welcome.
The first thing to do is to accept (a) the legal profession is organised differently to what you’re used to and (b) you will need to take more responsibility for the house purchase than you may be used to. We don’t do surveys as you may know them. A good notaire won’t interpret the reports for you, because that’s not her job. She will tell you to get an interpreter.
You might get some help from your immobilier.
The good news is that reports have to cover the same ground; it’s just that they show the information differently. There are sections for lead, asbestos, electricity, gas, termites maybe … use Google translate or DeepL to tell you what’s being said. The report should tell you exactly where the problems arise. You can then decide whether the problems are serious and what to do about them. A huge amount will depend on factors like the age of the house, its location, the ground beneath it.
The best thing you can do at this point is to search on here and more widely for information about diagnostic reports. It’s a topic that you need to get a grip of yourself before coming back and asking more specific questions.
Don’t get disheartened: many here have gone through the process successfully.
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Thank you for your advice. Can i ask what the biggest red flag to look out for in France aside from normal reasonable renovation and replacement.
Things that may not be obvious include
neighbours
difficulty of access
nearby businesses, eg bars, farms
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In addition to the above, I’d also look at the orientation of the house and garden with regard to sun and shade (particularly if it’s not a particularly old property).
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Is it on main drains, or a septic tank. If the latter you eant to see a SPANC report.
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Yes the immobilier told us about this. The septic needs to be renewed within the year of ownership. The electrics also need updating. We could not see any water damage. The base of the house looked especially dry. It is a house above a garage.Date probably 1945 to 1970 but why is there no exact year? So not ancient. Roof looks pretty good too.
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Sun am in front then pm behind but still out front in late afternoon when we viewed, all around really
Good to know about these things, also how the previous owners dealt with them. Where did they have lunch and dinner? Also what’s planted where in the garden.
That’s a pretty standard line for a fosse that is not up to standard. But you want to know more, like what exactly is wrong with it and will it be emptied before the actual sale.
If there is a fireplace you want it to be swept before sale too.
Informal due diligence on the surrounding area can pay dividends…best of all is a chatty neighbour and a helpful Mairie…
Ask at the Mairie for the (visual) plan for the area (PLU) and ask them to show you where future housing, industrial estates etc (if any) are planned to occur. Friends discovered just before buying that a nice, light industrial estate was being planned on two sides of their future home.
Your town/commune is likely to produce a booklet of risks for the area. Although some may have been covered off in your diagnostic report, it was instructive to see our town’s map of risks, showing up mud flows below our house, areas of sinkholes, fire hazards (if near forests) and routes taken by transporters of high risk, hazardous materials.
Who owns the fields/land around you, if visually important to you, especially if it’s the Maire/his or her family, local councillors/their families…
Does the local chasse go across your land or neighbours? Is there a nearby Maison de Chasse (and how near)
What are the voting trends in your town/village (are you buying into a hotbed of RN voters!)
Etc
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In the report, there should be stuff on the electrical installation, the sewage treatment installation, lead, asbestos, ground movement, radon (if applicable), termites (if applicable), risks of natural disaster (rockfall, landslide, avalanche, flooding, exploding volcanoes, etc). Most of the latter are kind of obvious if you’ve researched a bit about the area you want to move to. Ground movement is something often overlooked by foreigners, but not French people, as there are too many reports of houses having been built on clay, and with the increased frequency of more extreme weather events, shrinkage of clay subsoils, and corresponding building movement (cracks, etc).
If you see cracks in a building, ask how long they have been there, whether there has been any movement, etc, and check for how far they go.
The hidden gotchas : rights of way, access across the property by 3rd parties, whether a road or drive is private sole ownership, private communal ownership, or co-opted by the commune (i.e. public) will determine whose responsibility it is to maintain it. Whether or not the SAFER, ONF, etc, or any other public body has a say in how you might manage the land on which your property sits.
Hunting and/or fishing rights might be an issue.
These are points (the hidden ones) that notaries don’t always investigate properly, they simply don’t have the time. If you ask the notary a question like that, get the answer in writing.
Called a “servitude” - or you needing right of way across someone else’s land to get to your place. I looked at a property near the Lot where we would have had to have driven across our neighbour’s lawn to get to our garage - needless to say we didn’t buy it.
Some servitudes aren’t worth worrying about - eg there’s a pylon in a neighbouring field and EDF have right of way across our field if they need to repair/maintain it. In the 18 years we’ve been here they drove a large tractorpel across our field once. And quite frankly I’d rather they maintained it than not.
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Nobody needs a plummeting pylon.
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Hello, i never knew how great this forum is, but it really does seem to be great 
Thanks to everyone who has offered their knowledge it has truly helped us affirm what we were sort of thinking but was not sure and thought there was nobody to ask; but there you all are!
. We’ve only just viewed the house yesterday, we was meant to spend lots of time in the area, and visiting the marie, but an issue has arisen and we are now hotfoooting it back to the UK today. BUT, we really like the house, in a tiny hamlet but within 10km of civilisation. Its a pavillion type build, but when we asked when it was built we only have an answer of between 1949 & the 70’s somewhere? The underneath looked exceptionally dry, and we did not see any notable cracks. The inside did not smell damp in fact i was surprised as its been locked up for a little while. When we are back in England then we can properly dissect the report.
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I waz informed that when you buy you are expected to update the fosse at buyers expense, and within the year, may get away with 2 years but any longer and you could be fined