The Importance Of French Property Surveys

In general, when people buy property in this part of France, they do not tend to have structural surveys done. This is very different to buying a property in the UK where nobody buys a property without having a survey.

In the UK, a bank or building society will insist upon a valuation survey to make sure that the property in question is suitable collateral for the amount of the loan. In France, the lending source doesn't always require a survey. A lot of emphasis is put on "Honour" over here. So if you tell the bank that the house is worth 150,000?, why should they think otherwise?

If you do want to get a Languedoc property survey done you can either have a friendly builder take a quick look, or you can have a formal survey done by a qualified surveyor. Languedoc Property Finders always work with companies who have RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) qualified surveyors to survey your house for you. Weather you want a full written report, a bullet point report , a simple verbal report or a combination of these they can tailor a survey to suit your requirements.

They will obviously look out for obvious things such as damp, the condition of the roof and any structural defects but they should also be able to advise you on whether the property is prone to flooding and any other information about the local area which could affect the future value or sale of your property.

With my experience of selling property in both France and the UK I can't emphasis enough the importance of having a survey done on any property which you are buying. It would be like marrying someone without dating first!

We have heard of people buying their dream holiday home and it turns into one disaster after another. We have also all seen the programs on TV which highlight both the ignorance and to a degree the laziness of many holiday home owners who seem to arrive in France with there heart and head no longer connected.

To give you an example of the costs of the surveys we have just arranged a survey for some clients who were purchasing a ?150,000 house. The survey cost ?900, at first this seems a lot but it only represents just over 0.5% of the value of the property, this in my opinion is money well spent.

Gary Ingram is a partner at Languedoc Property Finders are a personal property search company based in South West France. <br /> Visit our website: Languedoc Property Finders or call us on 0044 207 193 9341