Moving to France!

[Milims]

We've been contemplating moving to France from Northumberland and were wondering if any of you out there that have already done it have any tips, ideas, advice or even anecdotes about your experiences when you moved to a fairer climate!!!!

We've been looking at properties on the net, and what with me being a Joiner and Helen a Sparky, we are looking into doing up a house. Could do with a bit of advice on some costings too, such as how much it cost to get the water, electric, sewerage hooked up as well as things like council tax, schools etc.

Chris and Helen

[bwaymark]

Hiya,

We (me wife and three kids) moved to France a few years ago, when the kids were 10 and 11. We were in Labastide Rouairoux, in the Tarn, in the Southwest of England. I loved it! Wife loved it! Two older kids weren't so keen... mostly because the school held them back two years so they were in a class of kids two years their junior.

Best thing to do is join a forum like TotalFrance (www.totalfrance.com - there are other forums as well, but thats the one I used) and ask lots of questions. The French you speak the better. I am fairly close to bilingual and had a French friend come over for some conversation in the months leading up the move. They French are about as good at learning English and the English are French... so don't expect to get by with just English!

The other thing is to familiarise yourself with France many and sometimes confusing tax laws. France has the highest tax rate in western Europe and the lowest tax collection rate in western Europe. Your financial success or failure depends entirely on your ability to play the system and know how to do what. A few things I seem to remember being key bits of information is that if you buy a house and sell it before 5 years, pretty much all the capital gains get lost to tax. Or something like that (check with someone in the know to exactly how it works).

Good luck!

-Ben.

[Milims]

Thanks for that Ben - we'll certainly be doing lots of investigation before we up and off, and its good to know where to start looking for the info. I guess I'm quite lucky with the language thing - my Mum and Sis spoke fluent french and if they wanted to have a private converstaion they did it in french - needless to say I learned how to eaves drop in french quite quickly!! lol. The kids are also doing french at school and are being spurred on by my Mum, so we are mostly familiar - if a little rusty!!

I had a feeling that there would be some kind of rules about house buying and selling, so I have suggested to Chris that we keep the house here and rent it out and buy a small property over there to see how we get on - I'd hate to end up hating it and have nothing to fall back on here. Hyper cautious thats me!!

I do think that is will be a wonderful adventure and a fantastic thing to give to the kids - to be bi-lingual and have the experience of living elsewhere in the world will surely set them up in goos stead for their futures.
Regards
Helen and Chris