Hi, I’m wanting to buy a house here and would love to have your analysis. I can message you the address?
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Thanks Rehana, yes if you send me the address of the house will happily run it for you!
Quick update. Five run so far. Interesting things that have come up:
- One house where the flood plan is being rewritten right now, went through public inquiry in Feb, and the new maps aren’t public yet. House is 25m from the river. Current map says fine, new map could say anything.
- A DPE on a listing that had expired, and another house with no DPE at all in the national register.
- The asking prices have been coming out roughly 20 to 40% too high.
- Two houses inside listed monument zones that nobody mentioned, so every window and roof change goes past the ABF.
- A house where the rock nearby is naturally high in arsenic, the village play area came back contaminated in 2019 and the communal fountain is under a prefectoral ban. Mains water fine, but means you need to test the garden soil before you grow anything.
Ian said:
"Wow. Opened my eyes up to Heritage site and surroundings.
Surroundings may become evident in visiting the property but future works and obligations not until the notary exposes it!"
Still testing so please do send me a listing or DM me an address.
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Interesting tool Phillip, thanks for putting this together.
From my side as a Quantity Surveyor / AMO working with foreign owners, the pre-offer data checks you are doing are very useful. Once people move to the renovation stage, the next common issues I see are usually:
- Structural or damp problems that only become visible once works start
- Quotes that look complete but miss significant items
- Poor coordination between trades that creates delays and extra costs
Having solid information before making an offer already reduces a lot of risk. The next challenge for many remote owners is having someone local who can properly review the devis and follow the works.
Happy to share more observations if useful.
I’ve had another thought, for the people who already live in France, would you be interested in sending me your commune or your address and I’ll tell you what the official record says about your house. Radon category, flood plans, whether you’re sitting in a monument perimeter without knowing it, what disaster orders your commune has had since 1982, what houses near you have actually sold for.
Partly because it’s interesting. Mostly because I want to know how often my code is wrong. So far I’ve had quite a lot of conflicting information depending on which sources I’ve used.
If you’re interested give me a shout!
Well we only moved into this house 6 months ago so have all this info - but if you wanted to see whether your code matched what we have happy to oblige.
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Yes please that would be very helpful!
Test done, and I think it a well worth product. Had it been available while we were buying I would have been happy to pay. Nothing that we didn’t find by other means, but would have saved a lot of time and it was clearly written and presented.
200 times better than what we got from the Agent, and in a couple of areas more detailed than what we had from notaire. So for anyone who is not a nerd and happy to spend time crawling over the French Local Plan(which is not exactly a fun read) it would have been well worth it.
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Thanks Jane! I’m still expanding it too so everything that is missing is being added so hopefully becomes more and more complete
For those interested / or wanting to run a comprehensive check I have finally got round to launching the website - so please do check it out and reach out! https://frenchhousecheck.com
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Don’t forget to chat with @cat regarding commercial use of the forum.
Yep all good
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I’ve added him to the list in the lounge - it should be visible? But please let me know if not as there’s another lady coming on board too!
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I can’t see the list, Cat, but maybe I’m looking in the wrong place.
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It is probably me 
Not necessarily, could be me. 