Find your life in the South of France. Understand every line before you sign.
I am John Newman Prentice, an English-speaking estate agent at Orpi Les Carmes in Toulouse. Buying: I find the house, negotiate the price, and read every line with you in English, including at the notaire. Selling: your house goes to the whole French market, plus my English-speaking buyers. At no extra cost, either way.
Buying, selling, or still working it out.
Most buyers land here with a dozen tabs of French listings open and a week of unanswered questions. Most sellers land here with a house on the market and no news. And decent French fixes neither, because the problem was never the words: France runs property on different rules. Pick your door. Each one puts those rules in plain English, on your side.
Buying a home in France
I'm on your side of the table. I show you nearly every house on the market that fits what you need, whichever agency lists it. If it's for you, I negotiate for you, then walk you from offer to the final signing, reading every line with you, in English.
Selling your property
Your house goes to the whole French market, like any Orpi listing, plus my English-speaking buyers on top. I walk you from the valuation to the final signing, in English, even if you have already left France.
Guides & safeguards
The notaire, the state official behind every French sale. The real fees. The ten-day cooling-off rule. The diagnostics that are not a survey. All in plain English.
Toulouse, and 100 km in every direction.
From the office at 16 Place du Salin, I cover the whole of Haute-Garonne and reach into the Gers, the Tarn and the Ariège foothills. If it is inside this circle, I will drive to it.
Haute-Garonne · Gers · Tarn · Tarn-et-Garonne · Ariège
The same statutory purchase taxes apply across all five departments. And wherever you buy inside this circle, I check the asking price against DVF, the official record of what nearby homes actually sold for.
One agent, in English,
from the first search to the last signature.
France lets one agent work both sides of a sale, and I do. Sell with me and your house reaches Orpi's network and my 244 partner agencies across Haute-Garonne. If one of them brings the buyer, we split the one commission the sale already carries. Your proceeds do not change by a euro. The house just sells faster.
Buy with me and I work for you. Nearly every house on the market, whichever agency lists it: I shortlist against your needs, drive you there, and if you like it, negotiate with the listing agent and walk you every step, right through to completion at the notaire's office, in English. Same single commission. Nothing added on top of the price.
And I am still there afterwards, when the electricity contract needs opening in a language you can check.
One more thing, because it is the part that actually does the work: I am not just English-speaking, I am bilingual. Your side of the sale runs in English. The French side, the notaire, the mandates, the other agents, runs in native French. A French sale is a different culture, not just a different language, and I grew up in both.
“In France I can act for the seller, for the buyer, or find both sides of a sale myself. Whichever side I am on, you understand every word before you sign, and it never costs you more: it is always a split of the one commission the sale already carries.”
John Newman Prentice
I grew up watching my mother
hand English families their French keys.
I was born in England and moved to the Ariège at eight, with my parents and my twin sister. My mother, also bilingual, spent fifteen years as an estate agent at Century 21 in Mirepoix, serving the Ariège's English-speaking buyers and sellers, from Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States.
She has retired now. I have carried the practice to Toulouse, and I am in my first year of it. Her fifteen years are hers and my first year is mine, but everything she learned about walking an English-speaking family through a French sale or purchase, I grew up inside.
Found a house online already?
Send me the link.
Any listing, from any agency, within 100 km of Toulouse. I will tell you what it really costs on top of the asking price, what is actually included with the keys, and whether it is worth booking the flight. One clear reply, in English, within 24 hours.