How does anyone buy a house now. We have lived in Brittany for many years and need to move to Normandy, preferably department 50.
When we try and make an appointment to view a house (not often) agents seem so reluctant. It seems such hard work. Many houses have several agents and many times I have been told that the house is sold when in fact it is not. The agents only want to show you a house if you agree to their day and time. Nothing can interfere with the (just before) 12.00 stop time.
Where do we find an agent who really wants to sell a house?
Do you offer to provide a dossier to show you are serious buyers when you contact the immobliers?
Many find their time taken by hobby house hunters, and so are less willing if not sure you arr serious
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Certainly you have to adapt to the French way of doing things, and have realistic expectations (some non-French buyers expect a service they wouldnât find in their home country, for example). I found that email, online enquiry forms - indeed, anything other than a face-to-face meeting* - is a waste of time
Fortunately youâre closer to Manche than a Brit-resident would be!
If you can identify a town where you think youâd like to live, you can look at immo websites and get a feel for any problems by checking their reviews.
Then youâll need to visit the immobilier. Once they know you and that youâre serious, their attitude will usually change (thatâs what we found). Until then, youâre a brick-kicker 
I suspect in the areas Brits like, immos are inundated with people filling in a wet afternoon by idle enquiries.
*One exception was an immobiliĂšre who was prepared to send us information following a phone call. But we already knew the town we were interested in and could speak knowledgeably about it.
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No I do not want all my personal details shown to any Immobiliere. I would think that living in our own property in France for 25 years is enough proof that we are serious,
I reckon that your best bet would be to go the town / area in which you are thinking of buying and walk into the agentâs office before 11am.
Yes we are familiar with the French way of doing things and we sold our first house about 20 years ago. Since then things have changed a lot. I would only bother to view a house now if I can see a copy of the cadastre first as the agents are so good at hiding all the negative aspects of the properties. It saves wasting my time and theirs also. The last house I viewed with 10 hectares happened to have flooded lands all around it. No mention of this by the agent before the visit. I resent driving for over 3 hours there and 3 hours back to visit completely unsuitable properties. The agent only had to drive for 10 mins. to get there.
Hello, Yes you are right. However what we are looking for is very hard to find within a small area so we have quite a large area where we would prefer.
Have you tried the Notarial property listings ?
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Well if you are not prepared to give them any details how are they to know that? Just a suggestion of what works for others, but your choice.
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I left Brittany in 2022 after 33 years of that region after finding a building firm advertising on LBC. I wanted the plot and the house to be built and had to show I was serious even though my own house was going up for sale in the new week or so (it sold in four days of being put with our local Notaire!). The building company did not push me for any deposit only an attestation that I was interested and would be selling my own property to fund the project once it was completed. You have to give people something to show you are serious and if you start to decline any demands for that thenyou will be treated as just time wasters. Personal details like date of birth, bank accounts etc are never given, they just want to know if you are selling/have sold, how much you have to spend etc. You should be prepared to go along with them and just because you have lived already in France for 25 years, they donât care about that except for you speaking pretty good french. I suggest you go to the regionyou want to live in for a few days and do some legwork going round the immobiliers and notaires offices yourselves, the market is flat in some regions and you may get a surprise.
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Of course I give them details but not a âdossierâ
Thanks for your reply. We always let them know our situation but never supply them with a âdossierâ that for me implies giving too much information.
To me any folder containing a bit of paper on which are noted salient details is a dossier.
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If you check the dictionary you will see a piece of paper is not a dossier.
Thatâs not actually what Jane said 
On your point about giving too much information, I understand but - unfortunately - it remains true that you need to distinguish your enquiry from all the other Brit enquiries which are going nowhere and do not merit the immoâs time!
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@Shiba Could not agree more. Agents, notaries, house builders, etc need to know you can actually buy whatever it is you are after. That is easily demonstrated without giving personal details
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What info do you supply to them without giving too much info?
The standard definition of dossier seems to be âEnsemble de documents relatifs Ă une affaire ou concernant une personne, groupĂ©s dans un carton, un classeur portant au dos une Ă©tiquette distinctiveâ.
So if you give them a piece of paper with your coordonées on it, and they put it in a file with your name on it, with or even without a couple more file notes, that would constitute a dossier, no?
I do agree with others that if you are unwilling to engage with them, they will not engage with you.
I would have thought information on how you will be financing any transaction is the most important. Imagine they have something you would like to buy but you need to obtain a mortgage to finance it which could take several more weeks to get a written offer before you can even sign a compromis. You never have to give financial details away, just how you will be purchasing and how much you have to spend max. End of the day, its like going to the showrooms to buy a brand new car and you donât do that without finance in place or discussing garage credit with the showroom which inturn you will have to furnish financial details eventually to relevent bodies.
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dossier=from your point of view, your application, in French. So it can contain what you want to list for the immobilier. Even on one half-sheet.
It does not have to mean a dossier, ie a file, as the word in English.
I see far more of this use for the word âdossierâ, in French, ie youâre applying for something, than any other meaning. It can also mean your case number, case reference, or the matter being dealt with. Use of âdossierâ in French as a file containing lots of stuff comes quite far behind those other meanings, in particular the âme applying for somethingâ meaning, IMO.
Due to the mostly different narrower meaning in English, Iâd classify the word âdossierâ for an English person, as almost a âfalse friendâ linguistically.
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