Where to live in France? Let’s start with Fonsorbes.

Dear France Property Hunters,

OK. I’ve said that throughout this blog I’d like to discuss suburban towns, or places in France, that overseas property hunters may not know about. Not so much the picturesque fairytale villages of dreams, but real places, where people live and work and go to school. Places that you might consider living in rather than just visiting at holiday time (though some are perfectly good places to spend your holidays as well). It’s my goal to help you discover more towns in France that may suit your lifestyle and to give you more town names or areas that you can enter into search engines. So I’d like to start off today with my own little town – Fonsorbes, a suburb of Toulouse.

Toulouse is the capital of the Midi Pyrénées. It’s the fourth largest city in France and nicely located in the southwest. It’s not a huge Paris-sized city, I think it’s about the size of Glasgow, Scotland (my other home town) or maybe Manchester, England (though I don’t have the facts to support that – I’m freely and carelessly writing as if I know what I’m talking about!). I will probably mention Toulouse a lot – it’s a beautiful city and worth visiting.

Like all cities, there are plenty of suburban towns surrounding Toulouse that are growing in popularity and Fonsorbes is one of them. Workers in France’s aeronautical and scientific industries (Airbus or the new Canceropole cancer research centre, for example) are a big part of the population of these towns and more houses and apartments are always being built to accommodate new residents.

We’re about 30 minutes drive southwest from Toulouse’s city centre, which suits me fine since my late-night bar-hopping younger days are now (thankfully??) a distant memory. I have a panic attack every night if I’ve not brushed my teeth and got myself tucked up in bed before the clock strikes eleven! However, should I suddenly need to hit the tiles one night with reckless abandon, the city centre is close enough.

Here are some pics by "bazyorke" posted to Webshots. I don't know him personally but his pics are pretty good and better than I've got so I thought I'd take advantage of the "embed" feature on his web page and show off his work. Thank you bazyorke, hope you don't mind.



Around Toulouse. Fonsorbes, it’s buildings, events and neighbours

Fonsorbes is a normal, everyday example of a French town. There is the obligatory church on the hill, a nice looking Mairie (town hall), and a little, flowery main street running through it with hairdressers, pharmacy, pizza joint, banks, florist shops and the vets (with their new building which I’m sure I’ve single-handedly funded with health care payments for Cara the wonder dog – let’s not go there).

There’s a large grocery store, butchers, bakers, wine sellers, nursery and primary schools, and a new high school and shopping centre both under construction and opening soon. There’s no classic “French Market” (it’s down the road in Saint-Lys) but there is a little guy that sets up on Saturday mornings selling fruit and veg in front of the church. Within easy reach are larger retailers for sports equipment or furniture (IKEA!), supermarkets, DIY and garden centres, etc. that serve all of the surrounding area.

One of the great things I like about French towns, including Fonsorbes, is the way that they organise social and cultural events. There is always something on the go: a car boot sale, a little concert in the park, a dance for the teenagers, a party for the kids, a town fête. They even organise community get togethers (“Repas Partager”) where they set out the long tables and invite everyone in town to come along with their “pot-luck” dinners and share an evening with the neighbours! Get this too, once a year they even do a little bus tour for newly arrived “Fonsorbais” residents to show them round and welcome them to the town – with a little drink to finish off at the Mairie! Not my thing but I'm sure lots of people would like that.

For a small town of about 10,000 people, there’s plenty going on for everyone including football clubs, rugby, judo, dance, tennis, and golf. The family next door enjoys all of that but I prefer the less physically demanding sports like relaxing in the sun with a cold beer or walking the dog – which is, in my opinion, the best way to catch up on the goings on in Fonsorbes... The town gossip walking her collie keeps me laughing with her stories, the old granddad with his golden retriever gives me gardening tips and weather reports, the hairdresser with her mongrel tells me about the town council meetings with local business owners, and the guy that walks the rottweiller with the recurring skin condition (the dog not the guy) claims he’s the one who has single-handedly funded the vets new office. (I said let’s not go there!)

All in all, Fonsorbes is a pretty good place to live, and so are the neighbouring towns of Saint-Lys, Plaisance du Touch and La Salvetat Saint Gilles. Plus if you want a little getaway, the Mediterranean beaches are a really nice and easy 2 hour drive away. So are the Pyrénées mountains – which I can sometimes see but don’t want to see too often (everyone here knows that seeing the mountains means a bad weather front is moving in to spoil the sunshine – a good view is not always a good thing!) About 3 hours takes you to the Atlantic coast, and the Costa Brava or Barcelona in Spain are only about 3 and 4 hours drive.

If you’re looking for somewhere to live in France that caters well for everyday living then you’ll find properties in Fonsorbes or surrounding towns by entering 31470 into the postcode box in the www.breeze-france.com Quick Search. Please also, share your info about the area by adding a comment below. Next week I’ll be talking about the towns just north of Fonsorbes, so please come back soon.

Reporting from Fonsorbes on a sunny Sunday morning,
Ronaldo

Great Idea No. 1 – “Anglo-Phone”

If you’re searching for property in your home country, then you (usually!) speak and understand the language pretty darn well, and it’s natural for you to pick up the phone, call the advertiser to ask for a few more details, confirm a bit of information or to schedule a visit. You’re pretty comfortable doing that.

Now, imagine that the property you are interested in is in another country and you don’t speak the language. What do you do? Simple: just use a website or a company that speaks your language, right?

That’s great. In fact, all the pros recommend that you make sure you completely understand all conversations and stages of your overseas property transaction and seek assistance if necessary. However, in doing that, are you actually limiting your choice of property down to only those represented by people who speak your language?

In France today, there are over a million different properties available on the largest French property website. The majority of them aren’t normally advertised on overseas property sites that you may be using and you may have to get on a plane and pound the French pavements to find them. Even if they are advertised on sites written in English, non-French speakers may struggle getting “discovery” questions answered the way they would easily do it themselves at home.

Enter Breeze’s FREE Anglo-Phone service – our Great Idea No. 1.

Anglo-Phone is your free-to-use bilingual assistant. You can easily contact Breeze advertisers to ask early questions or arrange a viewing. Sure, use translators or specialist professionals to help you through the process later, when you’re ready, but don’t limit your choice of property now.

Early on, when you just need to know if the spare room is big enough to hold your collection of antique handbags, or if you’ll be able to walk comfortably to the shops without having to wear hiking boots and an oxygen mask, then the native English speakers at Anglo-Phone can help you avoid costly and time-wasting visits – for free.

You’ll save long distance charges too. From the UK and Northern Ireland, your call only costs 3p per minute. We’re working on deals with other telecom providers to get cheap calls from everywhere else too. Plus (as if that’s not enough already!), the Anglo-Phone lines are open 7 days a week, from 8am to 10pm GMT – when you’re most likely to be surfing the net.

A free bilingual telephone assistant. Great idea, eh? Get more info on www.breeze-france.com and let me know what you think using the comment link below.

Merci,
Ronaldo

Sorted!

Pleased to announce that the problems mentioned in the previous post have now been sorted. Yay!
I love it when things work out.

Testing times...a few known issues

Our friendly and helpful Breeze Testers have pointed out that there are random map rendering problems on computers using Internet Explorer.

They've also discovered a few issues in search return lists (ie. when jumping from page to page the site sometimes delivers the next page from your last search!!).

Sorry for any inconvenience....No need to panic....Normal services will resume shortly!
Don the Programmer is on the case.

FYI - Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox are the browsers that work best with Breeze.

Cheers,
Ronaldo

Great response, great new friends….a phantom and a cockroach!

IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN BETTER - As I mentioned, this weekend we went off to the French Property Exhibition at the Olympia in London to launch www.breeze-france.com to the world! What a great reception we got! We had loads of visitors to our stand and great positive feedback. We’re not big or well known enough (yet) to bribe folk with champagne and canapés but we did have a few seats for tired visitors and nice sweets wrapped in our colours, plus a snazzy little leaflet that, trust me, no one left without. We were blown away and we had a blast the whole time (though don't mention sore feet).

The show lasted three days and time flies when you're having fun. What a great experience to be able to talk about the site to people who've never heard of it but were genuinely inspired by what we were doing. I don't think anyone said (to our faces anyway) that they didn't like it. We also made more new friends amongst the other exhibitors and look forward to developing relationships with them in the coming months.

All the visitors were impressed and we got fantastic comments like "Wow, your site is exactly what I've been saying we needed" and "What a great idea" and "I'm going to look at your site as soon as I get home". Sure there were a few people too shy to express their glee but we could see it in their eyes. We launched a website and people like it. How great is that?

So all in all it was a worthwhile event, made even better when Heather treated us on Friday night with tickets to enjoy The Phantom of the Opera (thanks again, Heather!). After the show we stopped by Piccadilly Circus to see the dazzling lights of the massive advertising panels (…imagining our Breeze logo replacing Coca-Cola!!) and thought it would be an interesting experience to join some of those big-city “binge drinkers” we hear so much about! Sadly it wasn’t to be – it was late and they were probably tucked up in their spinning beds. So we stepped over the lager can evidence of their party and headed back to the hotel.

We did have one unwanted visitor to our exhibition stand… a cockroach (the size of a hamster!) crawled out of my computer bag on the first morning! A nice souvenir from the hotel that had successfully deceived us with their lovely internet pics and from which we had just made “the great escape” (another story!). Needless to say, the efficient Breeze team jumped quickly into action, donned our safari hats, hunted it down and bravely disposed of the beast before the inevitable panic ensued. Go Team!

Talking about deceiving – or misleading, or just plain uninformative - internet pictures – has anyone experienced that when hunting for French property? Uh-huh? Well, add a comment and share your stories. It’s important that property advertisers on Breeze hear what you expect from them.

Hoping to hear from you,
Big Game Hunter Ronaldo

Breeze is blowing...

Hello everyone and welcome to the Breeze France blog.


After two years of planning, www.breeze-france.com has finally come to life. This being my first blog entry, I'll give you a little run down on who we are and what we're trying to achieve with breeze. Then I'll tell you what I'm going to be doing with this blog.

The idea for Breeze comes from our team at Purchase in France. Based near Toulouse in the southwest, we help clients through the French property buying process. The core team is lead by the lovely Heather (the project-juggling, whip-cracking boss), then there's communications boy Ronald (that's me - pals call me Ronaldo), smooth-talking Gareth (not so smooth in the mornings) and soon to be new mum Lucy (congrats - she's glowing).

Supporting us (and I'll take a second to thank them just now...Thanks!) is design boy Daren of www.pigcom.fr. The site build team at Ideas and Creations in Glasgow (special mention to Don the master programmer). Sarah, the "Let's have wine with lunch" legal genius, and Tom, our "Have you thought about this?" advisor.

We saw a little hole in the market. French property advertisers needed a better way to market their properties to a wider (English-speaking) audience. English-speaking property hunters needed more information and more property choice. Both groups needed language help. Eh, Voila! Breeze was born to help both groups. I'll go into more detail about how we're helping in future blogs.

Location, location, location...
breeze is location focused, just like the experts say all property hunters should be. Our location search options are designed to help people discover properties that match their lifestyle (near schools or sports, the beach, or simply to know that getting a pint of milk isn't going to be a problem). For people searching from abroad this is particularly important. Since they can't just jump in the car to have a look, better location information builds better short lists and weeds out costly time-wasters.

In support of this, I'll be using this blog to talk about the different areas I pass through on my daily travels and I'll be asking for input from readers and pros about places further away. Getting information on major towns or regions is easy on the internet. But is that enough? I want to talk about the suburbs of those towns or perhaps lovely and affordable places that people from abroad haven't discovered yet. For example, Fonsorbes, where I live, just west of Toulouse. It's a great area but would you know to enter the name into a web search? If you don't then you'll miss property for sale here.

I look forward to this blog project and hope you enjoy reading it and are encouraged to ask questions or share knowledge. Tomorrow we travel to the French Property Exhibition at the Olympia in London. www.breeze-france.com is online today (warts and all) and we're going to start talking about it - a lot! I'll share the experiences along the way.

Cheers,
Ronaldo