For moving to France (from US), how detailed does the inventory need to be for customs? Do we need to list every single item (e.g. a spatula), or do common things get lumped together (e.g. “kitchen utensils”)? Do we need to list the value of each of those items or groups of items, and if so, would we be giving what we paid for them, or what they’d sell for at a garage sale? Thanks.
Have you looked through he service public info? They say “Inventaire détaillé, estimatif, daté et signé (en 2 exemplaires) des biens et objets mobiliers que vous envisagez de transférer en France” but perhaps if you dig down or look at FAQs it will give examples
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Thanks Jane. That’s exactly the sentence we were looking at (at that URL), and wondering how détaillé it needs to be. To be safe, I think we’ll list every single item, and for the value, guess (estimate) what it would sell for in its used state, like at a garage sale. There’s a double-edged sword here, since we’ll be paying our moving company a percentage of our declared value for their insurance, and that would be based on replacement costs. I was hoping we could hear from those who have made the move, to find out what worked for them.
When we moved all the stuff from Oz I had to do this, I pretty much listed everything, although I did chunk some things together like ‘towels’, ‘tshirts’ etc. I just guessed at value for replacing second hand (as you say you have to pay for the insurance!). this was all fine when dh collected from Le Harve.
Do be aware of the port costs, we paid over €900 just to pick it up, we drove to Le Harve (7 hours?) as Bordeaux (1 hour) was going to be about 3 times that 
Thanks for that, Tory. Scary about the port costs, as those are explicitly excluded in my mover’s estimate.
I’d really ask questions, we didn’t even more furniture, it was just boxes.
Do think about what needs to be shipped. We only came from UK, so basically put everything into a lorry and drove over. About 30 boxes remain unopened 12 years later (and there are also a few in the basement of our rental flat that have been there for 20 years). A lot of the furniture we sold or gave away as didn’t suit new house. Most electrical items we’ve replaced.
We would have been better off selling off an awful lot of things and just bringing over the very personal things like the paintings and art works.
Hi Jane. Good point. My wife’s into minimalism, and we sold almost all of our furniture last week, so we’ve already culled.
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HI Martin,
just came across this posting and wondered if you are now in France. Hope you were able to make it OK. I’m looking for other Americans on this site that might be able to give some details of their experiences, things that we may be overlooking. Your posting is pretty recent so I was hoping you might have some up-to-date information.
We hope to make the move from the US sometime this year (if travel restrictions are lifted). My wife is French and she is getting information from the French Consulate here, as far as paperwork for our permanent move to France.
But I’m still trying to find other information, including recommendations for moving companies, French Customs, banks, credit and debit cards. Still have lots of questions and want to make sure we do what needs to be done before the move and what can wait until we are there. Any advice would be of great help.
Thanks.
Hi Peter,
We’re still in the US, but not for long. We thought we’d have to wait to get 1-year tourists visas, when those start issuing again, but after I contacted an immigration attorney in France, I learned that the Passport Talent visa (which has a few sub-categories) is currently being issued. One such sub-category is for starting a business in France. Before talking with the immigration attorney, I had spoken with a couple of French visa consultants, who were steering me towards creating a micro-entreprise, but I didn’t like the limitations of those. With help of ExpatPartners.com (who my immigration attorney works with) and Audit-CPA.com (who have filed my application for a branch office (succursale), not to be confused with a subsidiary (filiale), of my US startup LLC, after I signed a lease with a virtual office company (Buro.com) to have an address needed for forming the branch, I’m now waiting for the branch to be approved and with that, should have a dossier ready for applying for the visas (me as the legal representative of the company in France, and my wife on the family Passport Talent).
Regarding your Q about banking, through HSBC US I was able to create a checking account with HSBC France. I also created an account with XE.com, who have better conversion rates than HSBC.
For a credit card, Barclays Arrival MC is a chip card that doesn’t charge a conversion fee (although you’re still stuck with whatever conversion rate they use).
Creating a branch or subsidiary or business in France (as opposed to going on a tourist visa) is the path to permanent residency or citizenship, because you’d need to pay taxes on the money you earn in France, including the social charges, which means you can apply for a carte vitale and thus not need medical insurance (unless you want a mutuele insurance policy, that covers whatever isn’t covered by the French health system).
One of the requirements, regardless of visa type, is to show medical insurance coverage. It needs to be for the length of your stay, but in the case of having a business in France, as soon as you get a carte vitale you can cancel that insurance. After doing a lot of comparisons, I decided on an expat policy from April International, and I’ll be getting it from FabFrenchInsurance.com.
Hope all this helps. Good luck.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for the quick reply and all the information, sounds like your situation may be a bit more complicated than ours. We are both retired and my wife is French so the permanent residency should be simpler for us.
As far as HSBC US, I guess you can move money from your online account to a branch in France? I’ve used TransferWise (now called Wise) to move money to Europe. They have low fees and use the ‘mid-market rate’ for currency conversions, so it may be a better deal than XE.
Wise, Formerly TransferWise: Online Money Transfers | International Banking Features
I’ll look into the Barclays Arrival MC and compare it to the cards we now have. No transaction and conversion fees is a must. But it seems Mastercard may have better rates than our Visa cards.
Do you have a moving company to recommend? I was given a recommendation from someone on this site, for Schumacher Cargo Logistics. Someone had recommended them to him and he was happy with the service.
It seems that US citizens are not allowed to enter the EU at this time. My wife wouldn’t even be allowed to go right now, and she has a French passport. Hopefully that will all change soon. We just got our second Pfizer vaccine shot on Saturday, but we’re hoping that France will be getting a high percentage of their population vaccinated before we make the move.
And we’re still sorting and deciding what to take with us.
Thanks again for the information, and good luck to you, too.