And in some areas the French home counties has been achieved! Was in a Lidl recently and the only people speaking french at anytime were myself, my wife and the girl on the checkout. It makes me cringe in shame when most make no effort to wrap their tongues around a few french words.
Dada da da dada, et maintenant Les Archers...
There are terraced cottages in the East End that were valued at £20k in 1994 that are selling for just around £600k at present. The house I sold in 2004 has more than quadrupled in East Cambridgeshire where increases are nothing like further south. However, the bottom lines is that I absolutely agree that it is what people are willing to pay rather than the value.
When my father was building council housing stock he knew the price of materials and labour, later on when they were sold off he made the point that anything else devalues as it gets old when the fabric it is made from wears but the boxes people put themselves in do the opposite. He didn't mean coffins as I first thought but those houses that he felt were grossly overvalued. In the end he bought one himself!
Some people did this to me a while ago, I didn't like it. I wouldn't have minded if they'd said bonjour (or even parlez-vous anglais?) first, but no, they just launched into English. I helped them with apparent good grace but seethed internally.
Speak English loudly to the French. They do understand they just pretend to be unable to speak English. On the other hand why come to a country with a different non Anglo-Saxon view of the world if it annoys you so much. It seems many Brits want to turn France into a version of the Home Counties.
Not sure where you have got the 30x factor when it is more like a fourfold increase in prices. And as an aside I think a lot of properties here which described as chateau are far from my idea of a chateau. When it all boils down to it a property is worth what someone is willing to pay!
Depending on where tou are. It had to be the Daily Wail but look at this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2933616/As-French-property-prices-plunge-reveal-pick-palace-peanuts.html
There are things on the market hereabouts that vendors are reducing the prices of just to get rid of them. About 18 months ago a small château worth over a million was sold for €50k because the owner could neither afford the upkeep and maintenance or live there alone any longer because of age and health. It had been on the market for two years. Even at 50k it took around eight months to sell because people viewing it realised what the bill for repairs and renovations would be. So perhaps in Paris or regions such as Provence and on the edge of the Alps they are overpriced, but elsewhere that is far from the case. As for UK prices, well the SE and London have stagnated and parts of the UK have seen some drops but even the cheapest properties are on the market at up to 30 times their evaluation in the mid 1990s.
When was the last time you took a good look at UK house prices from your comment not recently!Who mentioned people in the UK not being able to afford their houses we are discussing the ludicrous prices some vendors over here think their properties are worth.One classic example is a house we looked valued, by the vendor surprise surprise, at 695K€We told the vendor it was overpriced to which he replied "yes I know, how much do you think it is worth?" to which we answered no more than 500K€. Lo and behold if 2 weeks later it is on the books at 500K€. Then 6 mths later it goes up to 595K€ now explain that. My explanation is a total lack of understanding in selling a property and having no idea what it is worth. You can go into any estate agents site and see numerous properties that are obviously vastly overpriced, I do not think one can say the same of the UK, if only evident that one does not see the same house on the books for 2 years with no reduction in price.
..and I agreed.
I am saying that no one knows it all and the ones who think they do are foolish...and sometimes dangerous.
Wow, a long time since I saw the word 'omniscient'. I'm not sure though. Know alls can be the worst of all, those who are omniscient often do not correspond with what is known generally already though.
Yes, the UK is not 'heaven on earth' but more like a 'fool's paradise' when people take the points about doctors and so on into account.
I think the French are willing to change, as much as anybody else even, but bureaucracy is entrenched and watches public bodies in other countries so carefully keeps their ranks closed to make sure they stay in control. That way there can be no sale of La Poste to cronies at great loss and privatisation of everything and anything the state can make a penny on without the public or public servants gaining any benefits whatsoever. To be honest, they may be as annoying as hell at times, but they are not wrong to protect themselves. That they have freeloaders who exploit that and become little dictators is not new to anybody who has had enough to do with UK civil servants as they were before the guillotine of privatisation fell on many of them.
Some of you find the French arrogant and unwilling to change.
A little bit like some of the settlers from UK who come to rural France
and believe that they know it all.
No one knows it all.
Ps Yes what will happen when the interest rates rise in UK?
If people were omniscient then the world would not be in such a mess.
I watch, I listen and I learn....at the same time ...I hope.
Some of you do not understand what say...
Or perhaps you do.
For those of you who are going back to Uk to the property boom,
the 3 week queues to see a doctor and the crowds....they are every where...
well I hope that your memory serves you well.
Antiquated = good, well not in my mind. How can you call the french "antiquated" administration system as one example as good?
In fact the pound slid back two cents in the last few days. €1.40 is possible but the UK is in tow to the US$ as well at present, which is not doing madly well. There is also a pre-election budget coming which some pundits are suggesting will be built on attempts to bribe the population to vote Tory. If it works they will get away with it, if not then Sterling is likely to backslide. Economics is the silly science that allows itself to predict the unpredictable.
The upbeat side is that I enjoy the extra €s my pension brings in, but not the less money I earn since just about all we do is paid in US$. Sure tourists who can afford it might come, but a lot of people in the UK are strapped for money too. I already know from our nearest gîte owners that they are putting up their prices this year because tax has gone up for them, presumably other accommodation too. Certainly shop prices and restaurants already have gone up since last year. There are far less UK house buyers enquiring as Easter approaches than last year or the year before which is worry my OH, but then she is turning over nicely with French buyers. The French have learned that prices are lower than a decade ago and the bottom is in sight, they may reach a plateau then but thereafter the only way is up.
As for rude and arrogant French, well I think the same can be said about other nationalities. The 'Brits' who come over expecting to be pampered to by people who speak flawless English, know how to mix a gin and tonic and open their shops seven days a week can be embarrassingly arrogant. Indeed sometimes they are arrogant enough to appear arrogant to the most arrogant French. There again, I live in a French community, except for writing here I often have no other contact with the English language for days, even weeks on end, which includes my family who all speak perfect English. Given the global economic situation France is doing no worse than most other places, nor better. The UK certainly is not albeit there is a chancellor who makes out that there is, which could easily gets worse if he is replaced by Balls.
I do feel for those who have no choice but to return to the UK, their property value has probably gone down here and then the exchange rate will hurt again.
As for Greece, that is an 'it's not over until fat lady sings' situation and somehow I suspect their politicians are as disingenuous as everybody else's. If their coalition breaks up then perhaps the EU will have problems, however they are beginning to look like a big bag of compromises and wind, all happy to be in charge of their country. Probably there will be no change. The doom sayers will continue to predict downfall and the rest of us will sit on the sidelines watching with baited breath. In other words, business as usual.
Antiquated = good in my eyes and one of the many reasons we chose to give the UK (lack of) lifestyle the elbow. 
You’re wrong. It’s the inflated UK prices that are due / need to collapse. An interest rise in the UK will create a very different UK housing market that’s for sure. If people can’t afford to pay for their houses now with these low interest rates, imagine what will happen when those points start to rise…
Ah me thinks "change" does not exist in the french vocabulary so we are stuck with these antiquated ways of doing things for some time to come. I personally have never found them to be arrogant, and rude on very few occasions. As for giving the french government a kick up the backside that I would like to see!
Absolutely. When one expects the whole world to be able to speak English and the French are obtuse enough to prefer speaking their own language they are obviously being arrogant and rude. Likewise, the way the French insist on running their bureaucracy in ways different to Britain is exceedingly annoying. Shop hours are odd, as well - closing on a Monday, I have never heard of such a stupid thing. I am quite sure they do all this on purpose, just to annoy us. They seem to forget who won the war for them and blah... blah...blah... priority à droite, sugar beet dumped on the motorway with the police looking on, air controller's strikes at half-term, smelly garlic, blah...blah...blah...
on the upside the lower euro might just give the french government a kick up its backside to help the tourist economy get going. all my friends who have visited france recently have said the same thing, they found the french to be arrogant and rude.
Yes I hope that we see lots of British tourists coming to Rural France to enjoy the
Euro.
Hopefully these tourists will arrive at all the small airports having purchased their
reasonably priced tickets to fly.