French visa nightmare
 

Hi everyone my first time on this forum ,we are hopefully going move to France in April and are having difficulties understanding the visa process, We are funding the move from the sale of our house in the UK. We are not retiring but are going to start a air bnb and a rental business. Please can anyone tell us how to get visa so we can stay in france ?? ,MANY THANKS car&ade

Re: French visa nightmare
 

Welcome to the forum.
Start by reading this.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-france

Re: French visa nightmare
 

:welcome:
The French visa application is done online although you also attend an in-person appointment at one of the visa processing centres in the UK. This is the website. It lists the various visas you can apply for and the supporting documents you need to provide for each.type of visa
https://france-visas.gouv.fr/en/web/gb
In your case it sounds as if you need a visa that will give you the right to work in France. For that type of visa you need to submit a good business plan to demonstrate that your business is likely to be successful and earn a sufficient income. I believe for hospitality businesses you also have to get your plan approved by the French authorities, again this is a simple online process once you prepared your business plan. If you're not already familiar with French business structures etc that is something you will need to start looking into, because your plan will need to show that you understand what social taxes etc you will be liable for depending on what business structure you chose. You do not have a lot of time before April. Maybe you would be better off going as a visitor first, either using the visa waiver or on a 6 month visitor visa, and spend the time getting your plans together. Not sure what the rental business will be, do you mean being a landlord or renting out tools and equipment or something? but for the bnb, obviously you cannot start writing a business plan for that before you actually have the property. You need to have the business pretty much set up and ready to go before you apply for the visa because the decision is made partly on how good your business plan is, they will not give you a visa to come to France and start thinking about what kind of business to set up. Also, each time you renew your permit; probably every year to start with, you will have to provide accounts to show that your business is on track, so the plan has to be realistic.

Start by looking carefully at the visa options and good luck with your plans.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

Have you researched how much "profit" an Air B and B and I assume holiday rentals make in France and what you need to charge to make a living.The vast majority of gites etc are run as an add on to a pension, a farm, or if one partner is working.You need to research how much the french state will take off you -I think you will have a bit of an unpleasant surprise.
You will need to show as well that you will have a minimum income of €16,236 per person per year after tax and deductions in order to get a visa.This is the french minimum wage in order to show that you will not be claiming benefits
As you say "we" you need to be aware of french inheritance laws and taxes especially if you are not married and how the french tax system works generally
TBF there is no way that you are going to get a Visa in time to move to France in April in view of the fact that you have a lot of work to do to prepare
One short cut may be to try and establish if either of you are eligible for an EU passport based on your ancestry-usually parents/grandparents

Re: French visa nightmare
 

Hi, and welcome to the forum!
Have to agree with what has been said above. For the above reasons, you won't get a working Visa by April, and the suggestion that you come over on a visitor visa to get your plans together, is a good one.
- Have you researched potentially profitable areas? There's a lot of competition in areas of interest.....
- How is your respective French? You should both be at an adequate level to cope with the inevitable bureaucracy (setting up at least one business structure (depending what the rental business is), professional and personal Taxes, Social Security Contributions, to name but a few....); with the local artisans for the inevitable work to be done on the property which you decide on. (Be aware that plumbing and electricity standards are different in France and need to be signed off by a registered artisan); and with potential French clients....
- Does "we" include children and/or older relatives? If so, take a look in the "Schooling" and "Growing Old in France" threads in the Read-Me: Moving to France FAQs above. Likewise, as mentioned, check the Inheritance issue in the same FAQs, and question the Notaire when you see him/her. It will depend on your matrimonial status (and any children from earlier marriages).
We can give more advice if you give us the above info!
Good luck with your plans, but be patient!;)

Re: French visa nightmare
 

This is an important point because for some if not all types of carte de séjour that give you the right to work, you are required to have reached a certain level of competence in French. As I understand it you don't need to demonstrate this when you apply for the visa, but it is required in order to renew, typically at the end of the first year. Leaving the language learning until you arrive can be risky because setting up a new business takes a lot of time and energy, the year passes quickly, suddenly it's time to start the renewal application and you realize you haven't done anything about getting your French up to the required level. Then it gets stressful.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I hope nobody minds my joining this discussion from Iberia.

You may need to rethink your plans. It's one thing to move to an EU state on a non lucrative basis ie not working/earning money in France but another thing entirely to try and set up a business.

I think you would find it much easier to sell your house in the UK, allocate money to buy a property in France and supplement your income with a buy to let in the UK. Believe me, it will make your lives much easier and it will be far easier to obtain a visa in France.

Holiday rentals are highly regulated and very tying and in many respects, it's doing things the hard way.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I agree with you 100% but the catch I see with this plan is, selling your UK house and buying a French house and having enough cash left over for a UK buy to let property that will bring in £2,000 a month or so in rental. How much is a property like that going to cost? Your average family home would not rent for anything like that unless I am very out of date, that sounds to me more like London penthouse flat territory or else buy two or three modest properties.
If you have another income stream and you just need maybe £600 or £800 or so to top it up, that could work but the OP does not say that they have.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I will throw in my 2 cents and add that AirbnB is not something I would base my livelihood on (or even a small fraction of it..).

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I agree, this type of plan would mean the OP would need to lower their expectations with the house in France unless they have a huge budget.

Buy to let is the easier option by far. We have been landlords for years and to give you one example using today's prices, you could buy a one bed flat for £150,000 and achieve a rental income of approximately £700 per month. That is just one example but it gives you an idea of the figures.

Honestly, I wouldn't touch holiday rentals with a barge pole.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

Thank you, yes that is about what I thought.
That is the way to do it if you have the cash, no doubt about it, but the OP would need three of those to meet the criteria for two working visas for France.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I don't know anything about the holiday let/ Airbnb market in France, but I think you would be shocked how lucrative the holiday let/ Airbnb market can be (in the US). I know two people who have both rental homes and Airbnb lets, and both make a ****-load off their Airbnb's, (FWIW I am certain that they are entirely unknown to each other and live in different states). The last I heard, one, a colleague of mine, was making three times as much from his Airbnb as he was from the house he rented out, and that was after paying someone else to clean the Airbnb between occupants, change the beds, replace the towels, do the laundry, and ad hoc minor maintenance (such as replacing light bulbs) - that was a fairly unremarkable home in a development, but in the mountains, so was in a somewhat touristy area, but his net income from that one Airbnb is well above poverty level income for a family of four.

The other person, a cousin of Mrs P, has at least a couple of Airbnb's (a house and a converted basement flat), and he lives next door, so can take care of the cleaning and servicing himself, but he also has extremely high revenue, and he isn't in a tourist destination, not near either beach or mountains, not even particularly close to a major highway (a few miles away, so there are many hotels that are closer), and yet he has a high occupancy rate and makes the sort of money from 2 units that most people would consider to be a pretty good salary, literally twice what the other guy is making from his one Airbnb in the mountains, though with him taking hands-on responsibility for the servicing and maintenance.

So while holiday lets might not be something you would want to do, for those with the interest, skills, and especially time to do so, there may be fairly good money to be made. Obviously that depends on being able to find a steady supply of customers, and to be able to deal with the adminstrative and regulatory burden, which I suspect is significantly higher in France than in the US.

All that said, would I move to another country where I wasn't fluent in the language, and not familiar with the laws and regulations, and hang my entire life on starting a holiday let business from scratch? ..... He11 no! And it's worth noting that both the people I described above had other "main" income that they were living on, they were not reliant on their Airbnb income for their daily living expenses - the Airbnb was a side investment, allbeit a lucrative one.

Footnote: This is the sort of question that we have been fielding the US forum since, well, forever, invarably concerning getting a visa to live and work in Florida, and then having holiday lets and some combination of relatively low-skill service business, such as mowing or pool maintenance. Some people do manage to wangle a visa on that basis, but if the business isn't successful, renewing the visa every few years can become a stressful challenge, and may ultimately lead to a capital loss anyway, as there is almost no way to transition from a US self-employed work visa to retirement in the US, unless your business has been an absolutely roaring success and can obtain a (euro-speak) "golden visa". ... And it's about a 50:50 bet as to whether someone posting such a question ever posts on the forum again.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

It's like going to the motor show, though, isn't it? you look at the Rolls Royce stand not because you'll every buy one, but to dream....if you do ask the price, you know you'll be told that if you need to ask, you can't afford it.

Unfortunately Brexit has dashed a lot of dreams.

I have a flat in the Alps...AirBnB is a convenient marketing platform, but forecasting revenue in a very seasonal tourist location would be very difficult.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I would suggest, to continue your Rolls Royce analogy, that Brexit mostly put a stop to dreams that should have remained dreams. If you have to ask how much to invest to "get by", or meet the minimum requirements, then IMO you shouldn't be playing the game, In other words, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

But if you have the investment capital, and the expertise to run whatever business you're planning, then you can still relocate to pretty much anywhere in Europe, or beyond, most countries will give visas to those with business plans and investments to support themselves and, more importantly, pay taxes on.

Re: French visa nightmare
 

I agree to some extent and it's a point I have made several times. When you start trying to live a dream, it become reality.. Pre-Brexit, the reality test was when you tried to put your plans into action, and if they didn't work, the reality they turned into could be unliveable. Now, the reality test is when the visa officers scrutinise your plan and say Non this will not work. So yes it saves a lot of heartache.

But at the same time I'm very conscious that if the UK hadn't been part of the EU when I made the move, I wouldn't be here. My plans when I moved to France might have got me a profession libérale visa but it would have been a very borderline decision because my earnings weren't high. There were years shortly after I arrived when I made very little money and struggled badly (the financial crash of 2008 wiped out my two main UK clients within a few weeks of each other and I had to basically start from scratch with a different business activity finding a whole new set of clients in France). I would never have managed to keep scraping through residence permit renewals for the first five years. But in the end it worked out for me and I would say the dream came true. It was a modest dream, I never dreamed of being rich or living in a chateau, I just wanted a little place in France with a boulangerie down the road for my croissants every morning, and generally to be immersed in the "French culture". I have it, and I'm happy, 15 years down the line I still get a buzz out of it. I find it sad that people who have the means can easily move to France for the wine and the sunshine and the good quality healthcare, to live in English-speaking communities and keep all that dodgy foreignness at a distance, while for people who love France and are more than willing to work hard and do what it takes to make a life there, it's off the menu. That's the difference that Brexit has made.