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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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France Voila - Newsletter #59
Nizas - France - February 17, 2002 1. Buying and Renting in France 2. Provence Properties 3. Home Exchanges 4. Paris Properties 5. Washing my e-mail 6. How Can You Check On An Internet Company 7. Bullfights 8. Pen Pals (at last) 9. Nizas == Sent from France by.. http://francevoila.com/ All you need to visit France. Full details to subscribe, change address and unsubscribe are at the end of this newsletter. Write to me at mailto:tony@nizas.com This newsletter talks about some important issues for renting property in France, either as an owner or a visitor, we are introducing a new section for you to advertise anything FREE or ask for pen pals etc, plus the continuing story of life in a French country village. ===== 1. Buying and Renting in France I get a lot of mail asking how to purchase and rent our a home in France, in some of the earlier newsletters I have touched on a few points, but this is a big subject and I have written a short piece which outlines some of the key pints to consider. == If you are thinking of investing in a property in France where you expect to get a fair return on your investment you need to be very careful and consider many key factors. Your requirements for your personal dream home may be very different to getting an income from it in the weeks you are not there yourself. As in all property, the prime consideration is "location". The property must be in a position which is commercially viable. For a vacation rental this means the location must be where the clientele want to go. There are some people who dream of a vacation in an isolated farmhouse in the middle of France, but there are far more who want to be near a beach and in the sunshine with lots of local French interest/history/markets etc. Obviously a good villa, with a pool, near a beach and close to an interesting or famous town will be much easier to rent and attract a higher price. We receive thousands of demands for rental properties and we are constantly analyzing these requirements. For example, it no surprise that 30 times more people looking for rentals ask for "Provence" than ask for "Languedoc", also 5 times more people ask for "Atlantic" than ask for "Languedoc" - yet Languedoc Roussillon currently has more people actively looking to buy property than any other region in France. However, from our experience, four out of five of the people looking for "Provence" really mean the French Riviera, the "Cote d'Azur". Traditionally in France the rental season is only the eight weeks of July and August. For the French this was even more concentrated to the four weeks from mid July to Mid August. However, to get a fair return on any investment the property will need to be let from 15 to 20 weeks each year and preferably should be suitable for letting all year round. For vacation rentals this demands a climate which is suitable and for example, most of "Provence", that is the departments of "Vaucluse (84)" and "Var (83)" are not suitable for vacation rentals from the end of September until the end of April due to the climate. Slightly further south, the "Bouches de Rhone (13)" is also affected by the winter climate and the Mistral wind in particular. In fact we find a steady demand for vacation accommodation all year round, there is a peak in July and August due to family holidays where the children have their school vacation, but there is a very large and affluent group who will look for a vacation home in off peak periods and prefer the relative tranquillity of the low season months. Weather conditions are very important. France is affected by three climatic regions, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the central Continental. Weather is a vital consideration to determine the "season" for rentals. For renting, the Mediterranean for example, is not one climatic region, there are many areas where shelter from the seasonal winds gives a "micro climate". Good examples are Menton in Alpes Maritimes and Roquebrun in Herault, one being on the coast and the other about 45 minutes inland. Always check local weather charts for the whole year. The quality of the property you are letting must be to the highest standard possible. A pool is expected for villas and larger properties and ideally any property should have a bathroom for each bedroom. The days when a quaint rustic cottage with basic facilities would rent out seem to be over. We turn down a large number of simple village houses, even if they are beautifully decorated and furnished, as clients now demand a high level of comfort and convenience. It is most important that you understand and work within the laws relating to owning and renting property in France. Buying a house is simple, but you must make sure of all the rules relating to inheritance, access, local rights etc. This is the subject of another series of articles The laws and regulations relating to renting your property have been established for some time, over 25 years, but have not been put into effect until very recently. New legislation in 1999 has reinforced many laws and over the last year six regional inspectorates have been set up to investigate the way vacation rentals have been done in France. All Internet, Catalogues and newspaper advertising is being carefully investigated and any individual or company who is offering vacation rentals outside of the existing laws is being carefully noted. Some cases where large companies have flouted the laws are in court at present. The outcome will be that all rentals must be managed by a licensed French operator. Any owner renting their home though an unlicensed company or person will risk prosecution and a fine as will any company offering property to rent in France. Obviously a company advertising property rentals based completely outside of France is unlikely to be prosecuted, but the owner of the property in France, which is advertised or rented, can be. This law also applies to any hotel booking or any accommodation done by an agency. An individual owner is of course free to advertise and let their property directly, but all income from a property is liable to French taxes and must be declared in France. The allowances are generous and in most cases this will be a nominal tax. For any personal property only 30% of the total revenue is considered as being liable for taxation. France is the most visited tourist country in the world. At present, investing in good vacation accommodation can offer an excellent return. As in all investments, good research and local advice is the key to success. == This only touches on some aspects of a very complex subject. We are continually working to make an honest and accurate service for owners and renters. ===== TAX QUESTION: Tony, I just read an article in France magazine that suggested that pensions of foreigners were subject to French taxation. They were speaking in regard to a letter from a Brit looking to retire in France. We will be retiring to Montagnac in the near future and must know if this is so. I really don't see how American social benefits could be subject to French taxation. What can you tell me in regard to this. I e mailed France magazine in regard to the article and have not received a reply so anything you could tell me would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Elliot James ANSWER: Hello Elliot If you live in France all your income, no matter where it comes from or is banked, is subject to taxation. If there is a tax agreement arrangement with the country from which you receive your pension, then this will be taken into account. Many counties, the USA for example, do not have any arrangements with France and an American living in France would be subject to double taxation. All EEC countries do have some tax agreements. The UK certainly does and it is unlikely that a UK person, resident in France, with a (tax paid) UK pension would pay tax in France. I am creating a "panel" of experts who can answer these sort of questions accurately and promptly as I know there is a lot of confusion about many of the laws and taxes related to living and working/retiring in France. best wishes Tony ===== 2. Provence Properties One of the exciting things I do in front of my computer is to research which words people search for when they are considering a vacation in France, (I have a strange life here in the south of France). Not surprisingly "Provence" is one of the most searched for words. I have written several times about where Provence is exactly, it is part of a region and not a department. In fact not all of Provence is in the region of Provence - Alps Maritimes - Cote d'Azur. We have just added over 100 super villas and apartments on or near the Cote d'Azur, which is in the administrative region of Provence. You can see these quickly from our site at... http://goto-provence.com/ I am in the process of adding over 1,200 more good quality homes in the region. This will offer one of the best choices of accommodation to be found anywhere. All I need are ten fingers on each hand. ===== PARIS PICKPOCKETS: A recent police report shows that crime rates in Paris are on the rise, with tourists the chief victims of theft, according to the International Herald Tribune. Pickpocketing on the underground Metro is up 40 percent from last year, and there is significantly more violence above and below ground. ===== 3. Home Exchanges We get a lot of requests for home exchanges. I have not found a way to make this a part of our sites or a service we can offer, but the new Classifieds pages will enable you to place any request for this FREE. http://francevoila.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi All of you who have written in about this please put your ads there. There will be links to this service from all of our sites soon. ===== WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Dear Tony - I am inquiring about a self-catering apartment for 4-6 people for the last two weeks of May 18/19 to June 1/2. My brother is in a wheelchair, do you have proper access? Thank you, - Alison == Dear Alison - Unfortunately in France few properties are suitable for wheelchair access. This is typical of the Cote D'Azur where the accommodation is along the rocky coastline and the paths to and from the villas are very steep and often have many steps. We are trying hard to make owners aware of wheelchair needs when they build or improve their accommodation. It is something we feel very strongly about. Slowly we are finding good accommodation which is designed for wheelchairs. You can see one at.. http://rentalsfrance.com/34cayret/index.html and this month we have added more on our site for Provence, please ask us for details, I will make a special site when we have a good selection of properties - Tony ===== 4. Paris Properties We offer a good selection of apartments to rent in Paris, the quickest way to see what we can offer is from our page at... http://rentalsfrance.com/paris/list.html ===== WHY LANGUEDOC: I was recently at a dinner party where someone told me that Languedoc was named for the people that spoke a particular language as opposed to Languedui, the other language. Do you know anything about this? - Sheila A: Hi Sheila - Before the civil wars in the 17th century, the south of France was a large number of separate "countries" duchys and principalities. One region was the Land of Oc. The language was different, there are similarities to Catalan and Provencal, but it is a distinct language, (my son aged 7 learns some). Some people in our village speak it but not as a daily language. The people in this region became known as those who spoke the Langue d'Oc (the language of Oc) and the spelling is kept to this day. I don' know about Languedui, perhaps a reader can enlighten me. Hope this helps - Tony ===== 5. Washing My e-mail We get a large number of e-mail inquiries every day, but we also get about the same volume of unwanted "spam" or worse. One day I received over 120 virus infected mails. We have firewalls, filters, protection of all kinds, but the biggest problem is the waste of time to check and delete all this rubbish. I have found a new FREE piece of software which is one of the most valuable defences for all e-mail. http://mailwasher.net/ Simple to install and use, this will allow you to check ALL MAIL on the server before downloading in a quick and easy way. Lots of features, simple filters absolutely brilliant. ===== BREAD IN PROVENCE : Dear Tony, I am seeking info. on boulangeries in the villages of the Luberon, Gard and/ Vaucluse area of Provence. What I require is the name of the bakery and what type of breads they sell. Can you or your readers be of help in recommending bakeries in these areas. Thank you, - Sandra mailto:salanigan@yahoo.com = Hi Sandra - About the only way you will get this data is to write to each baker individually, you are talking about hundreds of bakeries. You can get their addresses from the telephone directories on-line through our site at http://goto-france.com/phone/ Hope this helps, I will mention this in the next newsletter best wishes - Tony ===== 6. How can You Check on an Internet Company How can you be confident that the Internet company you are looking at, which is offering wonderful properties for your vacation, is genuine? How can you be sure that when you turn up at your dream rental, possibly on the other side of the world, that the owner will let you in, or that the property even exists? Who do you go to if you are unhappy about the description on the website or if you find the property is not as it was described? In most countries there are official organisation which are there to look after the rights of customers. For example, ABTA ( the Association of British Travel Agents ) or other local travel agency regulators are created to serve as a body to regulate their members in a specific country and relate to traditional companies with fixed assets and offices, their members are bonded and this gives some guarantee for deposits and payments from clients. This does not equate to the Internet, as any company can be located anywhere and not be subject to any regulatory controls. In our case we are based in France, but we only serve clients outside of France and therefore we would not be relevant for any registration as a French "Agence de Voyage" through our local Chamber of Commerce, but neither can we register in the USA, UK or any other country as we do not have, not can justify, offices there. However, a lot of new legislation and control is being put into place at this moment and we are working with the authorities to be sure we will be able to give you full and legal representation in France, as soon as this is established. So how can you be confident that your money is safe and you will get good value for your vacation rental? At first sight it would seem very little, but there are some things you can do to verify that the people you are dealing with are honest and truthful. Here are some guidelines which, until there is some International watchdog who you can complain to and get some guarantee from, will help you to check on the claims made on any sites' pages. 1. Is there a name and address shown on most pages which you can contact and which you can check? If there is no direct contact you should immediately be suspicious. If there is, pick up the phone and speak to someone (please check the local time, we do get calls at 3h30 in the morning when we are not always at our best). 2. Go to http://betterwhois.com/ and type in the URL of the site, this will tell you who owns the site, should give their phone number and address and tell you when the site was first registered. Obviously if the site has been in existence for more than 2 years (a long period in Internet time) this is a lot better than if it has only been going a few weeks. If the address and name on the site is the same as the one listed on Who Is, then this is a good sign. 3. Go to http://google.com/ and type in the full URL of the site in the search box. If the site is not indexed then this suggests that the site is not serious and you should be careful. Assuming the site is listed (billions of pages are), you will see several options you can ask. Click on the one which says "Find the pages which LINK to this site" - and click on it. The more links the site has, then the more established the site is. Look through these links for other good quality sites in the same business. Ignore the links which are just internal links from within the site. You should find at least 20 good links. If you don't then again it is difficult to take the site seriously. 4. Check with http://www.scambusters.org/ to see if anyone has complained about the site or any of the owners. 5. Go to http://google.com/ again and click on the "Groups" button above the search box. This will take you to a directory of news-groups. You can search through these to see if anyone has posted any messages about the site you are checking on, for good or for bad. I just checked and there are over 24,000 "threads" about travel. If the company you are checking has a bad name, it is very likely that someone will have complained about it. 6. Ask the site for references from satisfied customers, preferably in your own region, they should be able to quickly give you several people who have had good service from them. None of these things will guarantee that your money is safe or you will get good service or value, but it should go a long way towards giving you some peace of mind. I would welcome any ideas or comments as to how to give confidence and guarantees to clients. Write to me at mailto:tony@rentalsfrance.com ===== QUESTION: Hello Tony - I am trying to research the cost of living difference between France and Los Angeles, California. Wondering if you have any information on this subject, or can point me in the right direction to learn more. Your help would be greatly appreciated! Regards - Kristen ANSWER: Hello Kristen - he best source of comparative information I have found is from the CIA site at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html Select the France link. This gives a summary of the economy, for local house prices look at the 300+ properties advertised on our site through http://francevoila.com/latindex.html Hope this helps - Tony ===== 7. Bullfights Here in the South of France, we have bullfighting where the bulls are killed in the arena. I have written about this several times as it is a part of life here. A group of 30 ladies wrote to me saying that on reading my newsletter they had decided to boycott France as a vacation destination. I can understand that this is a very emotive subject. This month I received this mail from a reader which in many ways reflects my own feelings. == Hello Tony - I hope this response isn't too late. I have just now had the chance to read through your newsletter. I don't think I have anything wise or wonderful to say about bullfights, but I felt a need to put in my 2 cents anyway. Being a animal lover, I also have a hard time with the idea of bullfights. But my father in law is a relatively well know picador so I get to hear the other side. I also felt the need to actually go see a bullfight before I made my own opinion. People in the bullfighting world like to say that the animal feels no pain. I would completely disagree. The animal is teased and poked until it bleeds. They cry out in pain. But one thing that has been pointed out to me is that these bulls live a relatively peaceful life in the fields. Though this does not justify the end, their lives are infinitely better than those who are raised to be slaughtered in a factory instead of an arena. The show itself can be very sad, though I must admit it can also be a beautiful thing to see with the costumes and the music. I found the people waving their handkerchiefs in order to have the ear chopped off a bit perverse. But then I got my own idea. At football games, there is always a section in the stands for the visiting team, right? So I sat there and cheered for the bull, much to the chagrin of my french husband. To be honest, the french people around me actually seemed to enjoy my cheering, Gimme a B! Gimme a U! etc. As for boycotting France altogether I think it's silly. There are so many other wonderful experiences to have in this country. It seems a shame to miss out because there is one thing you don't agree with. - Diana == Diana - Many thanks for your informed and sensitive observations. It is hard to condone the bullfight, but it is part of life and it is hard to condemn also, and impossible without seeing or experiencing. The Bull is the hero and the center of the event. A brave bull has as much (more) praise and respect as a brave matador. There are, I believe, many people who identify with the bull and would be proud to live (and die) as the bull does. Just my extra 2cents (now we have the euro) worth. - Tony ===== PROVENCE TOURS: FRANCE TOURS 2002 This trip is called SPRINGTIME ON THE RIVIERA, May 3-12, 2002. Travel with small groups of 4-8 people. You're guaranteed an in-depth cultural experience as well as first class accommodations, superb itineraries, wonderful food and expert guidance. Prices are truly all inclusive, meaning that airfare, ground transportation, accommodations, all means, including wine, entry fees, and even cafe stops are included. There are no hidden costs, so that you know from the beginning exactly what your trip will cost. SPRINGTIME ON THE RIVIERA 2002 features delightful 3 star accommodations at Hotel Le Panoramic in St. Jean Cap Ferrat, up the coast from Nice, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Matisse & Chagall museums; villages "perch s" of Eze and La Tourbie; St Paul de Vence: a day on the Mediterranean sea; Nice market & Promenade des Anglais; beaches; gourmet picnics by day & fine dining at night. $3550. Write to me at.. mailto:tours@rentalsfrance.com ===== 8. Pen Pals (at last) For several newsletters I have been promising that I would set up a pen-pal (key -pal?) exchange service. I did not expect so many of you to reply, this overwhelmed me a bit and I am embarrassed about the delay. But I have now set up a complete exchange service on the France Voila server and you can set your own adverts and also add just about anything you want on these pages. http://francevoila.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi I will be putting links onto this service from all our pages as soon as I can, but you can access this through the France Voila site at... http://francevoila.com/ Please keep your messages suitable for a family site and let me know if any unsuitable items are posted there. ===== ROUTES IN FRANCE: Hi Tony, My name is Carl. I am trying to find car routes from Nice to Goult in France. Is there a way to do this or should I just go buy a map. Carl - You can get fill details of routes and sites where you can find these from our site at http://goto-france.com/maps Have a great trip - Tony ===== 9. Nizas - The New Regime The new mayor has been in for a while now and things are settling down.In some ways the village is less lively now, the committees who organised the festivals and events have all disbanded and things are likely to be much less animated for a short time. When we first came to Nizas, nearly eight years ago, it seemed every week had a fete or big event. Music, theater and feasts. Now the center of life is the bar, lotto (bingo) in the place and sausages in the bouladrome in summer. Importantly, this shows that the village is still a traditional farming community, managed by people whose families have owned and worked the land here for many generations. This is not true of much of the South of France and things are rapidly changing everywhere. I have been wanting to document this change, from agriculture to tourism, since I arrived, but pressure of work and the need to feed the family have prevented me from using my cameras to document this "cusp" of history. I have made a site for the at http://nizas.com/ So if anyone would like to take up this challenge and stay in the south of France to make a record of history, I offer the use of my equipment and darkroom and a few grasses of wine each day. Does anyone know of any grants available for this sort of project? Talking about the mayor and the bar - My friend Terry Thompson (see earlier newsletters) has been known to spend the odd minute (very odd) in the bar, as does the mayor as the bar is next to the Town Hall. Both wear very similar leather jackets and last week the obvious happened, the mayor left wearing Terry's jacket. This forced Terry, much against his wishes, to stay in the bar until the mayor got home and would discover his mistake and return. I am simply writing this to confirm that no one looked through any of the pockets and any threats of blackmail are completely and utterly denied. ===== HOLIDAY ON THE CANAL DU MIDI: How about a holiday on a traditional, steel hulled, English canal boat - but in the Mediterranean sunshine on one of the most beautiful stretches of water in the world. Or a week on a boat and a week in a villa in the south of France. We can offer this through Minervois Cruisers... http://francevoila.com/mcindex.html ===== We love to receive your letters and comments and we really try to answer all mail but it does get lost, filtered or vanishes somewhere to a planet of lost e-mails, so if you write and don't hear from me, please write again. mailto:tony@nizas.com ===== |