Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Dordogne Characters - The Notaire -
Information for Buyers

Dordogne Characters - The Notaire - Our first experience of that mysterious species, the Notaire, was of course our meeting with the Notaire who dealt with the purchase of our own house 11 years ago. His offices were situated some distance from our local town. He fulfilled all our expectations – bent and old, his offices were in a crumbling stone house with turrets, a heavy creaking oak door, damp musty smell, and a very dark and gloomy interior full of old filing cabinets, piles of papers tied up with string and covered in dust. We felt as though we had walked straight into a novel by Zola or Dickens! After the signing, the notaire opened a bottle of champagne and clapped the owner on the back congratulating him! As we soon discovered, this notaire was a friend of the owners of the property we had bought, and we found that we had been successfully steered through the sale, without our discovering a couple of dubious facts relating to the ownership of the water supply to the house, and the status of the gardener handyman whom we had been persuaded to take on along with the property. As a result of this unfortunate fact, when we gave the gardener notice to quit, he took us to court for breaking a contract we did not realise we had taken on. Receiving no reply from the notaire who had handled the sale, we contacted our local notaire, who was far from dusty and old. The same age as us, he had qualified in Bordeaux and had taken over the practice 7 years previously. He clarified various legal aspects of our case in his excellent English, and pointed us in the direction of a good avocat, while giving us as much moral support as he could. The job of Notaire is delicately balanced between that of the civil servant who must gather taxes, capital gains, stamp duty, death tax, and the more personal side of advising people on their inheritance issues, marriage regimes, will making etc. In the last years there have been so many Brits coming to live in France that most Notaires are brushing up on European law and their English language skills. Certainly our own notaire is happy to chat in English, is easily approachable and when we ask him if he minds dealing with Brits, he points out that an infusion of fresh blood can only be a healthy thing in this rather cut off part of the world, where old country properties and even old village houses sit empty for years, gradually disintegrating. The problem of rural de-population, he regrets is not going to go away, and so it is a good thing that foreigners are moving in to renovate old houses, bringing jobs to local tradesmen, spending money in local shops and contributing to the local economy and cultural life in general. We work with many different notairial offices in the course of our estate agency work and are happy to report that the dusty old notaire of earlier days is a dying breed. The new generation of notaire is well versed in European law, speaks good English, and although rushed off his feet most of the time, he can usually find time to give advice on a range of issues.