looking for a bit of advice as far as the anglophone market/sites/buyers is concerned. No problems selling to the French, just agreed to sell my little place near Pézenas and found a buyer locally within a month. But I'm well out of touch with anglophones looking and want to know if anyone can recommend any good (preferably free) sites - I'm looking for a British version of leboncoin.fr ! who did you use/look at when you came out here? who do you still use for the UK/anglophone market? are there any Brits still looking to come out to France?!!!
I've already posted what we have for sale here in the Aveyron (in the househunters group) but now I'm looking to reach out further ;-)
Merci en attendant and all ideas will be gladly received (if they're polite!)
Thanks Brian - I know of somebody who has been kicked out of various agents for repeated underhand dealing. And just to put people in the picture a little more - I'm not really looking to use an agent. I'm here on the ground, bi/tri-lingual and managed and spent three years in estate agency work in the UK (turned down working for an agency here as it didn't add up... the agency has since gone bust!) so can handle pretty much everything plus I've already sold a few places here but always to the French. As i mentioned above, I'm trying to plug the overseas market which I haven't bothered about until now, but with this house we think (OH has the typical view of Brits all wanting a farmhouse, barns and acres for the horses...!) it's worth giving it a go. So I was after a little market research to see who had used who - thanks for your answers, it's all very helpful for somebody who has rather lost touch with the whole anglophone/french property scene (or too long isolated in the aveyron!!!)
Brian, I'll see how things go for a few weeks (adverts only just gone out in english and french) and if it's slow going I'll certainly come back to you and have a chat about how your OH and her company work.
Many thanks for everybody's thoughts and time and very best wishes for 2012 - bonne année à tous !
Thanks Steve - will place the ad asap. no worries with the french side of things - enquiries from as far away as Grenoble! it's the overseas market I'm trying to tap into.
We offer a free private advert for property, but to allow pictures and links to websites we charge 30 Euros until sold.
We have 2.5 million hits a year, so it is worth placing a free advert, as it just takes that one special person to find your property.
Not quite the hit rate of Le Bon Coin but we are working on it. The site is targeted towards English, but some people do also have their adverts in French as well.
The more irons you have in the fire, the better chance you have of finding a buyer in today's market.
Andrew, when I came house hunting I got personal attention from an agent. It turns out she was working alone, having been sacked by the agency but still without her siret. Anyway, accidentally I called the agency and they blew a fuse. In the end it meant they we escaped the commission fees that she was setting higher than normal for both the vendor and us. Beware such scams. My OH, for lack of any of our regular work, is part time working for an estate agency. THis one is trying to play the game straight, not messing people about and ripping whoever off which some 'British' ones do and plenty of French agencies try. I know several people who have fallen into a trap by joining a 'sell it yourself' website and then paying really through the nose. Yes, Elaine is right about Connexions but its distribution is not clever and the other paper, which I used to buy each month for a while, folded last summer.
Angloinfo, Leboncoin and the like attract scammers, unfortunately, which is not their fault but criminals have to survive like the rest of us after all - unless it is us!
Brits ARE looking at France right now and come Spring should be back. Those with a bit of money to invest who are expecting UK prices to plummet are looking for 'cheap' properties here. Cheap is relative of course, for some of them €300,000 gets many times more than over there - like a small chateau instead of a flat in some cases. My OH has a few visits coming up. Now this particular agency are doing well and have plenty of French (and other) buyers and sellers, not just UK buyers like some of the others. They have been here a long enough time to know the form and field and not put all their eggs in one basket. They've also very cleverly worked out that French agents putting a union flag in their window and having one person who mutters a few words of English but has not a hope in Hell with regional accents which make for a loser.
I am not in the business of publicising the firm, even for my missus, but if you want to know and in order to look at their site or talk to them (worth doing always) e-mail if you want and I'll let you have their main coordinates. As for my nearest and dearest, she is too far away from your area to be interested so this is not on our behalf at all because their is no bounty for finding them people off own territory by such means. I must say, after her seminars with them, training and so on what she has brought home is revelatory and having dealt with two of our local agents before the British person I began with I am not impressed and would have originally reco'd avoiding agents.
Give it a thought, if it works that way, ask and I shall give.
Probably because everybody's terrified about spending money, euros crisis, every other crisis, my eating too much chocolate crisis. Mind you, the market has been really slow so maybe I was the only one (unless Elaine bought recently as well) who has been trawling the web for the past few months looking for such things. £40 for 6 months does actually sound a bit of a bargain, considering how much you'd save in the dreaded agents' fees. The house I found on Green Acres was luckily a private sale too so I probably have £5k which would have gone on agents' fees and can now be spent on a sofa and an old banger for taking Shaun to school when we arrive. A penny saved...
If you do do a blog page, let me have a link and I'll post it on Facebook etc as well to expand your audience. Good luck with it and remember - people love photos.
- I've sold 4 different properties here (most bought and sold via the boncoin;fr), have just put this one on the market and it's more of the typical thing that brits tend to look for - detached farmhouse, outbuildings, 12 acres etc.
Finally the charges for a descent advert on a good anglophone site aren't too much (£40 for 6 months advertising) so I'm giving it a go but already have a couple of french contacts from le bon coin.
I did an English site for one of the houses I sold, it worked fairly well but was bought be a french person in the end - will think about getting a blog/site together for this one too now.
I was really trying to do a bit of sly market research and see who people bought through when they bought in france - not much feedback!
Silly question but if you've already sold 4 times why are you still advertising - or was that 4 previous properties and no offers on this particular one yet? If I see any other sites I'll let you know - I should imagine all agency-type sites will charge something, and on something like Leboncoin it will be buried amongst the hundreds on the classifieds. I take it you've already Facebooked it etc. You could also open a blog purely for the house and put every keyword you can think of for the SEs to pick up on.
Thanks Valerie, I've down the rounds via the internet now, Grennacres is a good one but paying as they all seem to be. Have opted for one of the cheaper paying sites that is first page google search and nice clean page layout and site. Time will tell now (already sold 4 times in France but always to the French, now looking for a bit more coverage!)
When I was house hunting, I saw a lot of Brits advertising on Green-Acres which I think is free and, added bonus, usually pops up on the first search result pages.
I also noticed a lot of the other portals/agents were copying ads from there onto their own sites which presumably is ok as it would also increase your potential audience - just make sure they don't try and get commission on your agent-less sale.