Long-term housing plans

We hope to rent in Bordeaux to begin with. When we first started talking about Bordeaux it seemed vital to find a house because it's so much easier for the work (having people round, meetings in the home, etc.) But now that the student centre is in full use that isn't so important. A flat would do.

Long term we hope to buy outright using the equity from selling our house here. There are pros and cons with this. The French property market is more static than ours - prices do not rise (or fall!) as much, and there are heavy taxes on house purchases. So it is not a good idea to buy and sell and "work up the housing ladder" in France.

For ministry this means you have to be sure that where you buy is basically going to be where you will work long term. Also moving your focus of ministry is a big issue - you sacrifice flexibility. While renting a flat seems o.k., buying a flat isn't as convincing, because of service charges, maintenance and such like.

While we could probably afford a flat in Bordeaux, houses are probably out of our price range. We could buy a house in a satellite town - but that depends on the future pattern of our ministry.

One solution may be to buy a gite. This would make it possible for friends and family to visit us. And the leaseback scheme sounds tempting. The French government instituted a leaseback scheme some time ago, where you buy a gite from a holiday firm and then lease it back to them. They pay you rent for it and assign you certain weeks when you can go there on holiday free of charge. After the lease is up (9-11 years) the place returns to you. Here's a website that talks a little about that: http://money.guardian.co.uk/buyingpropertyabroad/story/0,14757,1263103,00.html

The disadvantage is that we need then to continue renting indefinitely, but the advantages are in flexibility and mobility, and in generating some income towards our support.

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