We are looking for properties to view, over in two weeks. I can not seriously beleive the amount of agents that do not respond to enquiries. Is the property market that bouyant ??
If its Beaux Villages/Leggett etc then yes respond , however immobilers on Le Figaro, le bon coin etc, i get an initial generic response saying agent will be in touch soon then nothing. I have even gone direct to the agent and emailed again with no results !!! Yes i will call tomorrow and hope they have someone speaks a little english .
Lol at this rate will have nothing to view . Most of these agents are in the Lot et Garrone . I think i saw Sue P lives this department?
As a generalisation, they are just awful. Non-responsive to requests, no follow up and then just look at the quality of the listings. We found that the best way was to go to the offices and quite often you could view the same day.
If you find an agent who will engage with you, you’re fortunate. We had one who was wonderful, but it was as based on (a) his enthusiasm and (b) the fact we’d met him and sat down with him and set out our criteria.
I have never had any engagement without a personal contact. They just don’t! It’s a French thing, rather than an Immo thing.
Another thought - given you’ll have to wait until you get here, don’t despair. You will probably find that most immos will have property to show you that aren’t on their website.
We found Leggetts to be the most responsive, ironically particularly their French local agents, although there were a couple of excellent British agents too. Also one agent (in the south west) sent someone else along to meet us who had no idea which house we had arranged to see (it was a bit of classic bait & switch) and we really felt misled by them.
We did a 2 week tour and saw lots of potentially interesting property in agents windows, especially in Puy de Dome, but did not want to break our itinerary.
There has been a shortage of properties to buy for the last three years, one of the agents I work with used to have on average 75 houses available at any one time but currently she’s got 24 and has had to lay off staff as there is no work.
I have had that quite a few times and one of the agents said that folks here tend to go for the likes of two weeks free advertising and don’t stay with the company so the advert just disappears at the end of the two weeks, I used to take screen grabs so I could hunt the property down using the pictures in Google lens.
Not a lot around my area to buy, keep getting agents putting letters in my box asking if I want to sell. Only the properties that have been on the market for over a year seem to be on LBC,usually needing more money spent on them and anything new gets snapped up within hours of being put up for sale.
We had that last month, the agent that sold me the property 8 years ago, popped by and asked if we were thinking about selling and if so would we contact her direct.
You are lucky if it is only property agents who do not respond!
It seems to be a modern pattern evolving where people just do not respong if they do not feel disposed. A terrible state of affairs in a sales environment. What has changed? In my day - not that long ago - a sales enquiry of any type took absolute priority in the business.
Estate agents here are wary of foreign enquiries. They have too many who are just looking out of curiosity as a holiday activity, and also many who don’t have finances in place. They also don’t bother much with emails.
Leggets and Green acres focus on anglophones it seems, for a price! Many of their properties seem seriously over priced to me.
You need to convince agents that you are serious, and that you have the finances in place. When we were looking we prepared a dossier with our ID’s, details of our bank, and clear set of requirements and spoke to agents directly.
I had that a while back in a SuperU car park, they didn’t notice me sitting in the car and I flicked the wipers on when they went to put the card under the wipers, well I thought it was funny
Sorry, but in my book, punters do not need to convince sales people that they are serious!
A quality sales person will know very quickly if an enquiry is serious. Note I say quality - I have not seen any French vendeurs/vendeuses who would pass the test.
Maybe in YOUR book, but this is France and this a FRENCH book. Much better to recognise the reality and work within that framework - @JaneJones has given some very sensible advice.
When we came out we were liquid - we’d already sold our grossly overpriced property in Surrey and were serious about moving to France. We had no problem getting appointments.
Do you know whereabouts in L&G you want to be? Might be worth fixing on a couple of towns and scouring every single estate agent for the first couple of days and making appointments with them face to face - I was seeing 5-6 properties a day when I came over. I was fortunate - 16 years ago we found a woman in the UK who set up all my appointments for me before I came over. Unfortunately the world has moved on and I doubt that kind of service still exists.
How times have changed. 30 years ago you never needed an agent nor were there many, you used the Notaire. It was simple decide your area and visit the Notaire in those days they had a folder of property full instructions and directions, and Were very helpful and of you went. In 4 hrs we had found the farm we wanted and remained friends with the Notaire and his staff for many years.
Good Luck
Much better to recognise the reality and work within that framework -