About the Author

House Owning and "Heritage"

Robin Fenton

The phrase leads on to apportioning esteem, not to say reverence, to the Englishman’s dwelling, even if it is a simple Victorian terrace house. Hence the vast amount of home DIY work the British will willingly devote hours to, to enhance and upgrade their home.

This is where the French attitude to property starts; the house a Frenchman owns is his `patrimoine’, his heritage, and he will go to any lengths to maintain it in his possession.

Forge Basse - The Authors French Property

Curiously enough, the French approach to interior decoration, at least outside the fashionable areas of Antibes, St Tropez and Paris, is one of desperate conformity; if you have seen one hallway with walls lined in padded hessian, with the kitchen dominated by an oak kitchen table and carved wood kitchen cabinets, you’ve probably seen hundreds.

The French desire to create, inherit or hang on to their `patrimoine’ doesn’t stem from the more `British’ approach of making good financial sense; the fact is that many families in France live in rented accommodation. This can be anything from HLMs (council-owned properties) to upmarket pads in the smarter areas of Paris.

These rented properties they regard as purely temporary. The breadwinners earn money, they pay rent, they commute, and they work. But many older families in Paris still have their country home, probably inherited, which they regard as their `heritage’.

These may be big or small properties, from cottages to chateaux. Although rising property values have made it more difficult, it is still very common for an ageing parent to donate up to €50,000 worth of their `patrimoine’ to each of their children. This is a tax-free transaction, subject to the Notaire accepting that the value of the property being donated is a realistic assessment of the current market conditions. The donating parent or parents then simply live on in the premises rent-free, and when they pass away, the children automatically take full possession.

This attitude to `patrimoine’ can have some curious outcomes, one of which is the impact on the housing market. If a property inherited (or donated) in, say, 1995 was deemed then to be worth, say, €100,000, the French mentality dictates that it must be worth more now – say, €200,000. In which case, they wouldn’t dream of selling the property for less than that, (`let go of my patrimoine? Never!’) This may be even though the present-day appetite for a crumbling farmhouse in the country might be non-existent.

Hence the all-too-frequent sight, particularly in the countryside of houses, and sometimes of whole hamlets, falling progressively into ruins. This problem is only exacerbated by the inheritance laws, which effectively enforce division of inherited property among surviving children. (As soon as one family member wants to sell, and the other doesn’t, the stage is set for years of wrangling, court-cases and bitterness, during which time the house gradually falls down).

So the French attitude to `patrimoine’ is different from the English one in a number of ways.

First, the English have been encouraged to invest in property (`safe as houses’) as a way of building capital, and not simply `giving away’ rent to a landlord.

Secondly, British inheritance laws are far more stringent, so the notion of the family home passing down the generations has all but disappeared.

Thirdly, in a difficult economic world (the French always complain bitterly about their taxes, although actual tax rates are somewhat lower than the UK, compensated for by Social Security charges and surcharges) the French tend to cling on to, and aspire to own, the very bricks and mortar the British have tended to take for granted.

After all, `Ça, c’est mon patrimoine!’.