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| Reproduced from the June 2007 issue of French Property News |
| | House of Hidden Treasure
Peter Magee has a magical gift for spotting properties with secret hidden treasures. His latest renovation project is a delightful 14th-century village house within the bastide walls of Eymet - one of several neglected period properties in the Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne regions he has transformed in the past few years. Here's how he spots their potential… | | 
Renovated façade |
| My wife, Linzi, and I have always loved south-west France - especially the food, the wine and the relaxed attitude to life. After many holidays in the area, we finally decided to buy a holiday home in 2002, but little did we know how much of a challenge it was going to prove trying to convert and renovate the property over the telephone!
Although we had a superb maçon working on the house, everything was getting behind schedule. As anyone who's ever renovated a property knows, you really need to be on the spot to make choices and take decisions as and when they arise.
So out of sheer frustration, Linzi and I decided that we should take a year's sabbatical in France to get the house finished, decorated and furnished as quickly as possible. Once we got a taste for the local lifestyle, however, our year's sabbatical soon became a permanent move to France as all our UK family and friends had predicted!
Thanks to our maçon and the rest of our skilled team of artisans, our house was soon finished. The only problem was that both Linzi and I felt rather disappointed that the project was at an end. Although we didn't expressly discuss the possibility of doing it all over again, I found myself starting to look in local estate agents' windows just in case…
Of course the best way to find a good property is by word of mouth. And once our maçon started to make enquiries on our behalf, we quickly found ourselves with a choice of properties - all with great potential. |  The period properties we've bought and renovated over the years have all been run-down farmhouses in rural locations. Our most recent project, however, has been somewhat different - a 14th-century village house within the bastide of Eymet in the Dordogne.
When we first saw it, the front façade nearly put us off the house completely! But a tour around the house with our trusted artisans soon persuaded us that the finished result would be worth taking the risk for, especially since they believed that many of the original features of the house were currently hidden beneath the grim flock wallpaper!
Several months on, the house has been transformed. The front and back exterior walls of the house look stunning thanks to our maçon. He removed a thick layer of plaster from the front façade to expose the original stonework, which he subsequently renovated and re-pointed to great effect.
The wooden staircase up to the first floor has been repaired, stripped and polished to perfection, as have the wooden floorboards in the upstairs bedrooms. And up one more hidden flight of stairs, there is a newly floored attic space of 25' x 14'6", which would be perfect for converting to another bedroom with an en suite bathroom, or perhaps for use as an art studio or an office.
What makes this village house particularly special, however, is the courtyard at the back of the property. Village houses within the bastide walls in Eymet seldom have a garden or courtyard, so we were extremely fortunate to find this one. We saw that the courtyard catches the sun for most of the day, so we have created both a sunny area and a shady covered patio area - perfect for long lazy lunches, afternoon tea, early evening aperitifs and moonlit barbecues! Along with all its original 14th-century features, we thought the house might even come with its own genuine hidden treasure because when our maçon was exposing the original stone wall in the lounge, he discovered a deep hole behind two stones. He explained that holes like this were traditionally created for hiding gems or jewellery in and perhaps this was going to be our lucky day. We all held our breath as he intrepidly put his hand into the hole - but alas, it was empty!
Now completely finished and furnished, we are ready to start a new project. We have always decorated and furnished each property so that should we want to live there ourselves, it would be ready to move in to at a moment's notice. Potential buyers can also see what the house will look like fully furnished, which always seems to be greatly appreciated - as does a website. By setting up a dedicated website, the house can be visited virtually from anywhere in the world at any time of day, all year round.
The village house has been a one-off project for us, so we are reluctantly going to sell it. We are hoping to find a buyer who will appreciate the house as much as we do - and it would certainly be perfect for use as a holiday home for people who want to avoid looking after a huge house with acres of land and a pool. All the shops and amenities of Eymet are a short stroll away through the winding lanes of this lively, traditional village in the Dordogne.
In the meantime, we're off to renovate a neglected three-bedroom stone farmhouse with a pool, this time in the Lot-et-Garonne. Could this finally be the property we move into and call home? It's always possible, but on the other hand… |
Some simple tips for renovation beginners:- Buy a French bricolage book and start to learn the relevant building vocabulary
- Travel around the area to gather ideas about the local architectural style and traditional colours
- Go to the local museum or library and ask if there are any old photos showing what houses looked like at the beginning of the 20th century
- Ask around for recommendations for skilled local artisans, especially maçons. If you find a good maçon, he will be able to recommend other artisans to you. However, do bear in mind that if the artisans are any good, they'll be fully booked up - so don't expect them to be able to start work on your project tomorrow…
- Always apply for planning permission and ask for expert advice. If your property is listed or protected, you may need to consult Bâtiments de France. At the very least, you'll need to visit the mairie to find out what the local planning regulations are
- Don't wait until the travaux are finished before thinking about decorating and furnishing your property. If you live in the heart of the countryside, for instance, it may take several visits to your nearest large town to work out which are the best shops to buy from, so don't underestimate how time-consuming shopping for furniture and equipment might be
- Don't forget to take photos at every stage of the works. Once your project's finished, you'd be surprised how quickly you forget what everything looked like originally
- If you can't speak French, learn some key phrases. Your local maire, your neighbours and your artisans are all going to want to talk about your renovation project, so do make sure you've got something to say to them!
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Peter Magee - www.dordognevillagehouseforsale.com | |
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| | | Reproduced from the April 2007 issue of French Property News |
| | Food, Glorious Food!
The British are fascinated by French food. We love to buy it, we love to eat it - and we often cite it as a major reason for moving to France. Two confirmed French Foodies - Louise & Les Nicholson from the Poitou-Charentes - talk to Emma Ellis about their passion for French cuisine... | | 
Louise by the Aga |
| Louise & Les Nicholson have been fans of French food for years. Like so many Brits, they first fell in love with the country's cuisine during their holidays in France, which were spent wandering around local farmers' markets and enjoying surprisingly delicious meals in rustic village restaurants.
'Our lasting memories of holidays in France all relate to food!' says Louise. 'There was nothing we loved more than going to the local market to buy fresh ingredients to cook with - all those stalls piled high with colourful vegetables and baskets of ripe, juicy fruit, along with misshapen home-made cheeses and charcuterie. It didn't take many holidays to convince us that we wanted to be able to shop like this every day of the year!'
Years later, Les & Louise can do just that. Not only can they visit their local market every day, they also grow their own vegetables, fruit and herbs in the grounds of their French farmhouse - Bois Bourdet. Since they have both Bed & Breakfast and gîte guests to cater for all year round, their combined gardening and cooking skills have come in very handy and their home-grown, home-made French food is proving extremely popular.
'We mainly cook French food for our holiday guests for the simple reason that if they've chosen to come to France for their holiday, they'll probably want to eat French food,' says Les. 'We know that our holiday guests come to France because they love the people, the culture and the food. And they love the food because it's generally fresh, seasonal and affordable, as well as wholesome and uncomplicated - things that we strive to reflect in the dishes we create and serve at Bois Bourdet. |  'And both our British and French guests love to try the region's specialities. Gîtes de France, in conjunction with our regional tourist board, have been actively encouraging holiday property owners to introduce their guests to local delicacies - and have even run cookery courses to teach people like us how to cook them for guests.'
'The British seem to love the whole eating experience when they're on holiday in France,' adds Louise. 'For two weeks of the year, they enjoy long leisurely lunches in the summer sunshine, savouring a bottle or two of the local wine. But it's not until you actually live in France that you get to experience the large family meals where everyone is involved in preparing, cooking and serving, whilst socialising at the same time! This delightful, convivial atmosphere is something we hope to reproduce when catering for our guests at Bois Bourdet. And since we can have as many as 15 people to feed for supper, it never takes long for a friendly buzz to strike up!'
With so many people to cater for, Les & Louise have had to develop a repertoire of dishes which will satisfy their clients' appetite for French food, but which are also relatively easy to prepare and serve. So how do they do it?
'First of all,' says Louise, 'Les & I just love catering and being hospitable. Secondly, we've been lucky enough to have been trained to cater for large numbers.
'When we decided to give up our jobs in the UK, we actively sought work in catering and hospitality so that we could develop our skills. Our first job was running a 32-bed ski chalet in the Alps, which proved a major challenge on all fronts, not least because we'd only ever worked in corporate office jobs before! After that, we ran a 20-bed chalet in Breckenridge, Colorado - and then went back to the Alps to manage the chalet programme in the Three Valleys area.
'In addition to all our hands-on experience, the company we were working for gave us professional training as chefs in France and we had to pass food hygiene exams - all of which has proved absolutely invaluable to us. Getting meals ready for over 30 skiers every night (within a tight budget) was just the experience we needed for planning and organising our catering at Bois Bourdet.
'Finally, we spent a summer managing a gîte complex in the Languedoc with nine villas and two swimming pools - and it was this experience which really inspired us to set up our own business in France. We agreed that we should provide both gîte and B&B accommodation so that guests could either self-cater or let us cater for them.'
Having made that decision, Les & Louise started to look for a property and that was when they found Bois Bourdet. Everything went smoothly with the purchase, but just after the compromis was signed, they discovered Louise was pregnant.
'Trying to convert and restore ancient farm buildings with a new baby to worry about was hard work,' says Louise, 'but the advantages of moving into in a rural French village with a baby are enormous, especially in terms of being able to integrate easily into the local community.'
Once the farmhouse, B&B rooms and gîtes were ready for holiday guests, Les & Louise turned their attention to creating an organic vegetable garden. They hoped that before long, the garden would be able to supply most of the ingredients they would need for catering for guests. They also started to try out different dishes, all cooked on their beloved Aga cooker, which has pride of place in their farmhouse kitchen. |  'The Aga is perfect for cooking French dishes,' says Louise. 'An Aga produces radiant heat, which means that the temperature in the oven remains constant - you can even check a soufflé without it collapsing! Also, unlike most conventional ovens, food retains its moisture when cooked on the Aga, which makes it perfect for cooking meat and fish dishes.'
'Most of our guests are fascinated to know that we cook on an Aga, and even those who have an Aga at home are surprised that it can be so versatile. In fact, we've now had so many guests asking us for recipes, advice and help that we've decided to run some cookery courses this year,' says Louise. 'Our primary aim is to show participants how to use an Aga to cook our favourite French dishes. Numbers are limited to a maximum of six people so that everyone in the group gets a chance to join in with the preparation and the final presentation.'
After several years of running their holiday business, Les & Louise believe that the standard of their catering tempts guests to book holidays with them again and again. And they're hoping that their cookery courses will really help them stand out from their competitors.
'The French holiday market is becoming more and more competitive as time goes on,' says Les. 'Gone are the days when you could just place a display advert in a holiday brochure and expect to be full for six months of the year. If you take your business seriously, you now need to spend more money on advertising and more time looking after your holiday guests. We also firmly believe that you need your own website - it's definitely the best way to show off your property and the local area.'
'We really want people to get a taste of France from our website,' adds Louise, 'so we've made sure we've included lots of photos of food!'
Finally, Les & Louise offer some advice to fellow holiday property owners who fancy having a go at catering for their guests. 'The best thing is to start with some simple dishes which incorporate fresh, local ingredients. Once you've got the hang of serving the easy-to-prepare dishes, you'll feel more confident to tackle more complicated meals as time goes on. To boost your confidence, it may even be a good idea to enrol on a French cookery course to perfect your skills - and we know just the place!' |
Les & Louise Nicholson - www.boisbourdet.com |
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| | | Reproduced from the January 2007 issue of French Property News |
| | You must be Mad!
Is it really as difficult as everyone says to set up and run your own business in France? We speak to several ex-pats who have set up businesses in France and ask them about their experiences... | There is a commonly held belief that setting up your own business in France is a very difficult, frustrating experience. However, an increasing number of étrangers seem to be successfully negotiating their way through the numerous rules, regulations and paperwork - so perhaps the process is not nearly as complicated as some people make out.
Many ex-pats moving to France need to earn a living and often set up holiday-related businesses, such as chambres d’hôtes or gîtes. If you do not speak French fluently, this is a sensible option since there is so much advice available (in English) to guide you through the process.
As the gîte market becomes ever-more saturated, however, many people settling in France are finding that a gîte business alone is unlikely to generate a large enough income for to survive on. This means coming up with other business ideas, which is often easier said than done. On top of that, to set up your own business in a foreign country often takes a lot of courage, especially if you’re not sure how to go about it.
Whatever the nature of the business you wish to set up, an excellent place to start is www.apce.com (Agence pour La Création d’Entreprises). This excellent website tells you everything you could possibly ever need to know about setting up and running a business in France. It even tells you how to research the market, how to write and present a Business Plan to a French bank and how to categorise your own profession/business (which will affect where you go to register your business). There is also a very detailed guide which takes you through the 10 different stages of setting up your business – and even multiple-choice tests at the end of each stage to see how much you’ve actually taken in and understood!
Some of the website has been translated into English, but all the very detailed, technical information is only available in French. So if your French isn’t up to scratch, the only option is to sit down with a dictionary! There is a lot of information read and digest, but it really is worth putting in time and effort to inform yourself fully before you tackle the registration process for real.
There are three vital pieces of information you’ll need to research on the website before you can register your business:- Do you need any specific official qualifications to practice your business/profession?
- How is your business/profession categorised (its statut)? (For example: profession libérale; commerciale...)
- Depending on how you and your business are categorized, which is your relevant Centre de Formalités des Entreprises? (In other words, which organisation do you visit to register your business? For example: Chambre de Commerce; URSSAF...)
Once you have worked out these three answers and depending on what sort of business you’re setting up, your next task is to find a comptable/expert-comptable/compte gestionnaire (book-keeper/chartered accountant/management accountant). Try to get some recommendations from local French friends or associates before looking in the Pages Jaunes.
Your choice of accountant is crucial to the success of your business. They might have a particular contact at the Tax Office, for example, and be able to negotiate on your behalf. They might know a friendly bank manager who will arrange a favourable mortgage for you. And although employing an accountant is a significant expense initially, it is a necessary expense if you want to get into the French system without too much hassle along the way. Also, depending on what sort of business you are setting up in, you may be legally obliged to employ an accountant.
Incidentally, if you find the APCE website too difficult to understand, your accountant will be able to help you answer the three questions above. They may also disagree with your three initial answers (especially if the categorisation is going to affect your tax status, for example!), but at least you will have been seen to have made an effort to get to grips with the French system.
After you have agreed the business/professional categorisations with your accountant, the next stage is to visit your relevant CFE (Centre de Formalités des Entreprises). The purpose of your initial visit is to ask for a registration application form, along with a list of necessary documents you must collect together (your accountant will then be able to help with collating these if necessary).
Contrary to some of the advice available to read on the internet, not all businesses are registered at the local Chambre de Commerce. Briefly...
If your business is categorised as commercial or you are a commerçant, you register at the Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie (this applies to gîte and B&B owners, for example – although always speak to an accountant first about exactly how to categorise your business since smaller businesses are registered at the CCI in a different way from larger businesses).
If your business involves skilled crafts or both skilled crafts and trade, you register at the Chambre de Métiers et de l’Artisanat (a carpenter, for example).
If your business involves agriculture, you register at the Chambre d’Agriculture.
If you want to work as a sales representative, you need to register with the Greffe du Tribunal de Commerce (the commercial court’s clerk’s office).
If your business/profession is categorised as Profession Libérale, you register with URSSAF (the social security contribution collection office).
All other categories of business need to register at the Service des Impôts (tax office).
The job of your CFE is then to collect your finished dossier (once you’ve collected together all your relevant paperwork) and then to send copies of it to INSEE (who register the business for you and issue you with a SIRET/SIREN number), the tax authorities, the social security organisations (who will collect your healthcare/pension contributions), the commercial court (if relevant to your business category), the register of skilled workers (if relevant) and the various employment authorities if you intend to employ salaried workers.
Once all the relevant organisations have been informed, you should start to receive information from each one. Check with your accountant that each organisation has the correct information about since you may be asked to pay some contributions straight away.
One final point to note is that, since 4 August 2006, all couples in business together must both register. The conjoint (the husband or wife not currently officially registered) should now be registered at your CFE as a conjoint associé, a conjoint salarié or a conjoint collaborateur. The definitions of these three categories can be found on the APCE website – and it is advisable to discuss which category to choose with your accountant if you are unsure.
Here are a few final - but practical - tips to bear in mind when dealing with administrators and other officials...- choose your accountant carefully – and do you need an expert-comptable, a compte gestionnaire or just a comptable?
- even if you know of other ex-pats/French neighbours who are operating their businesses without registering, don’t assume that you don’t have to register. Seek advice about your own situation… because one day someone might discover you’re not registered and you will then have to face a full investigation - which may cost you much, much more than the contributions you would have been asked to pay in the first place. In other words, make sure you’re operating legally!
- practice and perfect what you are going to say (in the early days, my husband could often be heard having “conversations” in the shower!), or write out a crib sheet to help you remember all the key French words and phrases you are likely to need to use. Incidentally, don’t feel embarrassed by your accent or your imperfect grasp of the subjonctif tense. Speak to communicate, not to impress!
- if you know you are right, remain calm and explain again - do not lose your temper! This is especially important if you are going to have to go back into the same office again and speak to the same fonctionnaire!
- try to appear relaxed and don’t have too “British” an attitude. There often is flexibility/room to negotiate if you come across as agreeable, but there won’t be if you don’t!
- try to remain as positive as possible, whatever the outcome. And if you reach a dead end, don’t leave until someone has explained to you exactly where you should go or what you should do next...
- don’t fight the system and sometimes you just have to accept that, however stupid they might appear to you, the rules are the rules – et c’est comme ça!
We have asked six businesses set up by ex-pats in France to share their experiences and advice with readers. Each business is different and therefore each owner has been through a very different procedure when setting up their enterprise, so please be aware that what might apply to one person may not necessarily apply to another - even when setting up a similar business. We feature a property developer, an estate agency, a restaurant, a freelance journalist and a greetings card business. |
LuzMedia-LetSites Web Agency - www.luzmedia.com |
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| | Evolving & Expanding
Jane and John Barker run two complementary businesses in south-west France in property and building management. | | 
Dordogne Valley Homes |
| John and I moved to France with our two young daughters in 1992, explains Jane. We were unhappy with the quality of life in the UK and felt that we could offer our children far more by moving to France.
We decided to buy, renovate and convert a property in the Lot to create a small B&B business. Back in the 1990s, there was very little competition from other B&Bs or gîtes in the area. This meant that we were full most of the year and accommodating guests from all over the world.
A growing number of guests staying with us were actually house-hunting – and they often returned several times until they found their ideal property. Once they had found and bought their house, many wanted to rent it out to holidaymakers to generate an income. To do this, however, they needed someone who lived locally to assist with the lettings and we started to ask ourselves whether this might actually be a service that we could offer.
After talking to our accountant and the Chambre de Commerce, we officially set ourselves up as Prestations de Services Diverses: Gardiennage de Maisons des Propriétaires and called our business Lot Locations. We decided to stop running our B&B and to concentrate completely on the lettings business, whereby we assist and work alongside our clients and arrange their advertising. We do not act exclusively but in partnership. We also have a corporate website which has extensive information and numerous photos of each of our client’s properties. |  In 2003 John and I decided that we would like to build our own house on some land that we had purchased in the Dordogne. But even though we were resident in France and had a good command of the language, organising a construction project proved much harder than we expected.
At the same time, a former client of ours was trying to complete the construction of his ‘new build’ French property and finding it virtually impossible to organise artisans long distance from the UK. Knowing that John had worked for a UK development company before we moved to France, he asked us whether we might be interested in acting as his ‘project manager’. We felt quite confident about saying 'Yes' because of John's years of experience – but we also felt that ‘project management’ could be an interesting new business area for us.
Our client then put a UK friend of his in touch with us. He had recently purchased some land nearby and felt it would be much easier - and more practical - to ask us to organise everything from start to finish for him. In particular, he asked us to choose a local architect and a team of French artisans for him, something which is far better done by someone from the area. |  We decided to form Dordogne Valley Homes and used our local contacts to set up a network of people to work on each new construction project. Our clients so far have been from personal recommendations – and once their properties are finished, many will want to let them out to holidaymakers and will use the services of Lot Locations for that!
Throughout our time in France, we have found our local Chambre de Commerce to be extremely patient and helpful. We also have an excellent accountant who is currently in the process of deciding how we should register ourselves to take into account our 'project management' work.
Back in 1992, if you’d told us that we would end up as project managers in the Dordogne, we would never have believed you. Once you move to France, however, and face the prospect of having to earn a living, you learn to look for potential business opportunities and see whether you have the skills required for success. We’ve also found that attitude of French officials and local friends to be very laid back and flexible about the progression of our businesses - a major reason why we love living and working in France so much.
Jane & John’s advice to would-be entrepreneurs...- It is helpful, but not essential, to have previous experience of the work you want to do in France
- There are lots of business opportunities for French-speaking British ex-pats simply because there are so many people moving France who can’t speak French
- Your local Chambre de Commerce is a good place to seek some initial help and advice about the business you want to set up
- Try to learn to speak French as fluently as possible
Dordogne Valley Homes - www.dordognevalleyhomes.com
Lot Locations - www.lotlocations.co.uk | |
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| | Working on the Web
In 2004, Sarah Peacock and Carol Moss decided to start a business together selling English-language greetings cards | | 
Sarah & Carol |
| Carol and I first met in the UK when we were both in our twenties, explains Sarah. We lost touch when I moved to south-west France, but then fate brought us together again when - by sheer coincidence - Carol and her husband bought a house in a neighbouring village in the Tarn!
As we got to know each other again, it didn't take long for us to decide that we should set up a business together. Mulling over a glass of wine one evening, we came up with the idea of selling English-language greetings cards to ex-pats. We already knew that we would have an instant market locally, but we could also have the potential to sell further afield in France and the rest of the world if we had a dedicated website.
Our first step was to run the idea past local friends. We also sought lots of free advice from the numerous contacts we both have in advertising, PR, journalism and retailing. We bothered them all! Once we felt we'd done enough market research, we set about finding suitable card suppliers in the UK and the USA. We chose a range of different suppliers and satisfied ourselves that they would be 100% reliable before we dared to even think about creating a website.
We wanted our website to be professional and efficient, as well as friendly and welcoming. We also wanted it to reflect the light-hearted spirit of our cards - and of us! After all, our website is effectively our retail premises. It needs to make our customers feel that they can shop in comfort and buy with confidence whenever they visit our site.
Carol and I are not computer whizz-kids, so we chose a website design agency which had been recommended to us by local friends. Once we started the design process, we had to be available to make numerous decisions on a daily basis. Decisions such as… which typeface to choose? How should we categorise the cards? How should we go about accepting secure online payments? Which particular shade of pink we should use? |  Although a website involves a significant investment of money and time in the early stages, the advantages of creating an online business are huge. Carol and I do not need to work from the same premises. We can work from almost anywhere in the world and sell to customers anywhere in the world where there is a postal service.
We find that our clients are delighted with the convenience of shopping online. We have tried to be as flexible as possible and find that our clients appreciate this. For example, most are happy to use the PayPal secure payment system, but those who prefer to send a cheque are given that option at the 'checkout' stage of their purchase.
Once our business was up and running, we set about finding out how we should register it. If you're planning to set up an internet-based business, your first step should be to book an appointment with a good accountant. Depending on what sort of business you are in, your accountant will then tell you how and where to register. And because internet businesses are a relatively new concept, we can guarantee that each case will be different!
A word of warning, however. An internet business is like any other business and needs to be promoted and advertised to attract clients. Do not expect instant success, especially on the internet. People are used to websites coming and going and many customers will only trust those which have been around for years. And if you get as far as launching your business and its website, make sure you have another source of income to rely on for the first year or so, just in case the business is slow to get off the ground.
After two years of trading, Carol and I are still the best of friends. We know that there is an enormous potential for expanding our business still further, but our primary aim is to have fun running a business together in south-west France.
Sarah & Carol's advice to would-be entrepreneurs...- Choose the right people to work with
- Ask questions and check your facts all the time. It's much easier to avoid a potential problem rather than having to extricate yourself from one later!
- If you have children, make sure you'll be able to fit your work commitments around your family, especially if you don't have organised childcare
- Never assume anything. What seems logical to you as a UK ex-pat might not be interpreted and understood in the same way in France
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| | Buying a Business
In 2002, Mike & Sue Douglas took over a well-established hotel and restaurant located in the Quercy region of south-west France. | | 
Le Mûrier de Viels |
| The decision to take over an existing business was the best decision we ever made, says Sue. Although we were forced to plunge headfirst into all the activities of an on-going enterprise - and without any previous experience of running either a restaurant or a hotel – it was definitely the best way to learn!
Le Mûrier de Viels is a small hotel with a spacious restaurant. When we bought the property from its French owner, we found that we had inherited a restaurant which had had an excellent reputation locally thanks to its chef – but ever since this chef had resigned, the restaurant’s popularity had declined significantly. Faced with this situation, our first job therefore was to appraise whether or not it was actually cost-effective to keep the restaurant open.
After agreeing that we should really try to make a go of it, we decided that during our first season we would shut the restaurant to everyone except hotel guests and only offer supper. Every evening, we offered hotel guests a three-course set menu which I prepared and cooked myself. Because we didn’t employ anyone to help us out during the first season, it was extremely hard work finding the energy to cook every evening – especially since we were still so busy learning on the job!
Right from the start, however, we saw the advantages of having taken over an established business. The professional restaurant kitchen was fully equipped and ready for us to use – and we already had a good choice of reliable suppliers to order ingredients from.
As time has gone on, we’ve become much more selective about our suppliers and have also received much help and advice about this from other hoteliers in the neighbourhood. Although we try to buy fresh, local produce from the market and the wholesaler every day, there have been moments during the season when we’ve had to rely on frozen products because neither of us has had time to go out shopping. We have now discovered some delicious and economical frozen food, such as croissants. We use these for breakfast for our hotel guests simply because there is no boulangerie in the vicinity.
As we gained more confidence from one successful season, we felt that we could be a bit more adventurous during our second season. We decided to open the restaurant to the public and offered a choice of dishes for each course of the meal. We also employed two UK students to help us throughout July and August, which made a huge difference.
Last season, we were even braver and offered three different set menus, along with a choice of à la carte dishes. In addition, we had a menu du jour with specialities for each course which we changed daily. The restaurant has proved an enormous hit with our hotel guests because they can dine outside on the terrace overlooking the River Lot. There is also no question of drinking and driving. Locally, the restaurant has once again become popular thanks to recommendations and word-of-mouth - and we now host a growing number of business functions and wedding receptions.
On the administrative side, we realise that we have been spared much of the bureaucracy and paperwork which goes along with setting up a business from scratch. Our business was already registered as a S.A.R.L. and S.C.I. and a good comptable was already employed. We ourselves had very little to do administratively. In fact, we have substantially de-registered ourselves from the system since we are non-salaried and have no full-time employees. The UK students we employ during the summer are paid through the l’Emploi Temporaire Etudiant (ETE) system which simplifies all the employment procedures enormously.
We wholeheartedly recommend buying an existing business if you want to generate an income almost immediately. It’s been hard work, but also incredibly rewarding – especially when people come back again and again because they enjoy our food!
Mike & Sue’s advice to would-be entrepreneurs...- Learn French – you have to feel confident enough to communicate with French-speaking clients and suppliers
- Be prepared to work very hard
- Buy a French-owned business if you want to integrate quickly and have a ready-made network of local contacts
- Do your homework before signing on the dotted line - i.e. if you’re going to run gîtes, check that the local area is not already saturated with them
- If you aim up-market, you’ll attract a more up-market clientele and you should be able to charge higher rates - i.e. you earn more money for the same amount of work!
Mike & Sue Douglas | | | | |
| | Freelance in France
Patricia Mansfield-Devine and her husband, Steve, have been working as freelancers in France since 2000. | | 
Patricia & Steve |
| After many years of living in London, Steve and I felt we needed a break from city life. Our first thoughts were to move to Cornwall, but a brief holiday at my brother's house in Normandy changed our minds. From the very first day of our holiday we fell in love with France and we bought a house here in 1996.
Over the next four years, we spent more and more of our time in France, finally moving here permanently in 2000. Our transition from the UK to France was purposefully gradual because we wanted to be completely sure that we could continue doing our UK-based work from across the Channel.
As a freelance photographer and editor of corporate magazines, Steve was able to carry on as before. I, however, had to change direction after a couple of years because my work as a sub-editor for UK magazines became too difficult to do remotely. I now concentrate on my writing, focussing in particular on the experiences of being a Brit who lives in France. Although speaking French has not been essential for doing my job, it has been useful to be fluent enough to be able to interview French-speakers. As for writing articles in French, the writing style used by French journalists is much more flowery than that of British journalists and is really too difficult to emulate without years of practice.
What has proved essential to both our jobs is a good internet connection. Back in 1996 when we first tried working from France, we were using systems like Cix and the majority of our clients didn't even have an email address. By the time we moved here permanently, however, the internet was much more advanced and we were able to communicate easily with our contacts in the UK. The internet is crucial for our work and we certainly couldn't do our jobs here without it.
As a result of the growth of the internet, there are now numerous online magazines about France which continually need stories from freelance journalists like me. Unfortunately, there is not much money to be made in this area of journalism, though! So, to generate a constant stream of work for ourselves, we've had to do a lot of cold-calling, including pitching cold for features. We've also maintained our membership of various UK journalism groups and, of course, we get some work by word of mouth.
I have to admit that it is much harder to make a living in France than in the UK. This is not really because you earn less, but because you have to pay higher contributions to the state than in the UK. Living on a low income in France can sometimes be hard - especially if you're surrounded by rich ex-pats! So if you're planning to work in France as a freelancer, it's a good idea to make sure you've got some regular work lined up before you move, at least initially.
One aspect of living in France which is difficult at first for all ex-pats is getting into the administrative 'systems'. It took us a year to get into the French health system, but registering Steve with URSSAF was remarkably easy. He is officially classed as Profession Libérale for his job, but he could also have registered as an Artisan Photographe because he has a degree in photography. I'm not registered in France. The reason for this is that if you are registered, you have to pay the social charges which are significant even when you only have to pay the minimum amount. Since we've never been sure of my income from one year to the next, we decided to set up a UK company instead and we put all my income through that. In other words, we pay corporation tax in the UK and personal taxes in France.
Although it can be slightly worrying never quite knowing where your next big job is coming from, the advantages of working freelance abroad definitely outweigh the disadvantages. And because Steve and I still work for UK companies, we could move to Spain or Italy in the future and easily take our work with us. But for the moment, we adore living in France… and our lovely life here has certainly given me plenty to write about!
Trish's advice to would-be entrepreneurs...- Learn French
- Have a very clear idea of what sort of work you want to do in France
- Have enough money in the bank to fall back on just in case you don't start earning straight away
- It's a good idea to rent for a year rather than buy straight away
- If relevant to your situation, build in a budget for trips back to the UK
- Never underestimate how foreign France really is, even though it's just across the Channel
- Be cautious. In particular, don't end up taking unnecessary financial risks in a foreign country where you understand neither the language nor the system!
| | | |
| | | Reproduced from the January 2007 issue of French Magazine |
| | Quality Counts
The lettings market can be competitive. The best way to get ahead is to embrace modern times and get on line, as the web is often a potential client's first port of call. But it's important to get it right - and this is when quality really counts, says Emma Ellis from www.letsites.com | Whether you're running a Bed & Breakfast business in Brittany, renting out a studio apartment in the Alps or a five-bedroom farmhouse in the Dordogne, you need to generate holiday bookings for your property.
This sounds easy enough. And there are many places to advertise your property - holiday brochures, magazines, websites… But as more and more people rent out their properties, some areas of France have reached saturation point with too few holidaymakers to fill all the gîtes and chambres d'hôtes available.
So how do you make sure that your property is fully booked each year? How can you tempt people to choose your property rather than your competitor's? How can you build up a clientele of guests who want to re-book year after year? And with so many properties advertising on the internet, how can you grab a potential client's attention and keep it?
One answer is to emphasise quality. Ensure that your property offers stylish accommodation and excellent facilities - and then promote this top-quality image in all your advertising.
Advertise in high quality holiday brochures and magazines which have good circulation figures and appeal to your target market. For internet advertising, choose holiday websites which look professional. Those which look home made or which present properties badly may do your bookings more harm than good.
Website Wow Factor
But wherever you decide to advertise, holidaymakers will look for a website address or clickable link to an individual website for your property. Before they contact you, holidaymakers will have wanted to visit your property "virtually" to check whether it's what they're really looking for.
Having a dedicated website is now a crucial promotional strategy. It is also undoubtedly the best advertisement you can invest in for your rental property or B&B. It acts as a comprehensive online brochure which is accessible to potential clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It can also be updated with relative ease, reflecting changes and improvements as you make them.
It must be remembered that the quality of your website counts a great deal. If your website looks smart and professional, holidaymakers can feel confident that your accommodation and facilities are likely to be high-quality and smart.
As a basic guide, an individual holiday property website should include all of the following:- detailed information about your property and the surrounding area
- fast-loading photographs and graphics
- interactive location and direction maps
- clear tariffs with current availability
- an easy-to-follow booking process with printable booking form
In addition, the website should be extremely easy to navigate and each page should load as quickly as possible. Large photographs and graphics slow websites down, so building in the facility for enlarging photos at the click of a button helps to solve this problem.
Since your website may be visited by people who only speak a little English, try to avoid fussy or complicated descriptions. You might even consider offering French, Dutch, German or Spanish versions of your website (visit www.frenchoasis.com to see how a multi-lingual website works).
Many property owners now try to appeal to particular niche markets. Amongst our many holiday property-owning clients, we have a gîte business which also hosts arts-based courses (www.tailliveaux.com) - and have created additional websites for gîte businesses offering specialist holidays (www.golfinangles.co.uk). Another client has expanded their website to feature their newly built holiday property for wheelchair users (www.colmanscottages.com).
The ultimate aim of your website is, of course, to make people book their holiday with you, so should include details of all those extra facilities, equipment or services you offer which differentiate you from your competitors. The provision of pool heating, free internet access or even children's toys can make your four-bedroom Provençal mas sound more special and luxurious than other, similar properties nearby.
We have been designing websites for holiday property owners since 2001 and have witnessed an ever-intensifying battle for bookings each year. Carefully choosing where to advertise will certainly help you to generate enquiries - but having an attractive, smart, top-quality website will turn those enquiries into firm holiday bookings! |
LuzMedia-LetSites Web Agency - www.letsites.com |
| | | |
| | | Reproduced from the October 2006 issue of French Property News |
| | When Disaster Strikes
George & Pippa Richmond-Brown offer some common sense advice about who to turn to for help if your French property suffers a house fire... | | 
Mas de Sudre |
| Pippa and I have been ex-pats for about 25 years now, having lived on a small Greek island until 1990 when we moved to south-west France. After living abroad for so many years, we are used to dealing with new situations and challenges all the time, but no amount of experience can ever prepare you for something as devastating as a house fire - especially if your house is vital for your business.
Back in 1990, we fell in love with a neglected maison de maître (Mas de Sudre) near the market town of Gaillac in the Tarn. Built alongside an 18th-century farmhouse, Mas de Sudre was started in 1912, but was never been properly finished and had only been lived in briefly during the 1950s.
Before we could move in, therefore, we had to arrange for the house to be connected to an electricity supply and to mains water. It also needed to be completely rewired and re-plumbed, and to have a new roof. We were delighted with the renovation work and couldn't wait to move in.
And our friends couldn't wait to visit us - during our first year in France, we had nearly a hundred friends to stay! Although great fun (most of the time), having a house full of friends on holiday in your house becomes pretty exhausting after a while and can become rather expensive.
It was at this point we decided that we should try to make some money from all our hospitality and set about converting our outbuildings to holiday accommodation for both self-catering holidaymakers and Bed & Breakfast guests. Over the years, we created one large gîte, two studios and four Bed & Breakfast bedrooms and found that we were enjoying running our holiday business more and more each season... |  ... until disaster struck in 2002. Pippa and I were in northern France visiting our eldest son when we received a phone call at 8 o'clock in the morning from a friend who told us our house was on fire. Being hundreds of miles away and completely unable to do anything about the situation was absolutely devastating, especially since our youngest son and two friends were in the house at the time.
It was our son, in fact, who raised the alarm. He woke up to find his third-floor bedroom engulfed in smoke and rushed downstairs to wake everyone else up. Once everyone was out of the buildings, the pompiers were called, although our neighbours had already phoned them having seen smoke billowing from our roof. Within minutes, our sleepy little hamlet was overrun with fire engines as three different fire brigades rushed to the scene. The Maire and the local press arrived shortly after, along with most of our neighbours.
Once the fire had been put out, friends who had come to help were able to let us know how much damage had been done. They told us that none of the original features had been lost, but that a third of the house had been destroyed internally and that we would need another new roof.
We arrived home later that day and realized that the fire could have been much worse without the quick thinking of our son and the swift arrival of the pompiers. As to the cause of the fire, all the evidence pointed to a faulty electric water heater in the attic. Rather worryingly, the water heater had been fitted when we had the house rewired, so was still relatively new.
Faced with the charred remains of part of our house, we felt very despondent. We knew straight away that we'd have to close our holiday business for several months which would have serious implications for our income. We knew also that, as in the UK, making an insurance claim was going to mean acres and acres of paperwork! |
When disaster strikes... what next?- For immediate help, we obviously contacted our insurance company who have an office in our local town. They explained the claims procedure to us but warned us that everything was likely to take a long time to get sorted out.
- Our first challenge was to appoint someone called an expert to represent us. This didn't require much effort as it turned out since several experts called at our house the day after the fire, one of whom we chose. From then on, it was our chosen expert who dealt with our insurance company rather than us.
- The expert's job is to represent the insured party against the insurance company, the cost of which is included in the house insurance. The insurance company also has an expert whose job is to limit the amount paid out as much as possible! At the same time, our expert would be trying to get as much money as possible for us from the insurance company - and both experts work on percentages!
- Once the claims procedure was underway, our most immediate problem was our holiday business. We immediately contacted all our clients and refunded their payments - and, where possible, tried to find them comparable holiday accommodation in the area. We were not able to claim any money for the loss of our income, but our accommodation costs were paid for, so we were advised to book our own (undamaged) gîte - and the rental payments effectively became our income for a year!
- The claim was finally agreed after five long months of negotiations between us, the experts and the insurance company. Once the amount of money to be paid out to us was finalized, it was up to us to find local artisans willing to carry out the building works within the budgets allocated for each task. Having already renovated the house once, we were fortunate enough to have made many local contacts and so were able to organize a team of workmen to start work quite quickly once we were given the go-ahead.
- Each task - such as replacing the roof - was given a dedicated budget. The insurance company paid us 80-90% of the cost of each task in advance. In other words, they retained 10-20% of each budget until the final bill could be presented to them. At this point, the insurance company inspected both the bill and the particular building work completed. Once they were satisfied that everything was in order, they paid us the outstanding amount so that we could settle the final bill.
When disaster strikes... some helpful hints!- We recommend that when you buy your property in France, you use an insurance company which has a local office. The advantages of doing this are that they are easy to contact or visit - and they can visit you easily, too. You can also get to know the staff in the office which makes telephone calls far less complicated because you don't have to explain who you are each time you phone up.
- An obvious - but vital - piece of advice is to check your house insurance policy. Is it up to date? What is covered and what is not covered? In particular, are your contents insured? And have you lodged a copy of the inventory of the house contents with the insurance company?
- If you have to appoint an expert as part of an insurance claim, try to choose a recommended firm. Funnily enough, the insurance company will be happy to advise you about possible good choices. This is because all the experts and insurance companies know each other because they work together all the time. Although acting in opposition, it is much better if there's a good rapport between all of you - the whole procedure goes more smoothly and (hopefully) more quickly.
- Make sure your property is fitted with smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and fire blankets. Although we had ample fire extinguishers, we didn't have smoke alarms in the house - it is probable that the fire would have been detected sooner if we had. And by the time the fire was discovered, the flames were too fierce to be put out using fire extinguishers. (We now have smoke alarms throughout all the buildings.)
- If you rely on your property for your income, start thinking about how you're going to publicise the fact that you're open for business again. We decided that one of the best methods available was to set up a website for our holiday business (we used the LetSites Web Agency). Once the building works were finished, we set about taking as many photos as possible so that potential clients could book our accommodation with confidence.
Finally, if disaster strikes, don't be afraid to ask for help from French friends. Even if they can't help or advise you themselves, they will know someone else who can - and they will feel extremely flattered to have been asked! |
George & Pippa Richmond-Brown - www.masdesudre.com |
| | | |
| | | Reproduced from the April 2006 issue of French Property News |
| | Spreading the Word
There's some corner of south-west France that is forever England. Or English-speaking at least! Kate and Mike Nicholls explain how they came to set up their very own English Language Teaching Centre, Anglais à Borde Basse, in the heart of rural Gascony... | | 
Borde Basse |
| When Mike and I moved to France in 1990, we had hoped for a quiet life. Our lovely French farmhouse, which we'd bought as a holiday home, became our permanent home -and the plan was to combine a bit of paid work now and again with lots of relaxation in a wonderful, calm environment.
Our opportunities for relaxation didn't last long, however. Family and friends soon discovered that our farmhouse was the perfect place for a summer holiday - and some days we found ourselves with up to 12 house guests...
Word also started to spread locally that we were qualified teachers of English as a Foreign Language. As well as being asked to take over the organisation of the region's exams in English as a Foreign Language, we also found ourselves teaching English to groups of local French people. We even devised our own correspondence courses which incorporated oral lessons over the phone. Our courses turned out to be a great way of integrating ourselves into the local community - and many of our students are still good friends. |  Towards the end of 1999, a neighbouring farmhouse - Borde Basse - came up for sale and we decided to buy it. We then spent 18 months converting it into two luxurious, six-bedroom villas which we planned to rent out for holidays during the summer months. So, with the addition of builders, our quiet life in France was becoming rather hectic.
One sunny day in 2000, we were proudly showing off the first finished house to one of our ex-language students - a French doctor - who immediately suggested that we should use Borde Basse for residential language courses, allowing participants to be totally immersed in an English-speaking environment for several days at a time.
We thought that this was a brilliant idea even though we knew turning our self-catering villas into residential accommodation might initially pose a few problems. Firstly, we had to install central heating and hope that the extra income would offset the cost of this - fortunately we were just in time to get the additional plumbing done before the houses were finished.
Secondly, we had to set up a classroom. A bedroom leading off the lounge was the obvious choice, but it required some ingenuity to enable a rapid transition from bedroom to classroom and vice versa depending on whether the villa was being used for a holiday or for an English course. To solve the problem, we bought beds which could be dismantled and hidden under other beds, a mirror and a wall-hanging to cover the holes in the wall for the whiteboard and a bookcase which could also be used as a dressing table!
We also had to make sure that all the bedrooms were suitable for use as single study bedrooms with tables and table lamps - and not cluttered up with extra beds and cots.
By November 2000, we were ready to hold our first immersion course for a group of doctors from a medical association which specialises in winter sports injuries. In 2001, we held another five residential courses for doctors and decided that this was a very pleasant way to earn a living. The doctors seemed to enjoy the courses too and didn't just improve their language skills… they also discovered that English food was not quite as bad as they had expected and some even complained that, because it was so good, they were eating far too much! |  As the years have passed, the word has continued to spread. We now host up to 20 one-week residential courses a year for small groups of French professionals. They come from a range of backgrounds and have included pilot instructors & mechanics from the Department of Civil Aviation and computer specialists & accountants from Rockwell Collins France. Being close to Toulouse, there are numerous companies in the area with staff who can benefit from our services and some come from even further afield.
And as the word has spread, we have had to expand - and there are now four of us sharing the teaching. Our courses are serious and intensive; we expect all participants to talk English to us and to each other from breakfast time until bedtime. Mealtimes are very relaxed and often lively - but all in English, of course! During the week, all students also visit English ex-pat families who live locally - and they in turn are invited back to Borde Basse for aperitifs on the last evening.
Last year, to spread the word even further, we decided to invest in a website for the Borde Basse courses (www.bordebasse-immersion.com) and contacted the LuzMedia-LetSites web agency (we had already used them to set up a website for our general holiday business). We all agreed that, as well as being slick and professional, our website should convey the warm welcome we give to all our students. The website now includes our online Newsletter which has numerous photos and news about past, present and future students.
It is now fifteen years since we first moved to France and we have never had any regrets. During that time, more than 200 people have attended our residential courses and over 15,000 people have taken English exams and tests organised by us. Add to those numbers all the ex-pats who have helped us out with English conversation (and French aperitifs) - and we wonder what has happened to our quiet life!
We certainly intend to carry on spreading the English word here for some time to come, keeping a little English corner of France for French people to immerse themselves in. We're also hoping to create a bit more time for ourselves to relax and enjoy the French way of life… but then we said that fifteen years ago! |
Mike & Kate Nicholls - www.bordebasse-immersion.com |
| | | |
| | | Reproduced from the January 2006 issue of French Property News |
| | Taking the plunge
You've bought your dream home in France but it doesn't have a swimming pool. You want one, but do you really need one?. Donna in the Vendée says yes, Andrew and Marcella in the Loire say no. Emma Ellis looks at both sides of the debate. | | 
|
| If you own a holiday home in France - or you live here all year round - your British friends will undoubtedly expect you to have a swimming pool. But do the advantages of having a pool really outweigh the disadvantages?
And if you run a Bed & Breakfast business or a gîte complex, most of your British clients will hope that you have a swimming pool. Indeed, it's a well-known fact that if you want to maximize your holiday bookings, a pool is an absolute necessity. But can you guarantee that the initial investment will definitely reap the necessary financial rewards?
There are perhaps four major issues to consider very carefully before investing in a pool: planning permission, safety regulations, usage and maintenance. And if your pool is for your holiday business, there are some additional financial considerations as well.
Planning permission
There are both planning and legal issues involved in installing a pool, so your first stop should be your local mairie to find out which are applicable to your particular property. It is also advisable to consult your insurance company at this stage to find out about insurance obligations. This is particularly important if you have a holiday property business.
If you already have a pool, you might like to check with the mairie that the pool was originally installed with the necessary planning permission having been granted. We know of at least one English couple who only found out about the lack of planning permission for their existing pool when they decided to sell their French house. They are now waiting for the relevant planning permission to be granted for the pool, even though it was the previous owner who hadn't applied! Buyer beware!
Safety regulations
The recent implementation of strict pool safety regulations in France has given rise to legal obligations and additional construction costs which pool owners did not necessarily have to think about before.
From 1 January 2006, all in-ground pools in France need to comply with the regulations and must use at least one of four safety devices: a barrier/fence with a lockable gate, a pool alarm, a safety cover or a pool shelter.
Rental properties with pools have been complying with these regulations since 1 May 2004 - and all new pools built since that date have also had to comply. Failure to do so can mean a fine of up to 45,000 euros for any in-ground pool owner, whether the pool is for a business or for private use.
Usage
This is an issue that people often forget to consider. Who is going to use the pool? How often will they use it? How long will your swimming season be if you don't heat the water? (18°C is about the coldest water temperature you would want to swim in.)
If you live inland, you may feel a pool is essential because of the heat during the summer. But there are often swimming lakes and public pools in these areas which offer a viable alternative to having your own pool.
If you're planning a pool for a holiday rental business, you'll need to match the size of pool with the maximum number of clients - and the size of the pool will affect the capacity of the pump and the amount of chemicals you'll need for treating the water.
If your business is mainly B&B, will people staying one or two nights get around to using the pool? And if the pool is for your business, will you want to use the pool yourself when the clients are there - or would you feel uncomfortable about doing that?
Maintenance
Keeping a pool clean during the summer is quite hard work. With smaller pools, robots which roam around the walls and bottom of the pool are highly effective… but the surface of the water still needs to be kept free of debris, the skimmers need emptying and the quality of the water needs to be monitored.
During the winter, there is obviously very little maintenance to do if the pool is unused. In the spring, however, the first big clean of the season can be quite a challenge! Some pool companies offer to do the first clean of the season and will also over-winter the pool at the end of the season, although it is a good idea to get quotes from several companies.
During the season you can, of course, employ someone locally to keep the pool clean - but should they clean it once a month, once a week or once a day? When we ran a gîte complex, we cleaned the pool at least once a day every day from May to October...
In theory, the smaller the pool, the smaller the amount of cleaning you will have to do. But it will only take one person to "pollute" the water if they're heavily coated in sun cream. And we've heard that fake tanning lotion can irrevocably stain the waterline.
A pool for your business
If you own a property which you rent out for holidays, here are some additional issues you might like to consider… - In theory, you can increase your rental prices if you have a pool. How long will it take you to recoup your investment, or is the pleasure of having a pool sufficient justification for the expenditure?
- A pool should attract more people to consider your property for their holiday. Whether they book, however, will depend on how your prices compare with other similar rental properties with pools in your particular area.
- How will the pool be constructed? A liner might need replacing after about ten years (or sooner if it gets torn), so don't forget to find out the approximate cost of replacing it.
- Don't forget to add in both the cost of putting a "plage" around the pool and the cost of landscaping the land around it - these are additional costs which some pool companies forget to mention at the outset!
- Don't forget to add in the cost of the security fence/gate/cover…
- If you live in the middle of the countryside, how long would it take your pool company to get to you if there was an urgent problem with the pool? And how much is their call-out fee? Having to "close" the pool even for a short period during the season can make holiday clients feel pretty hard done by.
- You'll need strict pool rules for your holiday clients and it's your responsibility to check that the rules are being respected by everyone. How do you cope with this if you don't live at the property? The security rules, such as keeping the gate closed/locked at all times, are self-explanatory - but clients can often take exception to the enforcement of less "serious" rules, such as no glass bottles or glasses near the pool. To avoid tearing the liner, a holiday property in the Lot bans inflatable toys from the pool but we've heard that clients simply wait for the owners to go out and then get out their blow-up crocodiles and sharks!
Summary
Whether you own a private property or run a holiday business, the decision to invest in a pool is no longer simple. To help you make as informed a decision as possible, why not ask for advice from any French or English neighbours and friends with pools? Just finding out how often and for how many months of the year they use their pool will give you a starting point.
You could also ask them how pleased they were with their pool company's workmanship - as with any business, some companies are more reliable than others. Avoid asking pool companies for quotations during the summer months because it's their busiest period and permanent staff are often on holiday. Above all, ask each pool company for a copy of their ten-year insurance guarantee ("le décennal"). Take the guarantees to your insurance company and ask them to check their validity before you sign any contracts. If the certificates are genuine, the companies will be happy to let you do this.
Weighing up the pros and cons may seem a little time consuming, especially if you've already decided that a pool is what you want, but pools do need a certain amount of maintenance to keep them looking smart and some tender loving care if they haven't been used for a long time!
Finally, in order to offer you a balanced view of the pros and cons, Donna in the Vendée describes the process she went through to install a pool, and Andrew & Marcella in the Loire explain the reasons why they've decided against installing a pool at their property in the Loire. | | For...
Donna set up her gîte business in the Vendée in 2003. Although only 10 minutes from the beach, she and her husband decided installing a pool was going to be essential for their business... | | 
Donna's pool |
| We have two large 4-bedroom gîtes and we felt that a swimming pool was going to be absolutely vital to attract holidaymakers to our gîtes.
Being ten minutes from the coast, you could argue that a pool is unnecessary, but we think there are three major advantages of having one. Firstly, what most people dream of doing on their holiday is chilling out by the pool. Secondly, you can normally charge a higher rental for properties with pools. Thirdly, it is an excellent marketing tool. It looks so lovely on our website and in our adverts which hopefully makes people choose to stay in our gîtes rather than those of our competitors.
The extra responsibilities of owning a pool must be taken seriously. To avoid or reduce liability, we rigorously enforce our pool rules. For example, to lessen the chances of alcohol-related accidents, we cover the pool and padlock the gate to the pool area from 8pm in the evening until 10am the next morning. During the season, we ourselves only use the pool when our clients are out.
The pool has to be kept immaculately clean - not easy with up to 20 adults using the pool every day! We use a manual sweeper and net each morning and evening to get rid of most of the dirt and use a Polaris robot cleaner to clean the bottom of the pool overnight. Once a week, we back-wash the filter to get rid of dirt in the system and clean right around the waterline.
We were opening for our first holidaymakers in July 2004, so we planned to construct the pool in May 2004. This gave us two months to complete the pool and landscape around it. We specified a pool measuring 12m x 6m (large enough to accommodate up to 20 adults), with extra-wide steps in the shallow end for toddlers to play on. The depth of the water in the shallow end is 1.05m and the deep end is 1.55m.
We asked local friends for recommendations for pool companies. Local companies can be a good bet - they're much easier to get hold of and to badger if there's ever a problem (essential in high season) - and they're also more likely to do a good job because they know you live just round the corner!
After receiving several quotes, we did indeed choose a local company. They proposed a pool constructed with a concrete basin and a liner and recommended a sterilising system which uses salt water (electricity passes through a cell in the water circuit to produce natural chlorine). The total cost was agreed and the final bill was not a centime more. It took just three weeks to build, from the moment the first digger arrived to the last drop of water going into the pool!
The pool company offered various extras - such as paved areas and landscaping - but we decided to reduce the costs by doing most of the "extras" ourselves. We constructed the decking and safety fencing around the pool ourselves (150m² of decking and 26 x 2m panels of fence plus a gate) at a fraction of the cost quoted to us by the pool company. We also decided to install a pool heating system to extend our main swimming season. We considered using solar panels, but ultimately they are (obviously) far too weather-dependent.
To give a rough guide, installing a pool like ours would cost between 20,000€ and 50,000€. The cost variation depends on the size of the pool, the safety arrangements and the choice of liner, plage, heating, underwater lighting etc. For this reason, it's a good idea to start with a budget and stick to it!
If you're considering constructing a pool, weigh up the pros and cons, set yourself a budget, get recommendations from locals with pools, shop around for detailed quotes, check the pool company's insurance and credentials, agree a timescale - and make sure you've organised the landscaping and safety fencing well in advance. Go on, take the plunge…! |
Donna - www.gitesinangles.co.uk | | Against...
Marcella & Andrew moved to France in October 2004. They bought an up-and-running gîte business without a pool, and after their first summer season, have decided that they definitely won't be installing a pool for their business in the near future... | | 
Le Tilleul |
| We took over Le Tilleul in October 2004 - a farmhouse and two spacious gîtes set in 15 acres of grounds. We certainly have room for a large swimming pool should we want one, but as yet we're not convinced of the benefits it would bring to our business.
After our first holiday season, we can appreciate the benefits of having a pool. When the temperatures soar, it would be lovely to have the possibility of a refreshing swim on our own doorstep, but we do wonder how many gîte owners - and indeed their gîte clients - are happy about mixing "business" with "pleasure"...
We've considered the idea of installing a pool just for ourselves and our nine-year-old son, but it would have to be located in our private garden area. What's stopped us from doing this is the potential problem of gîte clients asking to use it - and how could we possibly say "no"? In fact, our son is quite happy without a pool because he has been invited to use a neighbour's pool whenever he wants to!
We know that we would be able to increase our rental charges if we had a pool, which sounds great in theory. In practice, however, the extra income would not be pure profit - it would be helping to "pay" for the pool for the foreseeable future.
We have been through the process of gathering quotes for both above-ground and below-ground pools. Having seen the quotes (!), installing a pool would be a major investment for us, but there would be no cast-iron guarantee that we could recoup the outlay by charging our clients more.
Related to this, our gîtes appeal to holidaymakers with a certain budget. Having spoken to most of our clients this year about the possibility of installing a pool, many said that they would not be happy to pay the extra. Our clients also said that paying more would be fine if the pool was for their exclusive use but we have two gîtes, so obviously the pool would have to be shared.
Another worry expressed by our clients concerned the noise generated by people using a pool. Le Tilleul is calm and peaceful all summer long, but a pool would undoubtedly change that! And what if our son wanted to invite local friends over for a swim? Gîte clients might not take too kindly to yet more noisy children invading the pool for an afternoon!
The weather is an important factor in how much people enjoy their holiday, especially if there's a pool to use. If the weather has not been great, clients often resent the fact that they haven't been able to make full use of the pool during their holiday. We have read Visitors' Books in other gîtes and have seen the comments people make!
Keeping a pool both clean and safe is a constant job of vigilance during the season. Pool maintenance is time-consuming, even if you use a robot cleaner. We would want to keep our pool spotless, of course, but this would reduce the amount of time available to us for developing other aspects of our business.
As for safety, "where there's blame, there's a claim". No swimming pool can be 100% safe - no matter how careful you are - and we didn't move to France to give ourselves extra (self-inflicted) legal and insurance worries.
When we bought Le Tilleul, we fell in love with the property and the local area - and we believe our gîte clients feel the same way. We provide lots of games and activities on site and provide reams of information about things to see and do in the local area. We also make sure that clients have a choice of garden furniture and sunloungers for relaxing in the grounds - you don't necessarily need to sunbathe next to a pool!
For those clients who do want to swim, there are three communal swimming pools and three swimming lakes nearby. Clients with children have been more than satisfied to swim at one of these and the lakes have sporting and leisure activities, too . Without these facilities nearby perhaps a pool would have been necessary, but Le Tilleul has been a highly successful gîte business for seven years now, so why give ourselves extra worries, work and hassle? And why change a winning formula…? |
Andrew & Marcella Kirk - www.gites-letilleul.co.uk |
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| | | Reproduced from the December 2005 issue of French Property News |
| | A very private affair
Derek and Nora Nicolson explain how they hope to sell their Provençal villa privately using a website created by www.frenchpropertywebsites.com | | 
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| My wife and I are currently going through the process of selling our lovely Provençal villa. For various reasons, we have decided to sell it privately and thought that other French Property News readers might be interested in our experiences so far.
We have been considering whether or not to sell our villa for over a year now. A couple of months ago, we decided to take the plunge and weighed up the pros and cons of using an estate agent. Although the level and quality of service differs from one estate agent to the next, we decided that we would prefer (initially, at least) to have a go at selling our property privately. Our main reason for this decision was that the 6% estate agent's fee need not be included in our asking price.
Our first step was to think about how and where to advertise our property. Obviously all adverts and promotion have to be paid for by us, but we are then in full control of the whole selling process. Not only can we monitor which adverts are generating the most enquiries, but we can also decide exactly where to advertise. And we have a secret weapon - online advertising!
Online advertising takes two forms: the first is creating your own dedicated house sale website; the second is paying for an advert on a sales listing website.
As with everything on the internet in 2005, the choice of sales listing websites is vast. We are still in the process of choosing exactly where to advertise, but we have narrowed down our choices to those websites which are long-established, look smart, are easy to use and allow us to have a link to our own website.
If you don't know where to start looking for possible sales websites, go to a search engine (e.g. Google or Yahoo), put in a few search terms (e.g. private, sale, france, provence) and see which listings websites appear on the first two pages. These are the listings websites which are continually submitting their websites to the search engines and will remain at the top of the searches. (Interestingly enough, on 30 May 2005, the first two results were both from the French Property News website!)
Our first more important advertising task, however, was to set up our own dedicated house sale website. Although we could have attempted this ourselves, we knew the result would always look slightly amateurish! We needed a really professional-looking website which would reflect the top-notch quality of our Provençal villa. There are any number of web agencies to choose from nowadays, but we finally opted for French Property Websites (FPW) who specialise in producing property sale websites. |  To give you an idea of how much our website cost, we paid approximately £100 (150€) which has given us a website with up to 8 pages (although we could have had 9 pages), 15 different photos and 1000 words of text. The price also includes a domain name, an email account and three months' hosting. For people selling larger properties or businesses, FPW recommend a larger website which gives you up to 13 pages, an unlimited number of photos and no limit on the text (just 100€ more).
Once we had signed up for our website, our next job was to take a selection of photos of the villa's exterior, interior and grounds. We made sure that everything was tidy and spotless before we took the photos - undoubtedly it would be the photos which would persuade potential buyers to visit our property. We then wrote a full description of the property and then emailed both the text and photos to FPW. Just over a week later, we were online: www.tourrettes-sur-loup-villa-for-sale.com!
The primary advantage of having your own dedicated selling site is that you can mention your website address in both online advertising and conventional advertising. A linage advert in a quality broadsheet or a simple classified advert in the back of French Property News will be of far more interest to potential buyers if you include a website address. If they can visit your website to see photos and a full description of the property before making contact with you, they can discover - without much effort or expense - whether your property is what they're really looking for (or not). The advantage for you is that it cuts down time-wasters and dreamers, although not always!
Your website is effectively a brochure which potential buyers can access 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You may also want to produce a paper brochure based on the information on the website (any good copy shop will be able to help you do this), or you could opt for a CD-Rom version of the website to send out instead of a brochure. Another option is attending a French Property News Exhibition in person (to hand out your brochure or CD-Rom!), but the cost of returning to the UK to do this should be taken into account if you're currently living in France.
And if after a few months we find we'd like to put our property with an estate agent, our website will be of enormous help to the Agency. The estate agent could use our website to make a slick presentation to potential buyers in the comfort of the agency, or they can send our website address to buyers making enquiries from the rest of France or abroad.
Before we started, we knew our project was going to be quite a challenge - and as time progresses, new opportunities for advertising and promoting our property seem to crop up regularly. If you've got both the time and the energy, we definitely recommend trying to sell privately - but do make sure all your promotional efforts are smart, stylish and as professional as possible. | | | |
| | | Reproduced from the July 2005 issue of French Property News |
| | Keith & Helen Archibald have been running a successful B&B and gîte business in the Corrèze since 2001. In the main holiday season, they serve their guests a fresh breakfast every morning and most evenings present a gourmet four-course supper. How do they do it? Let them tell you how they...
Keep their
catering cool | | 
Keith and Helen Archibald
work hard running La Farge
and keeping their clients happy - and well fed |
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When Helen and I first set up our B&B three years ago, we knew we would have to produce breakfast for our guests every morning. What we had not anticipated, however, was that they would be so eager to order supper as well!
Fortunately, La Farge - our house in the Corrèze - is ideal for our B&B business. We have three guest bedrooms and bathrooms, a separate lounge for guests, a large farmhouse kitchen for meals and plenty of room left over for our own private space. On the whole, our guests are couples and adult groups - a conscious decision - and we also have an independent gîte for two for those who prefer to self-cater.
Originally, we decided to offer guests evening meals for one simple reason… it would give us an excellent excuse to enjoy delicious food and wine in the company of interesting people. The hope was that we would also make a bit of extra money at the same time - but more on this point later!
Catering for our guests was actually a logical and easy way for us to expand our business. We both love to cook and we both love to entertain. In addition, Helen had had more than enough experience of catering when, as a teenager, she often cooked meals for her large family - so before we even started, she knew exactly what was going to be involved.
How to Get Organised
Getting ourselves and our kitchen organized was our first major task. We decided to serve the meals in the kitchen so that we could cook and entertain at the same time. To do this, we had to make sure that we had a large enough table for the maximum number of guests (plus us). But we also had to make sure that there was enough room for us to manoeuvre around the kitchen with all the guests sat around the table. Although this seems almost too obvious to mention, it really is vital if you want to serve up food without tripping over chair legs! Another obvious point is to make sure that you have all the necessary (well-functioning) kitchen equipment and utensils. Tableware is another crucial consideration - the cutlery and crockery need to be stylish, but also durable, dishwasher-proof and easily replaceable, like the odd dropped tray of champagne glasses!
One final point is workspace in the kitchen. During a meal, you have to try not to make too much of a mess when cooking, serving up and clearing away. You can't really load everything straight into the dishwasher with guests there, so you must think about where everything is going to be stacked up in the meantime. Luckily, we have an area behind the fireplace in our kitchen which is out of sight of the guests - we call this "Helen's messy corner"! |
 Of course, if you prefer to serve meals away from the kitchen, the organisational considerations are obviously different. Perhaps the most difficult problem is maintaining the ambience if you're both in the kitchen preparing to serve up. And you also have to be prepared for guests wandering into the kitchen during or after the meal, so you need to work as tidily as possible or they might get the wrong impression!
How to Get Ideas
Once we had organized the practicalities, we needed to start thinking about our recipes and menus - a process we go through annually, in fact. Helen has been collecting recipes from newspapers and magazines for years (the clippings seemed to spill out of every box when we unpacked in France). She also has an incredible collection of English and French cookery books - and the internet is an invaluable source for specific recipe information and ideas.
Because we offer a four-course meal, we need to know and plan which dishes are possible and practical well in advance of the holiday season. Each winter, we usually set aside a couple of nights a week for cooking and evaluating new dishes. We look for recipes which allow a certain amount of preparation to be done in advance and for those without too much cooking to do just before serving up. It's also great to produce dishes that people would rarely cook at home, so we steer clear of "Delia" dishes and aim for a style that you could describe as "Franglais"! We also prefer recipes which will incorporate as much of our home-grown fruit and vegetable crops as possible.
If we think a certain main course will complement a particular starter or dessert, we make a note of that - but we tend not to use strategies such as a two-week rolling menu or freezing meals in advance. This is purely because you cannot cater for each guest's likes and dislikes if you've already planned a rigid menu before they arrive. We must admit that deciding on menus can sometimes be a little difficult, especially if one person is a vegetarian, for example, and others in the group don't like tomatoes or cheese or onions! So now you know why we like to have such a large choice of dishes to choose from at a moment's notice.
Every guest who eats with us has a record card detailing each meal we've served them. This is proving invaluable as we build up repeat clients each year - we hope never to serve the same dish twice to the same guest. The record cards are also a good way to remember dietary requirements and likes or dislikes.
How to Prepare
Once the evening menu has been planned, we have to think about shopping and allocating the various cooking tasks. The nearest supermarket is 15 minutes away, so we have to plan our time carefully, especially if we need to go further afield for specialist ingredients. We also try to prepare as much of the meal in advance during the day so that we don't end up with a panic in the evening.
Helen tends to do most of the cooking and therefore most of the shopping. This is not sex discrimination - it's just that she is extremely well organised, highly efficient and doesn't need to read the recipe ten times (unlike me)! I am, however, an expert at peeling vegetables, setting the table, shining the cutlery, verifying the wine stocks and taking orders (from Helen, that is)!
How to Get the Evening Going
Each evening meal is, in effect, a glorified dinner party. Having changed into smart-casual clothes (we always try to make an effort), we start with aperitifs at 7.30pm which are served either in the guests' lounge or in the garden, depending on the weather. While Helen beavers away in the kitchen for half an hour, I play host and head waiter.
Helen normally serves the starters but we're both on duty for the main course. I keep the glasses full (wine is included in the price of the meal) and try hard not to pour all our profits away with my over-enthusiastic pouring arm! After a respectable break, we serve cheese and then the dessert, as is traditional in France. Coffee rounds off the evening in the guests' lounge, although it should be mentioned that serving digestifs with coffee is not a very good idea if you're trying to make any money from catering. |
 How to End the Evening
We try to round off the evening as smoothly as possible, which can sometimes be difficult if people are enjoying chatting together. It's hard not to look at the clock, but we do have to remind ourselves that we've still got to clear up and prepare the breakfast table for the morning - all with the minimum of fuss and without getting to bed at the crack of dawn.
In addition, after each meal we like to appraise the cooking and the ambience. Did the guests enjoy the meal? Was there anything we should change or could do better next time? Did the timings go according to plan? Could presentation be improved? Should we try different vegetable combinations? You would be amazed to see the number of notes we add to recipes at this stage.
The next day, we sometimes ask guests for their opinions. Many have said that the fact we offer evening meals is a big selling point because many don't want to bother driving out to a restaurant each evening (and not drink). With this in mind, we decided that a website for our business would be the best way to present and promote our meals. We contacted the LetSites web agency (www.letsites.com) and had a website up and running within a few weeks, with a whole section dedicated to details about our catering.
How to Serve Breakfast after a Long Night
Getting up for breakfast after a late night is the hardest part of the job for me, so I'm in charge of early morning flower-watering and pool cleaning duties. Helen, however, relishes the challenge of producing a delicious breakfast for guests, so I leave her to it. We offer a wide choice of croissants, toast, homemade jams, yoghurts, cereals and loads of fresh fruit. We steer clear of cooked breakfasts simply because of the lingering smell in the house afterwards!
Guests can choose what time they would like breakfast which means that we have to be quite flexible in the morning. We ourselves eat once the guests have finished, otherwise we can find ourselves stuck around the kitchen table socialising when we should be clearing up the breakfast things, changing beds, cleaning bathrooms, shopping, gardening, preparing for supper...
As you'll have gathered from all we've said, catering for clients is extremely time-consuming and takes an immense amount of preparation for each meal to run smoothly. It's also worth mentioning that spending a lot of time in the kitchen during the hottest time of the year can sometimes be hard, but the rewards are very high. Meals are a great way for you to get to know your guests - and happy, satisfied guests are the ones who will book again next year, which is what it's all about! |
Helen & Keith Archibald - www.chezarchi.com |
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| | | | Happy... but Homesick!
Two years ago, Mike & Sue Douglas moved all the way from South Africa to the Aveyron region in France. They bought a three-star country hotel with a restaurant and an independent gîte. Nearly two years later, they're preparing for their second holiday season, but admit that they are beginning to miss the way of life in South Africa… | | 
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| Back in 2003, our dream of moving to France to run our own business became a wonderful reality. After months of looking, we found Le Mûrier de Viels - a three-star country hotel with its own restaurant and fitness centre. Set in six hectares of grounds, it also had an independent gîte for self-catering holidays, a large pool and a private house for our own accommodation. It was just what we had been looking for!
From the outset we knew that moving from an African culture to a European culture was not necessarily going to be easy - but we felt that this was going to be a minor challenge. Much more important was going to be making our French hotel a profitable business in as short a time as possible.
When we bought Le Mûrier, the previous owner had already started to renovate all the buildings. Our first major task, therefore, was going to be finishing off all the renovation work he'd started. On top of that, the interior of the hotel needed upgrading, the pool needed a new terrace and safety fence around it and the grounds had to be rescued urgently from years of neglect.
The task ahead of us seemed enormous, but it was one of the major reasons for deciding to come to France - to have the chance to create a successful business almost from scratch. With this in mind, we employed local artisans for all the major structural work, but endeavoured to tackle as many of the other decorating and gardening jobs ourselves. We didn't have much experience, but we learned pretty quickly as the deadline for opening rapidly approached! |  All in all, we redecorated and upgraded the seven hotel bedrooms, refurbished the restaurant and invested in new equipment. We also fitted a new bar in the restaurant (it was made in South Africa and then transported over to France). When the weather was good, we tackled the gardens and grounds - and on top of all this, our own private house (250m²) needed to be made habitable! We have really come to appreciate the value of a totally independent private house to escape to after a long day of looking after clients.
As anyone who has set up a holiday rental business knows, the marketing and advertising of your accommodation needs to start well before your first holiday season. Our first marketing task was to set up a bilingual website to attract both French and English-speaking clients. We contacted the LetSites web design agency (www.letsites.com) who said that they could set up a website within two weeks of receiving information and photos from us. Once the English version of the website was agreed, the French translation would then be online two weeks later. Knowing the timescale was very important because we needed to start publicising our website and email addresses as soon as we possibly could.
We initially tried running some adverts in glossy UK magazines, but found they were pretty ineffective and incredibly expensive. Far more important has been to be included on the local tourist offices' accommodation lists, to be mentioned in respected hotel guides and to get on as many good-quality internet listing websites as possible. This year we have had the time to do a lot more work on this, and we've already noticed that the quality of our bookings has improved dramatically with people booking much longer stays here.
And as with any hotel, the importance of signs to the hotel on the roadside cannot be underestimated. We have five roadside signs which have generated an enormous amount of bookings from passing holidaymakers during the season. You also can't beat word-of-mouth recommendations which cost us nothing! |  We still have some way to go though - even after all the hard work and investment so far - and there is still an immense amount of potential for expanding the business. For example, to reduce our costs and workload last year, the restaurant was only open to hotel and gîte guests. This year, however, non-residents will be welcome. We offer exotic dishes alongside more traditional, régionale dishes on our menu which we hope will interest people locally and so build up the restaurant's reputation.
But despite all the fun and experience we've had setting up our business in France, we have come to realise that Africa is too much in our blood. Whereas we thought that we would be able to adapt as time went on, in fact the opposite has happened. When we went back to South Africa for a few weeks last November, we made a decision - we want to move back there!
With some reluctance, therefore, we have put Le Mûrier up for sale. We shall, of course, continue improving and investing in the business and we hope to have a very healthy occupancy rate over several months by the end of this summer. So if you fancy running your own hotel and restaurant in France and relish the challenge of expanding this steadily growing business still further, Le Mûrier may be just what you're looking for! |
Mike & Sue Douglas |
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| | | Reproduced from the October 2004 issue of French Property News |
| | A family affair
David & Nydia Moss have had a long-standing love affair… with their property in Provence! Over the years their Chelsea gold-medallist garden designer son, Chris, has landscaped the grounds, ensuring the love affair is kept firmly in the family | |  |
| Lying awake waiting for Saddam's scud missile attacks can certainly concentrate the mind. During the first Gulf War when my wife Nydia and I were living in Saudi Arabia, we used to try to forget about being in a war zone by dreaming about buying 'a little place in Provence'.
Our first step was to get hold of a copy of FPN. We spread it out on the kitchen table (in those days it was a newspaper) and set about studying the adverts. Our dream became a reality one sunny spring day as an estate agent drove us through the French countryside to the lovely village of La Cadière d'Azur. Our 'little place in Provence' was about to become a huge old olive oil mill, a moulin à huile, with 400 square metres of floor area! It was a real coup de coeur - surrounded by centuries-old olive trees and with stunning views over the blue Mediterranean, it was a perfect location. The deal was done the same day. |  The moulin, which included the old family home, was in need of some serious renovation. It had become disused after a disastrous frost in 1956, which destroyed most of the olive trees in Provence. Miraculously, our trees had survived and were to become one of our great interests. After a lot of tender loving care we not only have olives again, but also our own olive oil. Although the original mill machinery is too old to for us press the olives ourselves, we have kept it and now have a small 'museum' in part of the mill.
After our return from Saudi Arabia to the UK, every holiday was spent in Provence working on the restoration. In England I was a project director - in France I was the same, but labourer as well! In fact we hardly got to know the local area at all because it was a case of 'on with the old clothes' as soon as we arrived, then working every hour possible until it was time to leave.
By 1996 the lure of Provence was too strong. We sold up in the UK and arrived at the moulin to stay forever - in a flash I changed from 'corporate man' to 'countryside (or should that be campagne?) man' and haven't looked back since. Our new life began in earnest. We created an apartment in the mill, built a Provençal house amongst the olive trees for holiday letting, and prepared the mill for bed & breakfast.
There were, however, two major problems with this Grand Plan. The first was how to incorporate the olive trees without harming them. The second was what to do about landscaping our steeply sloping land. We would need some professional advice about the overall design of the land and what to plant where. |
 |  | | Before... | ...and after |
| Luckily for us, we had a professional in the family. Our son, Chris, was embarking on a career as a garden designer in the UK, so this could be his first experience of design in a foreign climate - we were also delighted to keep the business in the family.
Chris already had several years' experience working for a landscaping company in the UK. He then started working with a leading garden designer in Surrey who exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show. I'm sure there will be the odd Chelsea enthusiast among readers who still remembers the Provençal Garden which won a gold medal a few years ago - it bore a striking resemblance to our moulin, not least because Chris 'borrowed' authentic materials such as old shutters, roof tiles and ancient olive wood! |  Having won another gold medal at Chelsea last year with the Lladro Garden, Chris has now set up his own business. Although based in London, he is already working internationally and has a number of projects in the south of France (including the finishing touches for the moulin when he's got time). With his fluent French and all the experience he gained from working for us over the years, he's now seen as a bit of an expert in designing Mediterranean gardens.
A year ago, we decided we needed a website for the mill. We contacted the LetSites design agency and with their help we had the site up and running within weeks. It has really helped in the running of our business, so when Chris decided he needed a website to show off his new business portfolio for next year's Chelsea Show sponsorship, we suggested LetSites design his site too. As a designer himself, he initially found it strange being the client, but the finished site is exactly what he wanted.
It's been brilliant to think that the whole family has been involved in the restoration of the moulin over the years. I might be the practical one but Nydia has the design flare, helped by our sculptress daughter in the Ukraine and, of course, Chris.
So as the 2004 holiday season draws to a close and our olive grove is as tranquil as ever, Nydia and I can look forward to sharing a quiet winter at the mill with regular visits from the family. As we do, we remember those nights in Saudi when we never really believed our family home would end up being in the beautiful French countryside - and we never for a moment imagined it would become such a family love affair! |
David & Nydia Moss: Le Moulin à Huile - www.moulin-a-huile.com
Chris Moss: Landscape & Garden Design - www.chrismossgardens.com |
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| Reproduced from the August 2004 issue of French Property News |
| | Ghost-busting in the Tarn
In their six months spent running a gîte and B&B business in the Midi Pyrénées, Sally & Kirk Ritchie have had a host of welcome - and some not so welcome - guests... | | 
The Ritchies' renovated farmhouse and B&B |
| When you've been in the hotel industry for 30 years, giving it all up to run a B&B in the south of France should guarantee us a quieter life - but we couldn't have been more wrong!
Kirk spent 25 years as managing director of the Lygon Arms in Broadway, Worcestershire, and latterly we owned and managed a busy Cotswolds inn. It was a hectic lifestyle, and in 2002 we finally reached the point where we wanted to find a business that we could control rather than it controlling us.
We felt we should continue doing what we know best, but with maybe the odd change in direction every now and then to keep us on our toes. So we hatched a plan to set up a luxury B&B business in France and then wait for other business opportunities to come along. |  Having found a beautiful farmhouse, Combenègre, near Castelnau-de-Montmiral in the Midi-Pyrénées, we wanted to get the business started as quickly as possible. One of the first essential ingredients for a holiday business is to have a dedicated website. Through LetSites we organised a website which we find most of our guests use when booking their accommodation. Most amazing of all is how quickly relationships build up via email, especially after having seen photos of us and Combenègre on the website.
If you are chatty and friendly to potential guests, they are too - and it can often make the difference between someone booking or not. We've also had so many kind offers to bring over such longed-for items as Rose's Lime Juice, pork and leek sausages and complete copies of the Saturday Telegraph!
As well as having B&B rooms in the farmhouse, we also decided to create a self-catering cottage in an adjoining part of the building. After several months of renovation work, we were completely open for business by Christmas 2003. And that was when we became utterly convinced that we had an 'unwelcome guest' at Combenègre...
At odd times when we were in the farmhouse kitchen, Kirk and I felt as if we were being checked up on. We were definitely being watched by someone... or something. Now, you might be sceptical - and we certainly were to begin with - but when you experience something like this for yourself, you change your mind pretty quickly! Friends in the local village then came up with the likely explanation. Several years before Combenègre was renovated, one of the previous owners had died at an early age leaving a young family. Could it be that the dead man was still worried about his wife and children?
We decided to enlist the help of some 'ghost-busters' (actually old clients from the Cotswolds who had come to house-hunt in the area). Being psychic healers, they would know what to do. They decided to have a quiet chat with the young man in question and told him that Combenègre is once again a happy home, and that the farmhouse is definitely in safe hands with us. Ever since then, much to everyone's relief, we have been free of 'unwelcome' visits. |  We have also had many welcome guests to stay, including an ex-ambassador from Cairo who came to collect the family dog and cat from long-term quarantine, refugees from a soggy Canal du Midi holiday who arrived covered in mosquito bites, and even a retired Dean of Westminster Abbey whom we managed to link up with the local Anglican community for a Sunday service.
We have also had house-hunters galore - some looking for a lifestyle change, others for holiday homes. In fact, the sheer volume of house-hunters quickly gave us the idea for a new project. Having recently been through the whole process of buying and moving to France ourselves, we wondered if perhaps we could offer a hand-holding service for others.
After discussions with Agence L'Union in St-Antonin-Noble-Val, Kirk is now involved in looking after properties in the southern sector of the Tarn, as well as assisting in a property search service. By having house-hunters stay with us at Combenègre, we can really get to know them and their 'wish list'.
So, to all those people back in the UK who said we would soon get bored with living in the middle of nowhere - we are definitely not! We love the French way of life and are very fired up about all our new projects - so much for a quiet life! |
Kirk & Sally Ritchie |
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| Reproduced from the April 2004 issue of French Property News |
| | Building an income
Diane & Gordon Thom will soon be giving up their home in Scotland to set up and run a gîte complex in the south of France. But with few suitable properties available for conversion in the Hérault, they've decided to start from scratch and construct three purpose-built gîtes, as well as a house for themselves... | | 
La Villamhor, the Thoms' villa in Hérault |
| Imagine living with mountains, lakes and forests on your doorstep. Imagine also being just 30 minutes from the beautiful Mediterranean coast. In fact, such a place exists - the Hérault region in the south of France.
We only discovered the Hérault four years ago. As soon as we started exploring, we knew that this was the perfect area for our ultimate 'master plan' - to buy a second home in France suitable for renting out to holidaymakers when we weren't there.
After scouring the area looking at every possible property on local agents' books, we finally settled on a smart, modern two-storey villa which had already been divided into two self-contained apartments. After a complete refurbishment, La Villamhor was finally ready for renting out for the 2001 holiday season |  Our first two years went well, but as the second holiday season was drawing to a close, we gradually realised that trying to run holidays in France from our home in the north of Scotland wasn't ideal! This meant making three significant changes to our master plan.
Our low season bookings were not as good as they could be, so our first change was to have a website. If potential clients had the chance to make a 'virtual visit' to La Villamhor, we were sure our bookings would increase. We contacted Charlie at the LetSites web agency to discuss our requirements, and within a few weeks we had our very own site on line.The site has also simplified the booking process significantly, so the business is running much more smoothly.
Having our own professional website then gave us the confidence to take our second major decision - should we expand our holiday rental business? To do this properly, we knew that we would have to move to France permanently, to be on-site with our clients and offer them a more personal service. This wasn't a hard decision to make as we were finding it harder and harder to return home to Aberdeen after each stay at La Villamhor.
We then spent a long time discussing how we could generate enough of an income from holiday rentals. We would need at least three gîtes - each with bookings of 15 weeks a year. La Villamhor obviously wasn't going to be suitable since we needed a property large enough for our house and three gîtes. There would also need to be enough flat land for two large swimming pools. |  After endless (often heated!) discussions about where in the Hérault we should start looking - and for what - we were fast coming to one conclusion: the only way we could really guarantee having exactly what we wanted would be to build it ourselves. So having settled on this idea, we immediately started devising our 'master plan no .2'!
In March 2003, we found an ideal spot in the village of Cessenon in the Orb Valley. The acre of flat land had lovely open views of the surrounding countryside, and within 48 hours, a purchase price was agreed. Then, having checked with the mairie that the land was in an approved area for house construction, our notaire arranged an application for a certificat d'urbanisme - a vital document similar to outline planning permission. After that, we signed a compromis de vente, paid our deposit and a couple of days later returned to Scotland. The remainder of the process was conducted by email or fax (when signatures were required) and our notaire finally signed the acte authentique on our behalf in August.
In June, we had our first meeting with our local French architect, Valerie Garnier, and it wasn't long before she'd transformed our ideas into plans - some in 3D! Her first design was for a house for us. She then suggested that the gîtes could be housed in one single building. We liked this idea and were delighted when she came back to us with a design for a single-level building incorporating three totally self-contained gîtes.
By December 2003, the plans were agreed and lodged at the mairie. Access roads have now been made and the land is currently being cleared of vines. By our next visit in May, we hope that the electricity supply and drainage will have been organised. We've even had some sondages (trial holes) drilled to determine what we'll be building on. All we're waiting for now is the maire's seal of approval.
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We know that our second master plan is still a long way from completion, but we feel very excited about the next couple of years. We're making quite a few major life changes all in one go - building two new houses and two swimming pools, setting up a new business and moving to a foreign country - but we'll still have La Villamhor when we need a relaxing break. One thing's for certain, we're ready and waiting for the challenges ahead! |
Diane & Gordon Thom - www.la-villamhor.com |
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| Reproduced from the January 2004 issue of French Property News |
| | Golden age for
the silver surfers
Roger Newman-Coburn & Sarah Maddison have created two beautiful holiday properties in their Lot farmhouse. They moved to France in 2002 and have gone from computer novices to expert 'surfers' in just over a year! This is how they did it... | 
Mas de Trugal - Roger and Sarah's lovely home in the Lot |
| For those of us 'of a certain age', moving to France can be quite a shock to the system. After nearly a lifetime in the UK, not only is there a completely different language and culture to get used to, but it's often the first time you really have to embrace modern technology.
No matter how hard you might have tried to avoid computers and the internet in the UK, life as an ex-pat can be a lot easier if you get 'online' at the earliest opportunity. The advantages are enormous - you can keep in constant contact with all your family and friends back home by email, and can even send them photos and mini-videos of your progress with the building work! And once you really get used to surfing, you can buy all your favourite UK products online, as well as read, listen to and even watch the UK news every day.
It all sounds very easy in theory - but what's the reality? How do you actually go about getting connected, particularly when you're still learning the language? We've just been through the whole process, from making the initial decision to get a computer, to ending up with our own website for our holiday rental business. So we thought it might be helpful to offer other first-timers some advice about how to get started! Here goes...
Your computer
One of the hardest decisions you'll have to make is whether to buy an English computer from the UK or a French one. (If you're bringing your existing UK machine over with you when you move to France, you'll need a converter for connecting it to a French phone socket.)
If you're buying a new computer from scratch, you need to decide whether you want the machine to operate in English or French. Don't automatically think that an English set-up will be the better option, though - a new French computer can be an excellent way to start using some French, and many of the 'technical' words are English, anyway.
If you decide to buy a computer in France, it's essential to get one fairly locally - it's far easier to sort out guarantee and breakdown problems face-to-face in the shop rather than by phone or letter. Probably the best places to buy computers are either a local hypermarket, such as Casino or Leclerc, or a chain of electrical shops, such as Darty. As for which model to choose, your choice will probably come down to your budget, so do have a clear idea about how much you want to spend before you set off to the shops!
Your connection
You've unpacked your computer, plugged it in, followed the set-up instructions - and now it's time to connect to the internet.
The first decision is about the physical telephone connection itself, for which your choice is between an ADSL (Broadband) connection or an ordinary 'dial-up' connection. If you live in a rural area, as we do, ADSL might not be available, but if it is we would really recommend it for several reasons: using the internet is about 10 times faster than with a 'dial-up' connection; you can stay connected to the internet and use your telephone at the same time on the same phone line; and perhaps best of all, you can stay connected 24 hours a day at no extra cost! You'll need to contact France Telecom to find out if ADSL is available in your area and, if so, how to go about arranging a connection. If you don't feel confident speaking French on the phone, France Telecom has high street shops in most towns.
Your ISP
Your next step is to choose an ISP (internet service provider). All new computers bought in France come with a choice of pre-installed connection kits from the major ISPs. Simply click on the one which you've chosen and it will connect itself and 'sign you up' pretty much automatically. (If you're bringing your own computer with you, you'll find the same range of kits on the cover CD attached to any French computer magazine.)
The best piece of advice we were given about ISPs is that you get what you pay for. So-called 'free' providers are not actually free at all, and can sometimes give unreliable connections meaning that you end up being thrown off the internet all the time. For this reason, we opted for Wanadoo simply because they are the biggest provider in France and are part of France Telecom.
Surf the net!
Once you're officially on line, you can start surfing and this is done with a special program on your computer called a 'browser'. The most widely-used browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer and your computer will have it installed already. Type a website address into the white box at the top of your browser and off you go!
One of the best sites to start off with is www.bbc.co.uk or any of the websites related to the UK newspapers, such as The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily and Sunday Telegraph. For online shopping, you'll quickly work out how to find just about everything you could possibly want, from UK books and videos to Marmite and Clarks shoes. For general enquiries, use a 'search engine', such as www.google.com and simply type in what you're looking for. |
 Email and photos
Along with your browser, you will find another pre-installed program on your computer called Outlook Express. This is the program that sends and receives emails. The signing up process for most ISPs will have created an email account for you and set up your Outlook Express automatically, so that you can start sending and receiving emails straight away.
One of the biggest advantages of email is being able to attach photos to your messages. With a digital camera, all the hard work is done for you. Your computer will find the pictures on the camera automatically, save them for you so you that can look at them on-screen whenever you like, and let you attach them to emails with just a couple of clicks. If you're using printed photos, however, you'll need a scanner to get the photos onto the computer - but even the cheapest, most basic scanner will do the job perfectly well.
Your Own Website
If you're running your own business in France, you'll soon see the benefits of having your own website. We now have a site which acts as an online brochure for holidays in our farmhouse and gîte. We communicate with most of our clients by email (which saves us time and money because we no longer have to make international phone calls or send brochures by post), and our clients love the fact that they can visit our website day or night to read the holiday information we've displayed there and to look at all our photos. They can also check our availability, and download our booking form immediately without having to wait for a copy to arrive by post. We used LetSites, a website design agency who specialise in websites for rental properties (www.letsites.com) because we knew that we just wouldn't have the time to create a comprehensive, professional-looking site ourselves - after all, we've got our own business to run!
So if you're now feeling inspired, don't waste any more time thinking about it - go and get yourselves connected. |
Roger Newman-Coburn & Sarah Maddison - www.masdetrugal.com |
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| Reproduced from the March 2004 issue of French Property News |
| | Out of Africa
Two weeks, 3000km and a hotel later... Sue Douglas explains how she and her husband moved halfway round the world to run a hotel in the Lot |  |
| I met my husband Mike in South Africa during 1988, but it wasn't until 12 years later on a skiing holiday in Austria that we both realised, after chatting to a couple we met on the slopes who now live in France, that living there was something we had both always dreamed about.
Three years later and many hours of searching the internet, we arranged a hectic two-week trip to explore France and find our dream property.
As we are both still very active, retirement was not on the cards so we were looking for an up and running B&B/gîte business. Fortunately we had a reasonable budget on which to base our search.
After planning a tight itinerary, all arranged through the internet, we travelled from Johannesburg via London to Toulouse in April 2003. Our first area was the Languedoc region, then across to Pau via Foix, and up through Condom to the Dordogne, where we spent a week in a converted bread oven gîte. From there we looked at properties within a radius of 100km. These ranged from grotty to glorious, and from a shabby moulin to a magnificent château. We soon concluded that what may appear to be perfect on paper is not always what it seems. |  After many wrong turns, twisty country roads, near starvation in the search for quick lunch bites, lost mobile signals, and a road map book which fell to pieces, our 17th viewing (on the banks of the River Lot near Figeac) stole our hearts. Never mind that it was a hotel (which we had never considered). We loved it but had to move fast, as there was another prospective buyer. We made the better offer and negotiations took place between the agent and the owner. Finally, while picnicking by the River Lot the next day, we heard that our offer had been accepted. We could relax... or could we?
We returned to South Africa for seven months, during which time reams of faxes and paperwork crossed the equator between us, the notaire and the owner. This was mainly due to the fact that we had purchased an existing business with two companies, which is extremely complex, and of course all the tax issues had to be considered. |  Upon arrival back in France we signed the final papers. There are considerable advantages in taking over an existing company structure (in our case an SCI and a SARL). For us, all the relationships with suppliers, bankers etc and the formalities of registration with a host of authorities came with the deal. This is a great plus but be wary, it can come with some complicated paperwork!
What looked to us in the spring as a property that needed very little work, has upon reflection become quite a major project. Being perfectionists, we have subsequently upgraded the seven rooms, the gîte, dining room and guests' lounge, and have added a bar and small fitness centre.
It is quite an adjustment leaving a hot summer in South Africa after 38 years for the Lot winter, but we are looking forward to the challenge of the season ahead. It has been a great learning experience and adventure finding Le Murier de Viels, but we know it will not take us long to settle into the French way of life. |
Mike & Sue Douglas |
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| Reproduced from the June/July 2003 issue of French Magazine |
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www.letsites.com
With the massive boom in British people buying
French gîtes to run as businesses over the last
decade, there has been an inevitable growth in
associated industries, including internet advertising.
This clear and clean site, which offers affordable
and smart website design services to UK owners of
French gîtes, is a great first stop for anyone keen to
exploit the power of the internet for the purposes
of letting their property. Simply choose from four
styles, with each available in three colours.
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| Reproduced from the October 2002 issue of French Property News |
| |  How did we manage without a website?
Gîte owners Robert and Suzie Booth in the Tarn have joined the technological revolution and now promote their business on the internet as well as in brochures
Seven years ago, Robert Booth swapped his broadcasting career at Radio 4 and Classic FM for the vineyards and sunflowers of the Tarn. Le Domaine de Bicary was the 42nd house that he and his wife Suzie viewed - it was love at first sight, even though their first job was to get the local builders in!
By 1997, Robert and Suzie had a beautifully converted farmhouse for their family home - plus two luxurious gîtes for holidaymakers in an adjacent honey-coloured stone barn. Since then, their gîte business has steadily grown. "But we're not complacent," says Robert. "Every year, the gîte holiday brochure we advertise in has several hundred more advertisers, so the chances of our advertisement being singled out by potential guests are constantly reduced."
Not only have the Booths seen the gîte holiday market become more competitive since 1997, but Robert also believes that gîte guests themselves have changed. "People have become far more demanding. They want to know everything even before you send them a brochure, and it seems to us that it's the little extras - such as the swimming pool or being able to offer lunch and supper - that make people book, rather than the standard of the accommodation or the location."
And increasingly the first question people ask when they phone to enquire about the gîtes is whether or not they've got a website. "A few years ago, a website was a bit of a luxury for a gîte business - now it has become essential," says Suzie. "We've noticed that it's the new advertisers who seem to be far more switched on to having websites than longer-established advertisers like us. And I suppose it's taken us a year or so to finally admit that we needed one ourselves. Our farmhouse is going to be available to rent from next year, too, which made a website yet more urgent for us."
But, as Robert and Suzie have found out, getting a website was easier said than done. They had heard plenty of horror stories of people paying thousands of pounds for quite basic sites that sometimes don't even work. As for creating their own, they, like most gîte owners, simply didn't have the time or technical knowledge to create something that looks truly professional.
"We wanted a bilingual website ready to include in our brochure advert for 2003," says Robert, "and we definitely wanted it up and running for when we start to take next year's bookings in the autumn. Luckily for us, we happened to come across an Anglo-French website design agency called LetSites, who specialise 100% in websites for gîte owners like us."
Quite apart from the obvious benefits of having an online brochure with masses of photographs, the Booths see their website as an ideal way to promote and run their business from either side of the Channel. "The ability to update our availability online is going to be a major benefit," Robert believes. "Whether we're in France or England, we can keep everything bang up to date without relying on anyone else's office hours. And with potential guests able to download our booking form and contract direct from the website, we don't even need to worry about catching the post."
Robert and Suzie soon discovered that the English couple who set up LetSites had run their own gîte complex in the French Basque Country for seven years - so they certainly know all there is to know about gîtes! "There's no doubt that setting up our website was much, much easier with people who already knew the gîte business inside out," says Suzie. "It really gave the whole process a personal touch. We're just so glad we took the plunge this year - we now can't imagine running a gîte business without our own website!" |
Robert & Suzie Booth - www.domaine-de-bicary.com |
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