(OT) Damn I'm excited.....new project!

[oldsub86]

Hey Phil

Looks like a great project!

A bunch of questions come to mind immediately:

What do you have to pay for something like that (if you don't mind me being a bit rude by asking)?

Any problems with non-residents buying property there?

What are taxes like?

How many square feet is the house?

Is it really 800 miles from home?

We travel about 185 miles out to the cottage and that is far enough in my book. Of course, we go for 2 day weekends quite often. About 3 1/4 hours if we don't stop.

Randy

[Lippyp]

Originally posted by oldsub86
Hey Phil

Looks like a great project!

A bunch of questions come to mind immediately:

What do you have to pay for something like that (if you don't mind me being a bit rude by asking)?

Any problems with non-residents buying property there?

What are taxes like?

How many square feet is the house?

Is it really 800 miles from home?

We travel about 185 miles out to the cottage and that is far enough in my book. Of course, we go for 2 day weekends quite often. About 3 1/4 hours if we don't stop.

Randy

We are paying 40,000 euros for it, which is about £27,000 or $48,000 (US) or $66,000 Canadian. Some savings and a small mortgage raised againt the equity in our house in the UK.

As we are all one big happy EU family there is no problem with us buying property and even living in France, we wouldn't need any work permits, residency permits etc. I'm not so sure about non EU citizens, I don't think there's a problem in terms of owning a house but you wouldn't have the same residency rights, I know there are Americans with houses in France.

Taxes are very reasonable I understand, will let you know when we get the first bill!

Actually don't know the square footage, I am waiting for the vendor to confirm these details, it's not huge but hey, it's a holiday home! We reckon on eventually splitting the top floor into two bedrooms, the middle floor will be one open kitchen/diner/living room and underneath will be the bathroom, utility area and possibly another bedroom (for those really hot summer nights it'll be nice and cool down there rather than roasting up in the roof!)

and yes, it is really 800 miles away from where we live. My parents have a house in Northern France which is close enough for them to go to for a weekend, but they live under two hours from the Channel Tunnel in the South of England and their house over there is only an hours drive from the othe other end of the tunnel. As we live in the North of England, over five hours drive from the channel tunnel, it still wouldn't really have been practical for a weekend trip if we'd bought in northern France, so we decided we'd rather have guaranteed good weather in an area we love in southern France. Also there are now some low cost airlines flying to an airport about an hours drive from the house, costing about $70 return, so we may fly over and hire a car on odd occasions.

[JIMs70GMC]

That is awesome to be able to do that. I thought my parents took on a lot by buying a house built in 1906, but wow! Any plans for the land?

[Lippyp]

No plans for the land, we'll probably fence off a "garden" area and do a deal with the farmer for grazing/hay or just have a huge wild flower meadow with paths mowed through it.

Our house in the UK was built in 1903, had been empty for 12 years when we bought it and was in a pretty rough state (dry rot and wet rot in the floors, broken windows, rising damp, dodgy roof etc etc. We've nearly finished restoring it to it's former glory (it was built by the Methodist Church as a Ministers house) The French house should be a lot easier to do as it will be very rustic, bare stone walls inside, natural wood etc.

My late mother in laws house was over 200 years old and had red sandstone walls about three feet thick. When we put an door through to her new kitchen extension we had to use two lengths of railroad ties side by side as a lintel over the opening....and there was still a small gap between them!

This is our house in the UK.

[oldsub86]

Hey Phil

Thanks for the response- very interesting.

Loved the photo of the house in England as well. Looks great.

Randy