Cultural French/UK Differences: Estate Agents vs Agence Immobilieres

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Agence Immobiliere, cultural differences, Culture, England, English, Estate Agents, ex-pat, France, French, funny, Humor, Sales

Estate agents and agence immobilieres, one based in the UK, the other in France. They ostensibly perform the same function: to sell your house in the quickest possible time or, alternatively, to help you find that dream home.

 

There are however a few key differences between the two…

 

Average Age:

 

Estate Agent: 20 – 30

 

Agence Immobiliere: 60 – 70

 

Location of business premises:

 

Estate Agent: Centrally located in heart of city/town/village

 

Agence Immobiliere: Centrally located in heart of city/town/village

 

 

Likelihood of finding dogs on said business premises:

 

Estate Agent: Very Low

 

Agence Immobiliere: At least one.

 

Will they smoke on said business premises?

 

Estate Agent: Smoking on business premises is illegal in the UK (so not while you are there)

 

Agence Immobiliere: Smoking on business premises is illegal in France (so not while you are there and occasionally while you are there)

 

What’s the lighting like inside said business premises?

 

Estate Agent: Bring sunglasses

 

Agence Immobiliere: Bring a torch

 

How they will greet you the second time you enter said business premises:

 

Estate Agent: ‘Hello, can I help you?’

(Translation: ‘What do you want? I’m nearly at level 80 on Candy Crush Saga!’)

 

Agence Immobiliere: (after warmly shaking your hand/kissing you on both cheeks) ‘Bonjour Monsieur/Madam (insert surname here). Ca va?’

(Translation: ‘Hello Mr (Insert surname here) how are you today?’)

 

How they will greet you the fourth time you enter said business premises:

 

Estate Agent: ‘Hello, can I help you?’

(Translation: ‘What do you want? I’m trying to upload my photos from the Ibiza trip to Facebook!’)

 

Agence Immobiliere: (after warmly shaking your hand, kissing you on both cheeks) ‘Bonjour (insert Christian name here) voulez vous une cafe, ou une boisson?’

(Translation: ‘Hello (insert Christian name here). Would you like a coffee or something to drink?’)

 

Likelihood that your agent will be related to someone else in company:

 

Estate Agents: Low

 

Agence Immobiliere: Them and that other person over there, you know the one that looks like a younger, female version of them? They ARE the company.

 

Routes to market for your property:

 

Estate Agent: Targeted email campaign, Facebook campaign, personalised brochure, open house days, local area leafletting, placement on multiple websites.

 

Agence Immobiliere: Placement on website of agency, discussion in queue at bakers, discussion in queue at butchers, discussion in queue at gunshop, discussion whilst out walking dog (s).

 

Number of Photographs that will be taken of the properties:

 

Estate Agent: a minimum of 10 or so photographs, depicting the interior, the exterior and everything that could possibly show the property in its best light.

 

Agence Immobiliere: A minimum of 1 or so photographs, sometimes the same photograph, 3 times, showing the same aspect, just slightly closer each time.

 

Will the agent ever take photographs as if they were taken by someone who has had a restraining order imposed on them and is not allowed within 100 ft of the property and thus has to resort to taking photographs when the house is fully shuttered on an overcast day from quite a distance away?

 

Estate Agent: Never

 

Agence Immobiliere: All the time

 

 

Will you move furniture around to get a better shot?

 

Estate Agent: Yes

 

Agence Immobiliere: No

 

Will they move people/animals out of shot?

 

Estate Agent: Yes

 

Agence Immobiliere: Sometimes

 

Have they mastered the art of taking a photo in a room with a mirror without appearing in said mirror?

 

Estate Agent: Yes

 

Agence Immobiliere: No

 

You are selling a house for over 200k, do you think people will want to see more than 3 photographs, one of which is of a bush?

 

Estate Agent: Yes

 

Agence Immobiliere: No

 

Do you think this looks like a good photo to have on your website?

 

 

Estate Agent: No

 

Agence Immobiliere: No

 

So why is it there Agence Immobiliere? Don’t you understand the term ‘correct photo orientation’?

 

Estate Agent: (Sniggers)

 

Agence Immobiliere: (shuffles feet)

 

I don’t know what you are laughing at Estate Agent, here’s one of yours:

 

 

Estate Agent: (shuffles feet)

 

Agence Immobiliere: (Sniggers)

 

Do lots of your properties look like they are haunted?

 

Estate Agent: No

 

Agence Immobiliere: 75%

 

If you are selling a property who will accompany the prospective buyer?

 

Estate Agent: Ostensibly the estate agent will arrange all viewings, with the promise that you will not interact with the prospective buyer at all. In reality they will text you to tell you that they have ‘gotten held up’ and ‘could you be a gem and show the house for me?’. The buyer will then arrive 30 minutes late (or early) because the estate agent hasn’t relayed the correct information to them. This will only happen 8 out of 10 times though.

 

Agence Immobiliere: The agent, his/her son/daughter and his/her dog (s).

 

Potential timescale for the sale of a property?

 

Estate Agent: Days/Weeks/Months

 

Agence Immobiliere: Months/Years/Decades

 

How they will greet you when you enter their business premises after the successful completion of your sale/purchase:

 

Estate Agent: ‘Hello, can I help you?’

(Translation: ‘What do you want? I’m bidding on an ab-toner on eBay and it ends in 2 minutes, I need it to look good for my next holiday to Ibiza!’)

 

Agence Immobiliere: (after warmly shaking your hand, kissing you on both cheeks) ‘Bonjour (insert Christian name here) voulez vous une cafe, ou une boisson? Comment vont les enfants? Merci encore pour votre enterprise’

(Translation: ‘Hello (insert Christian name here). Would you like a coffee or something to drink? How are the kids? Thanks again for your business’)

 

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The Seven Strangest Things At Today’s Brocante…

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children, Culture, France, French, funny, Humor, kids, Sales

 

Ever had one of those ideas that you immediately regret? Like taking a moped out for a spin in Greece, without taking out insurance? Or maybe accepting that drink from the slightly too friendly guy, that keeps touching you? Or maybe going along to that ‘it’s not timeshare’ presentation, with the promise of a free trip on a glass-bottomed-boat afterwards?

 

Or how about deciding to man a stall at a French brocante, and taking along your three and six year-old children? Doomed to failure that idea, a non-starter if you are seeking a peaceful, profitable day.

 

Regrets aside this is what brought us to the huge brocante in our home village of Aubigny sur Nere today. I don’t use the term ‘huge’ lightly either. The brocante dominates the place to such a degree that traffic has been shut down throughout and there’s nary an alley, or sidewalk, that doesn’t have somebody selling something.

 

It’s not long before the kids start to act up (2 micro-seconds to be exact) and so, after the requisite amount of paternal caring (3 micro-seconds to be exact) I bugger off and leave the kids with their mother, Grandma and Grandad, and take a look at what there is for sale.

 

There are lots, and lots, and lots of interesting items, the usual medley of guns, knives, rusty farm tools, knives, dead animals and more knives. The stand-outs for me, today, are the following seven deadly deals…

 

MUSCULAR GNOME-IN-A-THONG

This combines two of my least favourite things: gnomes and (male) thongs. What’s going on here? What message are you sending out if you buy this and display it on your lawn? If I bought this, the Peter Stringfellow of garden ornaments, and put it outside I wonder how long it would be before the gendarme came knocking at my door?

Also note his accessory: alarmingly phallic mushroom – I don’t think the plan here is for him to get his fishing rod out. Well, obviously that depends on your interpretation of the term ‘fishing rod’.

I think the plan is actually for the placement of these in the garden to attract ladies inside, with the suggestion of virility, muscularity and…well, a great big mushroom. The only slight hitch will come if it actually works, and the ladies knock on the door only to find a 9-stone-man with a stoop and halitosis…

 

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GOAT/COW/SOMETHING’S FEET LAMP

Yes, yes so I’m clearly not an expert on what foot comes off what animal as the title of this segment demonstrates. I don’t know about you, but my first thought if I cut off this animals legs and started wondering what to do with them, would probably not be ‘Hmm, you know what? They’d make a lovely lamp’. What the hell do you buy to complement this? A buffalo leg coffee table? Or maybe a set of four deer-leg coat-hooks (they actually had those, in case you wondered what happened to Bambi)?

If nothing it’s definitely a conversation starter. A conversation that would probably start with ‘What the f*ck’s that?’

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

NOT THE JOY OF SEX BOOK

My closest encounter with flagellation came in 2006, when I sat through the interminable The Da Vinci Code. You remember? That albino monk kept whacking himself when he thought he’d done something wrong. Or he might have enjoyed it, I forget which one.

Anyway, I didn’t realise it was actually a thing, or that there were even guide books for it. Needless to say, this was as close as I got, I really didn’t want to bump into one of my children’s teachers whilst ‘browsing’ Kinky Flagellations…t hat could open up a whole new world of problems. It would certainly make parent/teacher evenings interesting.

It’s nice that the producers of this book have thoughtfully included a warning that it is ‘not suitable for minors’. I would have thought the image on the front of the book, of the woman wearing S+M gear, and exposing her breasts would have done that job, but maybe that’s just me.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD 

JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING DOG-LAMP

Fans of the seminal 1982 classic John Carpenter’s The Thing (to give it its full title) will recall the standout scene early on, where the husky dog that has seemed to be normal reveals its true colours, goes bat-shit crazy, and starts melting and attempting to assimilate the other dogs. If you could turn those melted dogs into a lamp, it would look like this.

At least, I think it’s supposed to be a lamp. My French isn’t yet at the stage where I can confidently pose the question ‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to be? Is it a lamp?’, but I’m getting there. Where does the light bulb go? In its mouth? Or are you supposed to finish that part off yourself? The mind boggles.

This…thing, won the award for the day of being, in my partner’s words, ‘The scariest thing I have ever seen’. It’s so like The Thing, in so many ways that I’m slightly regretting not buying it now. It looks like something trying (and failing) to look like something else, part-dog, part-lamp: all-horror. That being said, If I had have bought it I’m fairly certain that the kids would never enter the room that it was in…bah! Yet another reason to have purchased it!

 

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

An Obviously Stolen Road Sign

This lady had some balls on her I can tell you. Stood there, in plain view of any passing gendarmes – of which there were many – with a stolen road sign. Just consider, for a moment, the lost motorist, adrift betwixt Gracay and Vatan. ‘How far is it now my love?’ grey-haired Elsa says to her beau, Francois ‘I don’t know’ he says, taking off his glasses and peering at the mound of upturned soil ‘Someone’s stolen the f*cking road sign’.

As uninteresting as the actual item is, it still garnered inquisitive looks and questions from passers-by. My partner heard her setting her stall out, price-wise, when she responded to a query on the matter with ‘let’s look at 350 euros, then we can start to talk about it’.

She also tried, unsuccessfully, to photo-bomb my picture when I took it. Like I said, she had balls.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: NOT SURE, SHE DROVE OFF

COCK-SWITCH LAMP

‘Eh!’ said the lady who owned this ‘tasteful’ item when I took its picture ‘You take a photo of it, you buy it!’. I just hid behind my foreignness, gave her the thumbs up, and said it was ‘Tres bon!’.

When what I actually wanted to say was ‘How do you turn it on? By flicking the penis?’.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GORILLA-MECHANIC WITH BOTTLE OF WINE/OIL & ADJUSTABLE WRENCH THING

So I’ve no idea on this one. What’s the purpose, the point, or the message? The bottle clearly used to be a bottle of wine, but now it’s been re-covered to look like a bottle of oil. With nuts at the bottom of it.

The wrench is touching the bottle, so is it implying that the two go together? Mechanics use oil and wrenches a lot?

What’s the gorilla got to do with anything? He looks like he wandered in from another set. Oh, and if you can’t see he’s also eating a banana. Is this the view of mechanics in France, that they are apes?

Maybe it’s an actual depiction of a ‘Monkey-wrench’ or…you know what? I’m giving up on this one. I personally think it’s someone’s art degree effort, probably means something really deep and cool. For me it just looked really weird, and faintly insulting for some reason.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD