French property - so what exactly is a "buying agent"?

I set up my business in France in 2003 when you could literally count the number of buying agents on one hand.  As regular readers have probably guessed, I love my job and many of my clients have become friends.

Since then, thanks largely to tv shows on TF1 and M6, our number has increased and we even have our own national federation - http://www.fnci.fr/

I have delved into Wikipedia to help me explain what we do and you can see their definition here.  They are talking about the UK market but the principle remains the same.

They are people acting as agents on behalf of a buyer and not the seller, as do traditional estate agents whose job is to obtain the maximum price for a property for the seller. Buying agents represent the buyer's interests and normally undertake negotiations on their behalf to acquire a property for the best possible price and terms.

The main advantages of using a buying agent are the savings in time and money and access to properties not available on the open market. Whilst nearly all charge a registration fee (anything between £500 and £2500) and a percentage of the purchase price of the property (usually between 1.5% and 2% of the sale price) the agent’s negotiating skills and access to properties before they reach the open market often mean that clients purchase properties for substantially less than they would if they went to estate agents or vendors directly.

Couldn't have put it better myself. 

For info my fees are €500 then 2.75% and you are tapping in to over 25 years experience of the international property market.

Feel free to get in touch.

That's it...shameless plug over!

www.cognacproperty.com

French buying agents - where to find them

Just had a heart warming conversation with a colleague of mine from Nice.

Rebecca Russell has been part of the FrenchEntrée property finder network for just over a year.

Despite the tough market, she has started to carve herself a niche on the Cote D'Azur and has recently found a spate of houses for international clients from all over the world.  The latest is a beautiful villa for a professional couple from the UK that was being marketed at well over a million euros.

She offers a professional and discrete service. Like all of the agents in our network she has been invited to write a number of articles for specialist magazines.  Read her blog and you will see why I think that journalists will continue to seek market comment from her. You can visit her website here.

Serious buyers are still in short supply but, as Rebecca is proving, if you are prepared to go the extra mile for a client then the service and value that buying agents can offer is invaluable.

All of our agents work to the same exacting standard and have true local knowledge (often of properties that are not being sold on the open market).  We all also follow a "quality charter" set out by our national federation.

If you are thinking of buying a property in France then a good opening move would be to click on the link to any of the experts below:

Normandy
Mayenne
Loire & Thouet valley
Limousin
Charente
Dordogne/Correze
Languedoc Roussillon
Provence
Cote D'Azur
French Alps

www.cognacproperty.com

A warming tale on a freezing day in the charente

Just heard from one of my colleagues in the FrenchEntrée Property Finder network that his clients have just signed on a pretty spectacular house. He had put a huge amount of time and effort into the property search and I'm really glad that it has paid dividends.

There's no hiding that it's been a poor year for both traditional estate agents and buying agents alike.

However, throughout 2009 we have helped clients find and buy houses in all corners of France including (off the top of my head) Calvados, Mayenne, Limousin, Poitou-Charentes, Aquitaine, Languedoc Roussillon and the Cote D'Azur.

Hopefully 2010 will bring easier market conditions and the network will continue to grow throughout this beautiful country.

Meanwhile I imagine that at least one of my colleagues will be enjoying a decent glass of red wine over his lunch today.

www.cognacproperty.com

91% of Brits would use a "buyers agent"

Encouraging research coming out of the Association of Property Finders and Buyers Agents (APFBA).

Over 2000 people were questioned between November 2008 and March 2009.

Worryingly, two thirds of buyers questioned believe that estate agents work for both buyer and seller. On being reminded that estate agents are generally paid to represent the best interests of the seller, 89% of buyers accepted that a conflict of interest exists where an agent deals with both buyer and seller in the same transaction.

Indeed, some 86% of those questioned said that they would get a fairer deal if they had a professional to represent them, and 91% would use a buyers’ agent if this would save them time, stress and money.

I have blogged before on the changing face of estate agency and firmly believe that buyers agents (or property finders as many people call them) will become more and more prevalent as the market changes.

I have been asked by French Property News to write on this subject and will post a link when it is published.

Meanwhile I leave you with this from the excellent UK based Homebuyers Agency:

The survey also showed that 75% of buyers prefer use the internet as their primary search method. With portals such as Rightmove, Globrix and Property Live providing access to every property listing in the UK it seems that the UK is moving towards a similar model as the US and Australia.

There, estate agents work as ‘listing agents’ for the vendor, uploading their listings to the Multi-Listing Service (MLS), or in other words the internet portals, and buyers’ agents are employed by the buyer to help find, advise, evaluate and negotiate on the property purchase.


www.cognacproperty.com

The changing face of estate agency

The revolution is gathering pace.

Today's Independent has an excellent article headed "Online property search: the diy sellers", you can read it in full here.

In it the journalist says:

Customers are becoming increasingly autonomous, finding properties on the internet for themselves and seeking professional advice as and when they need it. With the vast majority of properties now advertised online, and tools that allow buyers to look at flats and houses from street level such as Google Street View, buyers don't need an estate agent in the same way they used to.

This strikes a chord with the way my business has changed since I set it up in 2003.

In the beginning my clients would have no knowledge of what properties were available and simply trusted me to show them a suitable cross selection. Some clients still act in this way.

However, there are a growing number who have spent ages scouring the internet and have a good feel for what is on the market - they may well even have found houses that look promising on paper. They are looking for someone who can "project manage" their purchase:

• add to their existing list of properties (by using local contacts, private sales, back street agents)


• do an initial sifting to weed out unsuitable prospects


• guide them through the buying process, offering independent advice and acting purely for them not the agent or vendor


• help in negotiating the lowest possible price


• act as a signpost towards other professional advisors (notaires, surveyors, lawyers, currency brokers, architects, builders, artisans, mortgage advisors)

The French market is going through the same fundamental change as the UK. Nightly television is full of adverts for private sale websites and for property portals. The number of traditional agents is diminishing (I was shocked to see that in the UK one in four agents have closed over the last two years).

I'm not saying that traditional agents are dead men walking, nor am I saying that they don't have a place in the market. Clearly they do and changes like this don't happen overnight. If I were selling my house I would still use local agents and would expect them to advise me on how to "dress" my house to the best effect and how to get the highest possible price for it.

What I am saying though is that customer needs and actions are changing fast. Buyers will need traditional agents less and less.

Sellers on the other hand will be looking to their agents to help them differentiate and stand out from the crowd.....if the agent fails to deliver this then more and more sellers will go it alone and Sarah Beeney may well be proved right when she says:

"The internet has removed the need for estate agents and that in the future it is likely that estate agents will be the preserve of complicated or "out of the ordinary" sales".

www.cognacproperty.com

Property finder network takes off

Mixed messages still coming out of the UK.

FTSE 100 over the 5,000 mark (hurrah) and house prices are either on the rise (Halifax) or it's a false dawn (Ernst & Young).

One thing is for sure though. The activity levels of our French property finder network are beginning to take off.

I'm not claiming that we're all inundated but as the guy from Savills so eloquently put it "A year on (from the collapse of Lehman Brothers) power has been restored and there's a flicker of hope".

I've just taken a phone call from Caroline who is based in Mayenne. She has had clients over from Thailand and, after a week-end of hard negotiations, they have just had an offer accepted on a beautiful property. I'm thrilled for Caroline as she had put her heart & soul into finding something truly special for them.

Janine in Bayeux is flying - she's bought two houses for clients in the last few weeks and is slap bang in the middle of another search now.

Rebecca in Nice reports the same with a couple of offers accepted and more clients out shortly.

We've also just taken on mandates for further searches in the Dordogne, Aquitaine, Perpignan and Chamonix too.

The good news is that a lot of these enquiries are non-UK related (we've recently been instructed by clients from Hawaii, South Africa, Sweden, Canada and Asia)....hopefully this means that when the UK market does come back we should have real cause for optimism.

If you'd like to discuss joining the network (we're currently 12 across France but plan to be 50 by the end of 2010) you can email guy@frenchentree.com and he'll send you a prospectus.

Alternatively just pick up the phone and I'd be happy to chat about it.

www.cognacproperty.com