Buying property in Villefranche-sur-Mer from abroad

The difficulty of a remote purchase is never the welcome, it is the sorting: how to choose a property you have not visited, in a town where two apartments of the same size do not trade at the same level depending on whether they open onto the bay or onto the hill. Home Select steers the search from its management, with its network of 15,000 partners, receives more than 100 off-market properties every day and monitors 1,700 listing sites. In Villefranche, where the villas of the corniche almost always sell off-listing, watchfulness counts for more than budget.

Each shortlisted property is qualified on documents: diagnostics, minutes of the general meetings, charges, the seller’s situation. Then comes the video pre-viewing, steered by Home Select with the seller’s agent, window by window, windows open, to check the real view, the exposure and the noise of the railway line. The price is set against comparable sales in the DVF survey, and only the properties that deserve your trip stay on the shortlist. Home Select counts 50% expatriate or international clients: this way of working is its routine, not an exception, whether you want to buy a house in Villefranche-sur-Mer or an apartment opening onto the bay.

Nothing is closed to you: France imposes no nationality or residence condition for buying a property, and its rules protect the buyer. An offer to purchase accompanied by a payment is void: nobody can ask you for a deposit to ‘hold’ a property. After signing the sale agreement, you have a ten-day withdrawal period. The diagnostics, energy rating, asbestos, lead, termites depending on the zone, electricity, gas and risks, are at the seller’s expense.

On this coast, two more rules. The shore belongs to the public maritime domain: no villa on the corniche owns the sea it looks down on. And the loi Littoral protects a hundred-metre strip outside built-up areas, which weighs, along with the steep slopes, on any idea of extending a villa in the hills: every property is a case of its own. For the taxation of your country of residence and inheritance, your notary and a tax adviser take over: that is another trade, which Home Select does not mix with the search.

The market picks up in spring and at the September rentrée, but properties with a view of the bay appear as estates are settled and households move, with no calendar: the watch has to be continuous, and a ready file, financing and supporting documents in place, weighs as much as the price offered. For a remote buyer, the sequence is prepared in reverse: the brief, qualification on documents as properties come out, a single trip as soon as a shortlist holds, signing by power of attorney.

The pitfalls are those of old buildings and of the view. In the old town, the damp of houses set against the hill and parking, sorted out on the edge of town; along the bay, the façade works and charges of the old buildings, read in the minutes; by the Marinières beach, the railway line, to be listened to with the windows open at a busy hour; in the hills, sloping accesses and the coastal planning rules. Everywhere, the view over the bay is judged standing in the room, never on a listing’s tight framing: among the homes for sale in Villefranche-sur-Mer, the video separates two floors of the same building.