The advantage of becoming the owner of your main residence is not only the satisfaction of living within its walls. Real estate is also an investment. Once the credit on your house or apartment is fully repaid, your housing charges will drop significantly. And, if necessary, you can resell your accommodation and reinvest the funds at your convenience.

1 – Negotiate directly with the owner

Negotiating directly with the owner allows the buyer to avoid agency fees. Buying without an intermediary can save you up to 8% of the price. An owner may also be more available and willing to receive you in the evening or on weekends. Pay attention to market prices; however, as some sellers tend to overestimate their accommodation.

2 – Visit the real estate agencies

With a single contact, you have access to several real estate properties and multiply your chances of quickly finding the property that suits you. With the internet, you use “portals” grouping together the offers of different advertisers and sites set up by the real estate professionals themselves.

If you are also prospecting in the field, target a district, and leave your contact details in several agencies. Firms have more and more computerized files to automatically alert a potential buyer when a good meeting their demand comes up. In addition, real estate agents in a given sector know the local market well. They can, therefore, correctly assess the goods they are responsible for negotiating. Of course, the real estate agent’s services have a cost: a commission, which usually varies between 4 and 8% of the sale price, and which is added to the basic price asked by the seller.

3 – Go through a negotiating notary

The role of the notary is not limited to drafting deeds and providing legal advice. Like a real estate agent, the notary can be an intermediary between sellers and buyers. More and more notarial firms have acquired a real estate transaction service.

With a notary, legal and technical verifications are carried out from the start, whether it is the measurement of the property for a co-ownership lot or the various diagnoses required by law, town planning rules, or property rights of the seller.

4 – Save time with the internet

About 95% of housing searches are done online today. The advertising websites allow you to access a lot of information on the property for sale: photos, videos, even a virtual visit. You can also be notified by email as soon as an ad that meets your selection criteria is posted. Very well designed sites are therefore dedicated to transactions between individuals.

In the old one, websites each offer several hundred thousand ads, mainly from professionals. The same property can be presented by several agencies at different prices, leaving you the choice of your contact. Sites are dedicated to new housing. Others offer a range of specific goods such as lofts, artist workshops, apartments on the ground floor, or even in the basement, “maid’s rooms,” etc.

It is now possible to access real estate offers on phones or tablets. The internet user thus benefits from alerts on this or that interesting property, or even “geolocating,” the real estate agencies in the sector, as well as the list of the properties they sell or even have an estimate of the properties located in the vicinity.

5 – Buy an apartment in a new program

Currently, the vast majority of new apartment purchases are made “on plans,” that is to say, when construction has not yet started. The sale on plans, also called “sale in the future state of completion” that allows the buyer to book accommodation with a promoter, in return for the payment of a security deposit.

Once the construction operation is well advanced, the future buyer is summoned to the notary to sign the act of purchase in the future state of completion itself. He pays for his apartment as the work progresses. The delivery of the accommodation takes place within 12 to 18 months after the signing of the reservation contract.