Buying property in Bayonne from abroad

The difficulty of buying a house in Bayonne from abroad is not the welcome: the town is used to buyers from elsewhere, from Paris by TGV, from Bordeaux, from Northern Europe. The difficulty is the stock. It is old and narrow, demand is strong and permanent, and well-presented town houses trade fast, often between networks, before any public listing. Whoever searches homes for sale in Bayonne from abroad on listing sites alone watches the market go by instead of entering it.

Home Select works differently: Home Select’s management steers the search, Home Select mobilises its network of 15,000 partners, receives more than 100 off-market properties every day and monitors 1,700 listing sites alongside. Every lead is qualified on documents, then pre-viewed on video with the seller’s agent, window by window, roof timbers included; the price is checked against recorded comparable sales; only the properties that hold up deserve your trip. A notarial power of attorney then lets you sign without being present.

No nationality or residency condition applies to buying property in France: a foreign buyer signs the same preliminary contract and the same deed as a Bayonne resident. The buyer’s cooling-off period is ten days from notification of the preliminary contract; the surveys, from the energy rating to natural risks, asbestos, lead, termites where the zone requires it, electricity and gas, are at the seller’s expense; an offer to purchase accompanied by a payment is void, which protects the distant buyer from any request for payment at the offer stage.

The specifics lie elsewhere: financing from abroad, the taxation of your country of residence and the inheritance rules applying to a property located in France. Your notaire and a tax adviser take over there: another trade, which Home Select does not mix with the search. On Bayonne’s old buildings, a specialist in historic structures completes the legal surveys, which do not say everything about wall plates, timber frames and damp cellars, and the works are priced before the offer.

The Bayonne market has two active windows, spring and the rentrée, and a local demand that supports it all year. Summer serves second-home buyers; the late season, the serious transactions of old Bayonne. The Fêtes in early August take over the centre for a week and fill every diary: it is not the week for the viewing trip.

For a remote buyer who wants to buy a house in Bayonne, the sequence is prepared against the calendar: brief in winter, shortlist in spring, a single trip of decisive viewings, an offer defended on comparable sales, then securing and coordination of the notaire up to the deed, by power of attorney if you do not return. Home Select charges its fees 100% on success: nothing is due before the deed.