Have You Decided to Sell Your France Property?

Are you thinking about selling your property in France, but don’t know where to begin or with whom to list it?

We are a licensed French real estate agency and can list your property for sale…but we are very discriminating—we only list properties that we would recommend our clients/readers buy! And that’s why we can be successful, because our clients and readers know they can trust us to present only the best properties.

We also work closely with other larger agencies that specialize in the North American market in order to broaden our reach when necessary. So, if we can’t sell the property through our own channels, we partner with agencies who can.

To prepare for the sale of your property, we will evaluate the retail value and offer suggestions for pricing it. Normally we build in a small amount of negotiation room (about 5%) and our commissions (about 5-6%). The bottom line is what you want to net from the sale, so that will be discussed and determined.

At this stage, we offer you a “mandat de vente” or mandate to sell the property. This contract asks for a chance to find a buyer between 90 and 120 days. The mandate outlines all the details of our agreement with you, and we ask for exclusivity so that we are not working against other agencies. (Keep in mind that whenever you list a property with multiple agencies, it reduces the interest the agencies take in your property as they have less of a chance selling it!)

Often we get requests from sellers who have already listed their property with another agency, but who want to reach our audience/market because we can target North American buyers who have discerning tastes and money to back up their desires. This market may be their most viable buyers…but they thought of this too late in the game! And this is why I am telling you this now! Research all your options before you make a decision.

To prepare for the property for sale, we organize having the diagnostics* done, have photos taken, organize all the important documents and prepare the listing for our website. I also write a Nouvellettre® in order to promote it to our market—a readership of well over 12,000 Francophiles eager to have a connection with France. If we want to reach a broader market, we may also advertise it on some of the major real estate websites.

If the property is in Paris or Nice, then we have agents on the ground who can manage the visits. If it’s outside of these two cities, then we partner with a local agency that can easily manage the visits for us. Either way, we ensure easy access to showing the property so that offers can come rolling in as quickly as possible.

You might be surprised to learn that we can sell a property sight unseen just from a Nouvellettre® like this one! Why? Because we believe in it; because we have a personal relationship with our audience; because our clients and readers trust us to be 100% honest with them and give them not only all the plusses, but all the minuses, too—so that a buyer will be completely informed and be able to make a good decision.

This is my personal motto and mission—full disclosure, complete truth, and absolute trust. This is why you can count on us not only to find you a great property to purchase if you’re hiring us to search for it, but also to offer listings of properties that we can back up with our own reputation for selecting only the best.

Other agencies will take on any property that comes their way. They need the listings because without them they have nothing to sell. They will point out all the plusses, but not the minuses. They just want to sell the property and they don’t care about the buyer’s needs. They work for the seller.

That’s not us. Our clients hire us to find property that suits them and therefore we are not dependent on listings. So, because we won’t recommend a property to purchase that we don’t believe is a bona fide asset for the buyer, we won’t offer one for sale to our market, either.

*Diagnostics:

With French real estate, there is no “inspection” like is typically done in North America. In its place is a mandatory diagnosis, provided by the seller, performed by a licensed diagnostician, that covers the analysis of the presence of lead, asbestos, and termites, of the property’s energy performance, efficiency of the gas and electricity installations and non-collective sanitation.

The diagnosis is called the “DDT” file or Dossier de Diagnostic Technique. This file must be included with all sales agreements and any sale of a residential property. The law requires the seller to provide these documents, and failing to do so may result in legal consequences. You cannot be exempted from this responsibility.

For a complete understanding, read our French Property Insider from July of this year. And to learn more about our property listing service, visit our website!

A la prochaine…