property Renovation - Planning permission in France

property Renovation - Planning permission in France

We have a slightly different day today, as a thank you for the oak beams that we were given John is going to spend the morning helping our friends at the farm with their new porch. Our friends at the farm did a similar project to us and have now also started keeping a blog of what they have done, you can find them here if you want to have a look at a different kind of house renovation in France. http://inkermaninbrittany.blogspot.com

I go shopping with Theresa, who also has to put in some planning permission; this is really useful as I now know exactly how to put the planning permission together for our new windows. This is something you must bear in mind if you are doing a renovation, planning permission must be granted, you hear so many horror stories of people buying in a different country being told their house is not legal or they do not actually own it. If you do things correctly this will not happen!

When you are buying in France, especially from an old person or from family members of a deceased person, the entire family must give consent to sell, and agree the price, if they do not, they will have a claim on your house and this can lead to long legal wrangling.

If you do not have the correct planning permissions, you can be asked to undo your work, we have to have full planning permission to replace the rotten windows, even though we are replacing them with the same style, this is because we live in the national Park (a little bit similar to National Trust land in the UK)  anything on the exterior of the house must be agreed by the Marie (town hall), the inside is no problem, but and I cannot stress this enough, YOU MUST CHECK!!!!!!!!!

We were also told similar stories when we were in Spain of people having their cars taken away, again this is because they have not fully registered in the country in which they are living and followed all protocols.

If you are moving to another country, check that everything is above board and correct, do not cut corners as it may cost you a lot more in the long run, and if you are put off by the horror stories, read the details as the horror may have been easily avoided.