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.