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We're moving to France!

So a few years back we started thinking about retirement. What would we do? Where would we be? Would we buy a holiday home or would we sell up and move abroad permanently? Or neither? Could we afford any of this?

Firstly a quick introduction. We’re a married couple in our 50s, living in Liverpool. I’m a salesman and my wife, Lyn, is a manager for a delivery company. 

We’re not ‘wealthy’, we don’t have large pension pots, we don’t have the much-quoted London apartment we can sell to buy a fully refurbished chateau with the proceeds. In fact, having bought a new house at the height of the property boom in 2006 we are still in negative equity today. I guess, like a lot of people with dreams of moving to France, we regularly did the maths and concluded it just wasn’t possible.

But as time progressed the dream didn’t go away and we talked about it regularly.

Then, at the start of 2018, we decided to stop talking (not as in we’ve fallen out!) and actually do something about it, dig a bit deeper and see what comes of it. If we proved ourselves right and couldn’t afford to do it then so be it. But what if we found a way …. ? What if we really could move to France?

This blog follows our journey from dream to reality. If any of the above strikes a chord with you then please follow us on this journey. We’ll share all the steps along the way from the excitement of viewings to French legal documents. We’d love to inspire others to follow in our footsteps. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.

If you subscribe below we’ll keep you up to date with the latest developments.

All the best

Mark et Lyn

 

Our Latest Blog Posts

First Trip Booked!

So we've taken the plunge and booked a 7 day 'holiday' to France in late September. It seems to make sense to get on the ground over there and get a feel for a few areas. Hopefully we'll come away with more of an idea of where to concentrate our search.We...

More Research

Another boring post title, I know. But we're determined to do this right ....  and that requires lots of research. There's no point investing the time and money into a viewing trip if we cant afford to buy anything. We've written off the French mortgage...

French Property Exhibition

Hailing from the North East originally, my Mam and sisters still live there. So we visited the exhibition on Saturday and continued on for a get-together Saturday evening. It was a gorgeous day - sunny and hot. This had us thinking how this will be par for...

Mortgage Criteria

Over the past weeks we've researched the mortgage offerings from a number of French banks and put in our first application.This was pretty lengthy, with an enormous amount of information required. What came back was unexpected. We have two rental...

Affordable Regions

You'll be aware from our earlier post that we've identified the south west of France as one of the best regions for weather (outside of the expensive south of France). We now need to find the best regions within the south west for affordability, especially...