Disappointing at least

[hughnique]

I needed a valuation on our property so called in a local agent, who measured everything up and came back yesterday with a dossier to give me the good news. The figure he has come up with is 75K€ more than the price I paid for it 20 years ago, and after spending at least 100K€ renovating and developing it. So certainly not a good investment and I have heard of this scenario many times before, so did we get stitched up when buying, or is the French property market streets away from what an Englishman would expect.

[niemeyjt]

Prices are falling. The house my father bought for 120K was valued at 85K for probate and sold for 80K.

As for an investment, maybe the mindset should be you buy to live in it, not to make a killing. That is the UK mindset - where people expect their house to always appreciate.

[hughnique]

That's true J, he showed me a graph giving a general fall in prices since the start of the year, at least it gives me an excuse not to sell up and repatriate

[Bayleaf]

You rarely get back what you've put in to properties these days. There's a place up the road from us - deep in the woods, sold last year for about €500k, the previous owners bought it about 12 years ago for €700k. Money is being thrown at it bigtime to, I think, make it one of these exclusive "Glamping totally eco/green sites". They'll never get back what they're spending on it. For instance, there's a main electric pole/junction halfway up the (newly cleared and resurfaced) driveway, and they want it removed - at any cost. Wow - blank cheque for EDF! Nice!!

[Hotrodder]

The game the British play with houses in UK simply doesn't work here. I personally know of half a dozen expats that lost money after pouring their hearts and wallets into their Breton money pits.

[hughnique]

It is a strange phenomenon, you would think that we all need somewhere to live but the mentality applicable to houses in the UK definitely does not apply here. I remember buying my last house in West Kingsdown for £108K, after 8 years in 2005 I sold it for £360K, and now it is worth over £800K. The French do not attach the same mentality to a house, for them it is just a place to live, whereas an English mans home is his castle.
My problem now is coping with the place in general, the garden, we had a gardener/ handyman, albeit questionable, but now he doesn't do weeding, comes along about every 3 months and does a bit of strimming, useless really, just wish I could get someone else, have tried but no takers, unless you want to pay 50€ an hour.

[Hotrodder]

You may be forced to give up on the idea of having a nice tidy garden. Take comfort in the fact that you once had one, and that what you have here in France would most likely be well beyond reach almost anywhere back in UK.
I spent the first part of my UK life in Kent and the place I lived is now valued at just under a million. Owned by my grandparents who were proper working class from the north of England. Both they and my mother worked in factories. A house like that would have been only a dream.

[exile]

@hughnique
Bought 20 years ago = bought on a rising and hot market. *
Selling now = selling on at best a static but probably falling market

* We bought 22 years ago and during the buying process a problem was uncovered which meant we could pull out; but in the 6 months since signing the compromis de vente, prices had risen over 25%. We decided to live with the problem which in any case was resolved within a couple of years.
We also invested a lot of money to get the property we wanted and in the expectation that we had pushed the costs beyond the sales value. But as said it gives us what we want and I don't expect either of us to worry about whether we made a profit or loss.

[Blaze]

The Brit practice of buying and selling to go up the housing ladder may have been one of the factors of house prices increasing. We never saw that here when we first came and I don't get the feeling that it does now. That said, there's a heck of a lot of "acheter pour investir" in new apartment blocks, certainly in this area. Sadly flats are snapped up to let to tourists rather than long term lets which is understandable as short term lets are far easier to manage with little or no risk of anyone squatting.

Our house did not need any structural work when we bought it other than a small section of re-roofing and we've done almost all of the internal work ourselves. We've had a couple of jobs done more recently for our own benefit but they will also be beneficial the day we decide to sell.

Considerations are obviously different for people who came to France with the idea of eventually returning to the UK. I am totally out of touch with UK house prices but I imagine areas like the south of England must be hors de prix ....

[MAD87]

When Brexshite arrived, we had a Plan B - moving to Ireland. Problem was, OH (Brit) wasn't keen and prices there meant we'd have to restrict ourselves to the windswept wastes of Donegal, while selling here would be tricky.
We've always been lucky where property's concerned (UK and FR), but as others have said, selling in France is a lottery. We sold our last house privately to a Dutch couple who bought it as a holiday home but moved here permanently after 2 years.