Any advice on selling our house in France?

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We live in France and are looking to move so are just in the process of listing our house for sale. We're going to do it ourselves without an agent to keep costs down (really common here) and we want to try and market it to English families because its in a ski/tourist area.

So, we've made a draft website but I've never sold a house before - much less without an agent - and I was wondering if anyone had 5 minutes to look through the website and make any suggestions?

In particular we're a bit worried that the pictures aren't professional enough. What does anyone thing? Please feel free to be as harsh as you like - all feedback is very welcome.

house-in-the-alps.co.uk/

Gorgeous house!

Not enough photos and a floor plan always helps. Plus a map that shows the location would be useful.

Hope it sells super quick for you!

Wow that was quick - thank you so much.

I'll follow your advice and try and take some more photos.

If you were looking to buy what would you want photos of? We've got all the main rooms but I haven't done stuff like toilets etc. Do you think thats a mistake?

I think you need better photos tbh - there's a particularly poor photo of the main living space which is just too dark. Also try taking shots from different angles at different times of day to show each room at its best.

The order of the first floor photos is wrong imo - show the living space and kitchen first.

It looks very much more like a holiday home than a family home to me and I can't put my finger on why. I think it might be because some of the rooms are quite sparsely furnished and the kitchen is quite dated. Could be worth painting those units to give it a lift.

It’s beautiful but not enough pictures and that picture of the cluttered garage isn’t needed.

I can’t get over the fact you have a cave in the garden? A real cave? We need pictures of the cave!

Thanks wowfudge.

Thats a good point about the photos order - I'll update now.

Thanks for the rest of the feedback too - thats good food for thought.

The kitchen is the traditional style from round here so we wouldn't change/paint the units (we're also marketing to locals) but maybe we could try a different colour on the walls.

Not a real cave unfortunately - a wine cellar built into the hillside which is called a cave locally. Maybe we should change that to wine cellar tho - it obviously doesn't translate outside the area.

Thanks so much for all of the feedback.

It’s a very pretty house. If you are marketing to brits maybe do a video tour. It’s a long way to fly over to view a house on the off chance you may like it! Also include rough monthly bills costs you have plus some links to the town.

Also translate the survey into English

Description days 5 bed, but only one photo of one bedroom. How much off road parking ? I would get it on right move.co.uk Are there schools nearby. Does buyer have to pay French tax, how much ?

Thanks arewehomeyet - a video tour would be a good idea, and I can add some links to the towns etc.

There are photos of all the bedrooms on there - if you click on the different floors those should come up.

Just picking up on the only one bedroom comment - I think your homepage slideshow should include all the photos, not just a selected few. The utility space after the living space, bedrooms, etc then the gardens. Have a look at the kind of thing local estate agents do - they may be rubbish, but you could get an idea of what works.

There is off-road parking for at least 4 cars comfortably - I guess you could get more on if you didn't mind shifting them around.
Yes, there are schools nearby. We deliberately didnt put details on the UK site as we felt it was confusing for uk buyers not used to the french system (they don't have ratings etc here in the same way as UK) but maybe that was a mistake.
French taxes will depend on the buyers status etc.

You should take the facade of the house without the car in the shot. Completely ruins the photo for me

Have you thought of putting an advert on Green Acres or Ebay at a pinch.

I know when we were looking to buy in France this is where we started looking, and friends have sold through Green Acres.

Wow - thank you so much for all of the suggestions - I didn't think we'd get so much of a response.

I hadn't thought about ebay but we will list on greenacres and on bon coin, pap etc for french listings plus rightmove etc in the UK I think.

Just spotted that your blurb refers to the "quite" village, assume it should read "quiet".

I second having all photos on first page. I flicked through and thought it was a one bedroom flat, wouldn’t have taken the time to explore further if I hadn’t seen this.

I too spotted quite when I'm pretty sure you mean quiet. Also at the end of the ad you mean to say prospective buyers, not perspective.

that picture of the cluttered garage isn’t needed

I would disagree there—a lot of people like to have a workroom.

Thanks so much for spotting the typos - spelling is not my strong point as you can probably tell - I've changed those now.

Thanks as well for all of the other ideas and suggestions. You've given me lots of food for thought.

Hopefully going up on rightmove etc tomorrow so we're gonna make a few more changes today and tomorrow. Wish me luck!!

I would strongly advise getting a local rental agent in and asking for holiday let figures and assuming it would fetch big money high season, make that a big feature.I have a friend who bought a very similar type ski house and she always rents it out over Xmas & NY & at Easter whilst she comes back to the uk to stay with family and it makes her a huge sum of money! Ditto in the summer when she goes away on her holidays she'll rent it out to cover the cost of her own holiday!

Thanks Mymadworld - good idea. We actually work in the tourism industry so I can advise on rental rates etc if any potential purchasers are interested in using it as an investment - maybe I should add something to that effect on the site.

Have a look at this site www.francepropertyshop.com/french-property-for-sale/ they take listings from English owners wanting to sell their properties privately.

Thanks Catslife - looks like its worth a look

Here's another long-established site for private sellers of French property: www.frenchpropertylinks.com/

Good luck, op.