So finding ourselves with time on our hands, as our first viewings trip had been moved to February, we came across a property exhibition in London - The French Property Exhibition organised by French Property News. With the girls dropped off at Kate’s mums we caught the train to Kensington Olympia, not quite sure what we were going to find.

We turned up and bought our tickets on the day. If you buy French Property News they often have free tickets to these events so it may be worthwile checking that out, W H Smiths has started selling the magazine. On the way in we had to fill in a registration card and thought we were going to get inundated with junk mail but what we actually got was free editions of Fench Property News sent to us for a few months, which was a real bonus.

We had seen in the advert that there were some seminars on such things as the Buying Process and Currency Exchange so we wanted to get tickets for those so we headed for the stand handing out the tickets. These seminars proved vey popular so if you are interested it’s well worth making this your first port of call.

The seminars were very good and what they really did was allay any fears we had about buying in France. When you see these programmes on television showing people who have lost everything because they bought a house in Spain and it didn’t have planning permission, or the government have just taken it back you do worry. France is competely different though and the property buying process is actually, as far as we’re concerned, much better than the UK.

Apart from the seminars there were hundreds of stands with Estate Agents (obviously), banks, solicitors, removal firms, surveyors and a host of other professions. It was good to be able to talk to people about it, even though most obvisouly wanted to sell you things, you could get a really good idea of what you needed to know and some good contacts for taking things further if you wanted to.

The best part, however, was the main section of the exhibition which was not property related. It had an eating area where some of the finest French restaurants in the UK had setup stands and you could buy a small main course for £5, the food was amazing and we were in heaven. Having had a couple of mains and a Lemon Tart for pudding the day was just perfect.

There were also lot’s of stalls where you could buy wine, furniture, cheese, clothes, books and so much more and so Kate was very happy. Overall it was a really good experience and it actually made us more excited and confident about buying somewhere in France.

 Self Catering Cottage / Gite near Dinan, Brittany, France

Buying, Owning and Running a Gite in Brittany Blog

©Derek Arkwright 2007

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