Q & A

Subject: Moving to France.

Question: We would like to move to France. Can you tell me if it is an easy process. What is the job, housing and real estate situation like. We are interested in opening our own business and are interested in warm regions.

Answer: Having just made a move to France I don’t know if I would say it is an easy thing to do. I would recommend that you ship as much as you can, as furniture is more expensive in France than in the states. What might be hard to plan is where you are shipping your things. As finding an apartment will not be easy if you don’t have any proof of having a job. We lost a few apartments because we could not prove any income. Even having money in the bank was not much of a help. If your renting for the first time in France you might have to have a cosigner, some one that will say they will pay the rent if you can’t. The job situation is not very good for Americans. I work in IT and it took me over three months to find a job. Most Americans that I know here either transferred to a job in France or teach English. Housing and real estate is cheaper in France than in the states. If you sell a house to come to France you should be able to get a better house, but maybe smaller, than you had in the states. As for opening a business, I have heard it is not an easy thing to do. French bureaucracy is very complex, most French don’t understand how it works. For example in France, the government gives each family a monthly stipend for every child of the family. Being that my son was born in the states, my wife had to prove that she was pregnant, to get the family stipend, having our son was not proof enough!

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