Renting in France (for Brits)

Have just been to Bordeaux to rent a house. It went like this!

I arrived and Carol said "Do you want to hear the bad news?". She had been working really hard, scouring the papers, surfing the websites and phoning agencies. The bad news is that the agencies did not want to deal with us at all. Why? Here's why (it's a long story....)

1. France has a law that forbids evictions between October and March. You can't make someone homeless in the winter, apparently.

2. This makes landlords nervous, especially in student towns. After all, what's to stop a student from paying his deposit, then living in your place scot-free until April, when you evict him and he goes to doss on someone's floor for a month till his course ends!

3. So landlords take out an insurance policy against non-payment of rent, and the insurance companies pursue your family, employer, whatever to recover the rent.

4. The insurance companies cannot recover the rent from people who are paid from foreign countries (like Britain)

5. So the agencies didn't want to even talk to us!

In fact, one French pastor in Bordeaux is funded by an American mission agency. he is French, has lived in France most of his life and is a tenant now - but STILL the agencies won't deal with him because his salary comes from overseas!

So it meant that instead of Carol lining up LOTS of viewings, when I arrived she had only succeeded in securing four. Actually, I thought that was fine. Too many viewings and you can't remember which was which anyway! Two were private, and two were with an agency that somehow had decided to chance it. I'll tell you how they went! (I was a bit disappointed that the one with the pool would not talk to us!)

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