Guide to France Real Estate Agents & Their Tricks

You just need to take a drive around any part of the French Riviera and it becomes very clear that there are too many real estate agencies here. There’s at least one on every commercial block, if not several. It’s easier to find a real estate agency than a place to buy coffee — by far.

Not surprisingly, real estate agents on the French Riviera are an extremely competitive bunch. There are thousands of agents all fighting over a comparatively small number of listings, scraping by trying to pay their rent on very few sales. In short, it’s a recipe for all sorts of bad behavior.

Some 62% of estate agencies inspected by the state have been found to have broken the law.

Guide to France Real Estate Agents & Their Tricks - ICONIC RIVIERA (1)

Much like any industry where the monetary incentives are not aligned with the incentive of being honest with the buyer, this type of system forces agents to either look out for their own financial interests OR be honest with buyers. It’s not surprising then, that they prioritize making more money above being transparent with buyers. It’s not that agents are bad people (they have families to feed, too); the problem lies in the fact that the system is set up in a way that incentivizes bad behavior. The more you overpay, the more profit they make.

It’s so bad that the majority of real estate agencies (62%) inspected by the state have been found to have broken the law.More than 1,000 branches were inspected by DGCCRF in 2020. Common infringements relate to incomplete information provided to clients, deceitful sales tactics, displaying listings for properties that are not really for sale (then telling potential buyers that they ‘just got an offer’), or homes incorrectly listed as ‘new’ or ‘exclusive’.

Many agents also don’t really want to sell a villa because they are making consistent income renting it as a vacation rental, and taking 20% plus fees on every rental.

Tip: When working with agents, use a temporary email address and a different, fake surname with each agent. There’s no need (especially since you should never sign anything with the agent), and why would you want your real name to be in all those databases? Also, that way you’ll have less issues with agents refusing to work with each other (as explained below).

How Real Estate Agents Operate

No single agent has access to everything on the market. Not even close.

In France, there’s no central database of all the properties that are for sale. Each agency has their own listings, and only if they really can’t find a buyer then they often open up to the idea of collaborating with other agents. They publish some of their listings online (the ones they’re having a hard time selling), and the rest they keep secret (these are called ‘off-market’) so that other agents can’t find out about them.

Most owners (the savvy ones) list with 2 or 3 agencies. Agencies often don’t like to work with each other because it means splitting commission. This is why, as a buyer, you’ll need to contact (and work directly with) as many agencies as possible. Many agents on the French Riviera won’t proactively follow up with new listings, so you’ll need to message them regularly to remind them that you exist.

Many agencies also don’t really want to sell villas unless they can make a massive commission, because they are making profit on it by taking 20% commission plus fees every time they find someone to rent it as a

Licenses & Insurance

Since there are many illegal 'real estate agents' trying to make money off French Riviera property, it’s very important that you make sure any agent you’re working closely with is legal by asking for three things: their license to practice (carte professionelle), indemnity insurance, and fidelity bond (piece de garantie) details.

Don’t worry – it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to ask for proof of these. This will help to protect you in case something goes wrong. If they don’t have a bond, that’s ok, just make sure you pay any money to the notaire (which you should really do anyway). Licensed agents must display all these details in their office and give details of these three things in all correspondence and contracts.

You can also find licensed agents through two estate agent associations: FNAIM and SNPI. This also gives you an extra place to complain to if something goes wrong.

Beware Foreign & Illegal ‘Agents’

Only work with agents that have an office in the area where you're looking for a villa. Local agents will know the area best and might be able to give you access to ‘off-market’ villas that they think they can sell quickly without needing to pay for publicity. They will also be more likely to be legally licensed to practice — and you definitely want to make sure the agent you’re working with is licensed and insured.

Some foreign or unlicensed agents will claim to be the ‘listing agent’ or ‘exclusive agent’, but actually aren’t, and might surprise you with a demand for extra fees in the end (which you are not under obligation to pay!) or hide fees in the listed price. For this reason, avoid global / UK / non-local agents and services, and don’t sign anything with an agent — all contracts should be done via the notaire. And certainly don’t ever give an agent money (again, only give money to the notaire).

Buyer’s Agents / Property Finders

What is a buyer agent?

Buyer’s agents (also called Property Finders) are a new thing in France (since roughly the year 2000). They advertise that they will do the work of contacting all the various real estate agencies and find out about the off-market villas. Some also say they’ll do their best to find out about private sales.

Limitations:

Since they all split the commission with the listing agent, they will all miss out on properties where the listing agent doesn't want to split the commission. Many agencies, especially the well-known ones, refuse to split commissions (unless the villa has been on the market for ages). This means that unless you are directly in contact with those agencies, you might not find out about the best villas they have for sale.

Who to Trust? A Warning

The main thing to always remember is that real estate agents (and notaires) get paid when you complete the purchase, and the more you spend, the more profit they make. They are paid a percentage of the sale price, and they only get paid if you complete the purchase for the villa. So, naturally, they are incentivized to be very optimistic about both the market and whatever villa you’re considering.

That’s why many will tell potential buyers that a villa with major mold and structural issues is “in perfect condition”, or deliberately inflate the m², or tell you other lies and half-truths to get you to buy at the highest price possible.

Given this, it’s important that you do your own checking to see if all the structures on the property were built legally, and to check the other things listed in this guide. Don’t expect agents to be honest about any aspect of the property — you are the only person who will look out for your interests. It’s up to you to hire independent experts (who get paid whether you buy the villa or not) to double-check everything.

Those who are in the business of promoting villa rentals will also encourage people to buy. If you buy a villa then realize you overpaid and can’t resell it, that’s good news for people who make a living organizing villa vacation rentals, as your next step will likely be to enlist them to help you rent it. (Keep in mind that these rental brokers charge 20% commission, and the government charges a 40% rental tax, so you’ll make less than half of the rental price).

(Dishonest) Things Agents Tell You

Given the misaligned incentives, always do your own research, and watch out for these things that some agents say:

“The market is super hot right now!”

Agencies always want you to believe that it’s a super-hot market and prices are going up, as this pressures buyers into feeling like they should buy sooner and for more money, and it incentivizes sellers to list their homes. Even in obviously soft or declining markets, many agents and notaires will often tell you that it’s a hot market. Here’s the actual state of the real estate market on the French Riviera.

“This villa is new to market!”

Emails with real estate listings often say “new listing” or “new to market” when the villa has already been listed for sale for many months or years. Don’t pay attention when the agent says it’s ‘new’. Instead, take a look at the date on the diagnostics.

“You can’t base your m² pricing on the notaire’s website (‘DVF’) because _____.”

They may give any number of lies for this, such as that the notaries don’t count villas purchased using a SCI (they do — they count all residential real estate transactions no matter who pays for them), that they include non-publicly offered or inter-family sales of property for a low price (they don’t), that wealthy people remove their sale from it for privacy (this is not allowed), or that the notaire’s published sale prices are somehow incorrectly low (they’re definitely not incorrectly low –in fact they’re incorrectly high!– and this is regulated by French law to increase transparency.) In fact, the published sold prices include TVA (tax paid)!

Here’s a guide to coming up with your offer price.

“The market has exploded / prices have gone up since the notaires last published the sale prices…”

Again, that is 100% certainly not true, as the French Riviera’s real estate market is like molasses — it’s very slow-moving. Besides that, their claim is also completely unverifiable and there’s no way an agent could know this. The only way to know the trends of the real estate market prices is via the notaires published sale prices (more on the market trends here), which is updated every 6 months. Agents are famous for lying about sale prices, and even if they were being honest, they would only know about their sales, and they are 1 out of over 1500 agents on the French Riviera!

“This villa is on an expensive street, so the price is justified.” or “The house down the street sold for €_____.” or “I recently sold several villas in this area for over €_____.”

First, you can verify if it is by searching the past sales, which are listed on the DVF website — but with incorrectly low m²). If those sales aren’t listed, then assume that it’s probably not true. Second, the price per m² should still be within the notaire’s published price range (more on this here), which includes every villa on every street in that area/town, including all the ‘special’ expensive streets. Thirdly, just because one buyer didn’t do their research and overpaid, doesn’t mean you should.

Guide to France Real Estate Agents & Their Tricks - ICONIC RIVIERA (2)

“That villa has just been sold / just received an offer!”

There are several reasons why an agent might tell you this:

There’s a chance it could be true (but you’ll need to make sure.)
Some agents refuse to work with other agents (for various reasons, usually because they don’t want to share the commission), resulting in the agent you’re working with telling you a property has sold when it hasn’t, so make sure to double-check with the listing agent.
It could be a false listing designed to get you to contact the agency, for a villa that was never really for sale.
If you are an educated buyer and know that a villa is overpriced, an agent might tell you a villa got an offer to get you to bid above market, and when you don’t, they might say it sold. But this is often simply because they know that the seller is just speculating and not interested in selling at a fair price, so saying it sold is intended to make you think you’re wrong about the market (that villas are selling for more, and more often, than they are).
Another reason why an agent might say this is when an owner decides to take their villa off the market because it’s not selling — agents won’t say this, obviously, so instead they pretend they sold it. Check the notaires published sales to verify.

Remember: Many deals fall through; a property with an offer on it is far from a done deal (in fact, more than 50% of offers fall through, mostly because the bank won’t underwrite the mortgage for an obviously overpriced offer) and the villa may end up back on the market within a month.

“They already turned down an offer for [insert above-market price here].”

This is almost always not true. This is a very common tactic used by agents to make you think the villa is in demand, and to get you to offer more than market value. If the number is very high, they may also be trying to scare you off because the listing agent won’t share the commission, or because they know that the seller doesn’t really want to sell.

“The villa already sold but the buyer couldn’t get a mortgage.”

This may or may not be true. If it’s true, the most likely reason they couldn’t get a mortgage was because the bank’s valuation / appraisal showed that the buyer’s offer was way above market value. So, if it’s true, that almost certainly means that the villa is very overpriced, even at the offer price that was accepted. If it’s not true, then the agent is saying this to manipulate you into thinking that it’s a desirable villa that other people are willing to pay for.

“They are considering an offer, so you’ll need to act quickly!”

This is not true most of the time (but once in a while it is, however, the offer amount they tell you is almost always much higher than the actual offer). This is a common tactic used to put pressure on you, to make the villa seem like it’s desirable, and to get you to quickly bid a higher amount than their (fictional) ‘offer amount’. Our advice: offer market value then wait and see.

“It’s an investment – you’ll make the money back when you sell…”

This is simply not true anywhere, but especially in France, where the market has been flat-lined for about 15 years. Buyers have no idea what you paid for your villa, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter, as villas will sell for whatever the market value is at that time. Real estate is like any other market: it has ups and downs, and people lose money on their ‘investment’ all the time.

“It’s priced at market value. You can see by searching for villas for sale in the area.”

Agents who say this are trying to confuse you. The asking / listing / for sale prices are NOT ‘market value’; they are the prices nobody is willing to pay (otherwise, those villas would already be sold!) Instead, it is the SOLD prices (the m² prices that villas have actually sold for) that determine the ‘market value’ (what villas in that town are worth).

“You can definitely expand the m².”

A classic trick is they get their architect contact to “verify” that you can expand a property, but then once you buy it, they all ghost you and you find out the hard way that it’s not possible to expand the m² (even if ‘it keeps the same footprint’). This has happened to several contacts of ours and seems to be common practice. The only way to know if you can expand it is to get proper planning permission approval from the Mairie, and double-check it at the Mairie in person.

Articles That Quote Agents

Many journalists publish articles that are sponsored by real estate agencies. These articles (like all paid-for sponsored content) lack any journalistic integrity. They almost always give sales statistics that are not backed up by the notaires. Any agent or agency that is claiming that the market is changing, is only going based on their own agency’s information (one of hundreds of agencies in this area), and since there’s no way to verify what they’re saying, you can’t assume it’s correct.

Any article that states that the market is going up by a % or states how the market is doing, that doesn’t directly link to their source, is not credible. The only source that can accurately say what % increases the market is doing, is the notaires. Period. They are the only group with all the sales info.

Even then, when the notaires state the % that market prices are changing, keep in mind that since they don’t specify correct m² along with the sale prices (and these price stats are always based on the per-m² price), there’s no way to correctly estimate the % increase or decrease in sale prices. Until the government forces notaires to accurately report the m² of sold properties, there is simply no accurate way to say the % that the market prices are increasing or decreasing.

Articles that state that huge amounts of Americans (or insert country here) are buying property in France are also sponsored garbage. The notaires publish stats about the % of sales by foreigners and the last stat they published was in 2016 (as stated in their fall 2022 report), which stated that only 5.2% of buyers are not French. Again, there’s no way for any agent to know these stats unless the notaires publish them.

How To Answer ‘What’s Your Budget?’

Since so many properties are dramatically overpriced, the best way to answer this question is to say this: “We don’t have a budget. We will pay market value. We will get two appraisals –including one by our bank– and will base our offer on those. So show us everything that matches what we’re looking for and we’ll deal with the offer price once we find one we like.” Then, you will craft your offer by following this guide.

Do You Need an Agent?

You may find this shocking, but only 58% of all villa sales are via real estate agents, and many of those are sold ‘off-market’ to their clients (or developers, which then give the agent another commission when they flip it) without the need to publish the listing online.

The rest are sold via auctions, directly via notaires (4% of sales), or through private sales via local newspapers, social media, classified sites, or specialty property press (listed by the owner). This is because real estate agents charge between 4% and 10%, and many owners would prefer to try selling another way, only dealing with agents if they can’t find a buyer on their own.

Once an agent gets hold of a property, they’ll first try to “off-market” offer it to developers. Then they’ll quietly offer it to their clients and other agents they have partnerships with. If none of them can find an interested buyer, that’s when they start paying to advertise it.

They hold off on making the listing public for as long as possible because publicly advertising it invites competition from other agencies (other agents find it on Google Earth and approach the seller, so they’ll make the commission if they sell it). So usually if a villa hasn’t sold by the time is publicly advertised, it’s because it’s overpriced or has issues.

For these reasons, it’s best to look for villas on your own, and also contact as many agents as possible, so you’re more likely to get told about the “off-market” properties.

Tip: You can make a request to obtain the ownership information of any villa and approach homeowners directly.

Buying a Villa? Read This First!

When you’re ready to look for a property, make sure to read our complete guide to buying real estate in France. These guides explain how to estimate a property’s real value, how to get the best price and avoid over-pricing, what to look out for, how to avoid getting scammed, and more.

First, in order to understand the real estate market in France, you must understand how m² pricing is a giant scam. Then, you can move on to the other guides:

Our guide to where the market is headed includes: French Riviera real estate market predictions, current & historic pricing trends in the market, and the reasons why prices will continue to fall. Plus, supplementary on the French Riviera real estate market.

Our guide to real estate listings includes: how to find villas for sale, what to look out for, misinformation and warnings, auctions & foreclosures, buying direct from sellers, why timing is everything, and the reason why only about half of villa sales are publicly listed.

Our guide to scams and secrets includes: warnings about the unethical tricks that agents, notaires, sellers, developers and builders use to get more money out of you. This is a must-read, and the whistleblower guide that those in the business don’t want you to see.

Our includes: why there’s so much extreme overpricing, how to estimate a villa’s market value (what it’s worth), and a step-by-step guide to finding your offer price.

Our guide to important things to find out includes: diagnostic reports and surveys, sun & micro-climates, potential issues with the view, housing taxes, the age, internet and mobile access, danger (red) zones, health risks, privacy & space issues, nearby problems, what you’ll actually own, illegal additions and structures, why they’re selling, how to verify, and more.

Our guide to things to consider includes: your actual costs, issues with buying a ‘newly renovated’ villa, learning about local crime & squatters, and questions to ask yourself.

Our guide to the buying process includes: negotiating the price & the initial offer, choosing an honest notaire, buying in the black, the official offer & deposit, using a SCI, contract pitfalls, the cooling-off period, what to do before handing over the money, and the final signing.

Our guide for after you buy includes: insurance pitfalls, tips for second homes, renting your villa, renovating, and what to know about hiring people.

Guide for sellers: How to price your villa so it will sell.

Guide to France Real Estate Agents & Their Tricks - ICONIC RIVIERA (2024)