# Making an offer on purchasing a French property. What is considered "reasonable"?



## MikeandEmilyD

Hi I know that there can be no fixed rules on this but was just wondering if it is normal to make an offer when buying a property in france. I would not wish to offend when making an offer but also want to get the property at the best possible price. Does anyone have any recent dealings or any general ideas?
BTW we should be moving within the next few months and after we are settled I will do a post outlining how everthing went re. visas, etc. and using Wise as a bank. It might be a tale of woes 😄


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## suein56

It is perfectly normal to make an offer ..
But do be aware that 'gazumping' as in the UK doesn't exist here so an offer made at the asking price has, legally, to be accepted.
This is most evident in a seller's market, eg in Paris, big cities and popular places but can happen anywhere.
Some French sellers are resistant to the idea of negotiation but a cheeky offer might get you somewhere .. or not.
A lot depends on whereabout in France you re thinking of buying .. town, country, mountain or coast .. they all have their own idiosyncrasies.


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## Bevdeforges

You really need to determine the circumstances of the property on which you are making your offer. How low you can go depends on lots of things - the general market in the area, how long the property has been on the market, the circumstances of the particular property (e.g. is the family selling off a property they have inherited? are there "nuisances" in the area or proposed construction or other plans that make it likely the owner is trying to get their money out and leave the problems to the new owners? how "desperate" is the owner to sell? etc.) If the seller has an "exclusive" contract with an estate agent, there may be a clause whereby they can't refuse an offer for the full asking price - so it depends how much you want the house.


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## rynd2it

MikeandEmilyD said:


> Hi I know that there can be no fixed rules on this but was just wondering if it is normal to make an offer when buying a property in france. I would not wish to offend when making an offer but also want to get the property at the best possible price. Does anyone have any recent dealings or any general ideas?
> BTW we should be moving within the next few months and after we are settled I will do a post outlining how everthing went re. visas, etc. and using Wise as a bank. It might be a tale of woes 😄


It's your money, be as cheeky as you like, we ended up paying over 25% less than the original asking price. Talk to the selling agent, if the price drops they should drop their fees accordingly. I would discuss this aspect *before* the agent shows you the house and if they won't negotiate you are free to use another agent if there is one. If an agent shows you a house and you buy it, you owe their fees. If two agents show you the same house, and you buy it, you owe *both* agents.


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## eairicbloodaxe

You also need to know something about the seller and their situation. What's their attachment to the house? Some people get REALLY offended by a lowball offer and will then refuse to deal with you ever again - even if it means the property remaining on the market unsold for years.

However, if the property is on offer through an english speaking estate agents targeting the expat market... their prices are probably inflated 20% anyway. Check other sites in French and you might find what the house is really priced at for locals.

Kind regards


Ian


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## MikeandEmilyD

thanks for the replies. Another minefield to tiptoe through!


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## SPGW

Usually the agent can help on knowing the seller’s circumstances ( they want a sale for their commission), whether or not they would be open to a « or best offer » kind of approach and it really depends where the property is and the demand. If you don’t offer the asking price is someone else about to? Etc
What is the bargaining position? I sold a place at a lower than asking price because there were no other offers…I bought a place at the asking price after negotiating to throw in a whole load of extras ( vehicle, furniture….) cos it wasn’t going to move otherwise, and that was ok for the seller.


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## Clic Clac

eairicbloodaxe said:


> *You also need to know something about the seller and their situation. What's their attachment to the house?* Some people get REALLY offended by a lowball offer and will then refuse to deal with you ever again - even if it means the property remaining on the market unsold for years.


Yes, and if you are moving into a small village then your new neighbours are probably related to the seller, so it's more tricky than moving into a big town after hammering the price down.

Also, what's the buyer's attachment to the house? Usually too much, and us Brits tend to view places as 'bargains' compared to UK prices.
To get a rock-bottom deal you must be prepared to walk away and try elsewhere.


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## boilerman

I have to say, after watching Brits buying houses on the telly, I feel a bit embarrassed by their "cheeky offers".


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## Clic Clac

boilerman said:


> I have to say, after watching Brits buying houses on the telly, I feel a bit embarrassed by their "cheeky offers".


Yes, but half of them on the programme are only there for the freebie holiday for a week.
They've got to make sure their daft offer isn't accepted. If they get unlucky and the offer is accepted they always have a 'builder mate' who appears
later and advises against buying.

I used to love watching 'A Place In the Sun' where the lady walks into her 'dream home' and starts crying, then two minutes later
she couldn't possibly buy the place 'because it doesn't have blue shutters'. 

One time the presenter lady even offered to buy them a tin of paint. 😅


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## BackinFrance

Bevdeforges said:


> You really need to determine the circumstances of the property on which you are making your offer. How low you can go depends on lots of things - the general market in the area, how long the property has been on the market, the circumstances of the particular property (e.g. is the family selling off a property they have inherited? are there "nuisances" in the area or proposed construction or other plans that make it likely the owner is trying to get their money out and leave the problems to the new owners? how "desperate" is the owner to sell? etc.) If the seller has an "exclusive" contract with an estate agent, there may be a clause whereby they can't refuse an offer for the full asking price - so it depends how much you want the house.


If the buyer has multiple offers at the asking price the seller can pick and choose amongst those offers.


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## rynd2it

boilerman said:


> I have to say, after watching Brits buying houses on the telly, I feel a bit embarrassed by their "cheeky offers".


There is a basic rule of selling houses and that is any house will sell for the right price. An offer is a starting point in a negotiation, if the seller is insulted by it, then it's likely the asking price is too high or the offer is too low. No need for anyone to be embarrassed or insulted, just keep negotiating until it sells or one party walks away.


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## boilerman

Clic Clac said:


> Yes, but half of them on the programme are only there for the freebie holiday for a week.
> They've got to make sure their daft offer isn't accepted. If they get unlucky and the offer is accepted they always have a 'builder mate' who appears
> later and advises against buying.
> 
> I used to love watching 'A Place In the Sun' where the lady walks into her 'dream home' and starts crying, then two minutes later
> she couldn't possibly buy the place 'because it doesn't have blue shutters'.
> 
> One time the presenter lady even offered to buy them a tin of paint. 😅


Then there's the bleeding obvious "oh this is so typically French" which reminds me of Basil Fawlty, asking the elderly lady what she expected to see out of the Torquay window, "the hanging gardens of Babylon?


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## MikeandEmilyD

Thanks to all. I think we will have to play this by ear. Perhaps get to foster a good relationship with some agents first. Is it feasable to make an offer on 2 places and see which one is the most flexible on price or would that be a problem?


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## Bevdeforges

MikeandEmilyD said:


> Is it feasable to make an offer on 2 places and see which one is the most flexible on price or would that be a problem?


You run the risk of both offers being accepted - and that could be a problem. Also, you might potentially wind up paying two agency fees, even if you're able to wiggle out of the actual sale of one of the properties. There is much less "gaming" involved in the fine art of home purchase here in France than in the US or (apparently) the UK.


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## MikeandEmilyD

Bevdeforges said:


> You run the risk of both offers being accepted - and that could be a problem. Also, you might potentially wind up paying two agency fees, even if you're able to wiggle out of the actual sale of one of the properties. There is much less "gaming" involved in the fine art of home purchase here in France than in the US or (apparently) the UK.


Hi Bev. So you are sying that even if you make a verbal offer that it is binding if it is also verbally accepted. In the uk it's not binding until it is put down in a written and signed offer.


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## eairicbloodaxe

Mike and Emily, buying in France is most definitely NOT like buying in UK.

It's the UK legal process, where anyone can just walk away at any time before exchange of contracts, that is broken.

Kind regards

Ian


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## Franco-Belgian Brit

MikeandEmilyD said:


> Hi Bev. So you are sying that even if you make a verbal offer that it is binding if it is also verbally accepted. In the uk it's not binding until it is put down in a written and signed offer.


Not sure of the law in France, but the system in Belgium seems the same as France with compromis and so forth.

In Belgium, if you make an offer, it gets put in writing and passed to the seller. The seller then has 14 days to accept or reject. Rejected, you negotiate and put in another offer. Accepted, then the compromis is drawn up.


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## BackinFrance

Nobody in France will discuss a verbal offer to buy, your offer must be in writing and signed, see the notaires.fr website for information.


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## boilerman

Not sure if this just confuses the issue or not, but when we bought our place 20 years ago, when we made the offer, we had to put a 10% deposit down, to secure it. Or am I stating the obvious?


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## BackinFrance

boilerman said:


> Not sure if this just confuses the issue or not, but when we bought our place 20 years ago, when we made the offer, we had to put a 10% deposit down, to secure it. Or am I stating the obvious?








The promise to sell and the sales agreement | Notaires de France


Are you about to sign a preliminary contract? This is known as a "pre-contract". The preliminary contract and the sales agreement are two contracts with different consequences for the buyer and the seller




www.notaires.fr


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## ddaddy

BackinFrance said:


> Nobody in France will discuss a verbal offer to buy, your offer must be in writing and signed, see the notaires.fr website for information.


Not true.
I viewed a house last week. Asking price 430k. I emailed the agent with a list of issues I had and suggested I’d still buy it for 320k. He called the seller and made the offer which was rejected. He battled to try and get a counter offer.
In this case, my offer was just too low, but it certainly is possible to negotiate without singing anything.


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## boilerman

ddaddy said:


> Not true.
> I viewed a house last week. Asking price 430k. I emailed the agent with a list of issues I had and suggested I’d still buy it for 320k. He called the seller and made the offer which was rejected. He battled to try and get a counter offer.
> In this case, my offer was just too low, but it certainly is possible to negotiate without singing anything.





ddaddy said:


> Not true.
> I viewed a house last week. Asking price 430k. I emailed the agent with a list of issues I had and suggested I’d still buy it for 320k. He called the seller and made the offer which was rejected. He battled to try and get a counter offer.
> In this case, my offer was just too low, but it certainly is possible to negotiate without singing anything.


110k reduction, jeez, did it have a roof?

Having bought a house a few years ago, I see what BIF means, talk's cheap and there's lots of that before an offer can be legally accepted.


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## ddaddy

🤣 there was a lot of things flagged up in the Diagnostics and our offer was a negotiable starting point.
I was just pointing out that you can in fact discuss price at any point. Obviously once agreed you will need to sign to make it official.


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## mohsel

boilerman said:


> Not sure if this just confuses the issue or not, but when we bought our place 20 years ago, when we made the offer, we had to put a 10% deposit down, to secure it. Or am I stating the obvious?


yes, but this was after teh negotiation phase..
you negotiate through the agency with the owner in writing, then if it is accepted, the notaire jumps in, and to start the process 10% (or 15% I dont remember) has to be sent to the notaire to secure...
once the notaire makes the first draft, you have 14 days to withdraw without any penalty.


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## Clic Clac

ddaddy said:


> In this case, my offer was just too low, but it certainly is possible to negotiate without *singing* anything.


That's lucky. 
Especially with a voice like mine. 😅


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## zarathustra

I would try and haggle on the price, but take a good look and try to use justified reasoning for it. I was naive when I bought, and didn't place an offer nearly low enough - ended up with an overpriced property that required a reasonable amount of work. After a decade it also required a new roof, which proved to be a huge expense. Yes, a low offer ,might offend the seller, but so what - they can always refuse.


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## ddaddy

I've been properly house hunting for the past month, and every now and then I get notified of a price reduction on a property that drops from say 470k to 350k and this makes me petrified about over paying as obviously a lot of houses are put on the market initially over priced.

If you don't ask, you don't get. They can only say no.


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## Clic Clac

mohsel said:


> you negotiate through the agency with the owner in writing, then if it is accepted, the notaire jumps in, and to start the process 10% (or 15% I dont remember) has to be sent to the notaire to secure...
> once the notaire makes the first draft, you have 14 days to withdraw without any penalty.


That's the '_Compromis de vente'. _

The first stage of signing.


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## ccm47

The notaires have flexibility in requesting a deposit, we have only ever been asked for 5% despite having 10% available.

The compromis also normally includes a clause suspensive in case the purchaser does not secure a mortgage either of the amount required or at a repayment level they can afford. 
Either party can withdraw during the 14 day period after compromis signature but once those dates are passed at least one can be fairly confident the sale will go through if SAFER don't step in ( mainly applies to houses next to farmland) but their possible interest can delay completion by 2 months. But at least it's better than the UK where neither price nor sale can be 100% guaranteed until exchange of contracts weeks, if not months, after the notional offer has been accepted.

We hated the selling process of our first house in France because the agent 's employee tried to bully us into accepting the first offer the agency got, which was way under market value. In due course the same couple increased their offer to the asking price and therefore we accepted it.The same employee kept hassling us over certificates for the diagnostics, despite the fact that we had those that were needed had been done before the house was put on the market and then he really had difficulty in understanding that an electrical certificate did not have a start date of when the footings of the property were started. Doh! We suspect this employee got commission from those he could then recommend to carry out work, which may or may not have been needed.


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## Bevdeforges

zarathustra said:


> I was naive when I bought, and didn't place an offer nearly low enough - ended up with an overpriced property that required a reasonable amount of work.


There is also the whole "human nature" thing. It's not only in France that sellers expect a significantly higher offer from "foreigners" than from a local. The Brits were reviled for ages for buying up local housing at exorbitant prices - thereby cutting young local couples out of the market in "their own home towns." But still, plenty of folks were only too happy to sell to Brits willing to overpay for the property - especially if the buyers were looking to leave town anyhow.


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## TOrner

Bevdeforges said:


> You run the risk of both offers being accepted - and that could be a problem. Also, you might potentially wind up paying two agency fees, even if you're able to wiggle out of the actual sale of one of the properties. There is much less "gaming" involved in the fine art of home purchase here in France than in the US or (apparently) the UK.


Bev - just to note, in France, the buyer has a no excuses needed period of 10 days to back out AFTER the Compromis de vente is signed. So if both offers are accepted, it should be no problem to back out of the least favorable.


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## TOrner

boilerman said:


> Not sure if this just confuses the issue or not, but when we bought our place 20 years ago, when we made the offer, we had to put a 10% deposit down, to secure it. Or am I stating the obvious?


10% is generally the rule, but it's not in law. We made our offer last week saying we would put down a 5% down payment and it was accepted.


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## TOrner

I'm actively in the buying process now. The best thing one can do is go to Meilleursagents.com This site will allow you to put in the information about the house and it will within minutes spit out a Low - Medium - High price (net to seller) for just about any given property in France. Of course you have to know the address. If the house is in turnkey condition, expect to pay closer to the high price. If the house needs a lot of work, expect close to the low price. I've looked at about 20 properties and the list price isn't far from these values - if it is, you need to find out why.

Second: go to this French gouv website: DVF You can zoom into the address and pick out the actual property. If the house has sold in the last 7 yrs, it will tell you sale price, the m2 and the lots that were included in the sale. It will also show you what's on the cadastre for tax purposes. We looked at one house with a pool, but the pool wasn't listed on the cadastre, and the owner had the pool for 30 yrs - just never informed the fisc and was adamant about not having pool diagnostics done - wonder why?

After looking at the Meilleur's agents estimates, we put in offers that were 10% below asking price. In one case, the owner came down 2% and that was all, which we still felt was too high and we walked. In the second case, the owners met us a little more than half way coming down 5.5%, with the final price being between the low & medium prices. We felt this was fair and went with it.

There a plenty of houses one can get cheap in France, if you don't care about the condition or the neighborhood. But we find that good, nice properties in good locations are going to sell for not far from the asking price, by that I mean 5-10%. When we put our house on the market here in France we'll do the same, about 5-10% above what we expect to get. If someone comes in with an offer more than 10% below asking - they won't get a response.


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## BackinFrance

Congratulatio on your purchase.

It is entirely possible to put your property on the market at a non negotiable price, as a friend of mine recently did with success - she even got to choose the purchaser. It has to be said though that the market here is pretty hot for some reason.


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## boilerman

What BIF said about the market being hot, is right. House prices where we are, in Normandy, In two years, have increased by a third. That's mad, especially for the French. 
When we sell, it will be to a local French person, who needs somewhere to live.


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## BackinFrance

boilerman said:


> What BIF said about the market being hot, is right. House prices where we are, in Normandy, In two years, have increased by a third. That's mad, especially for the French.
> When we sell, it will be to a local French person, who needs somewhere to live.


I don't even know why prices are so high here. I have even had signed offers with dossiers attached in my letter box, and they haven't even visited the property! Not that I have any intention of selling, given I want to stay in this area.


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## tardigrade

boilerman said:


> When we sell, it will be to a local French person, who needs somewhere to live.


I do not think you are allowed to discriminate based on race or nationality.


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## boilerman

tardigrade said:


> I do not think you are allowed to discriminate based on race or nationality.


Tell you what, I'll sell to whoever I want, that's my prerogative, and no one will ever know


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## MikeandEmilyD

Thanks to all for your input. Very interesting.


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