The property-hunting puzzle every expat faces
The property-hunting puzzle every expat faces
Looking for a real estate agent? What about a property finder instead?
You’ve already spent entire evenings scrolling property portals, visited three places that looked nothing like their photos, and you’re starting to realise something: in this whole process, nobody is actually working for you.
That’s exactly the problem a property finder solves.
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Listing agent, buyer’s agent: who’s actually working for whom?
A « classic » real estate agent — the one you call after seeing a listing — works for the seller. The seller pays them, the seller’s property is what they need to sell, and so the seller’s interest is what they defend first, even while remaining professional and honest. Nothing wrong with that — it’s simply how the role is structured.
A property finder flips the mandate: you hire them, and it’s your interest they defend, from the first search criteria all the way to signing.
What few people realise is that these two roles aren’t always strictly separate. A listing agent can absolutely become your finder, on a one-off basis — provided you know how to explain precisely what you’re looking for. This is a true story, lived by the founder of Pros4Expats during a move to the Lyon area in France: a simple deal with an agent — « find me a house, in your agency or anywhere else » — followed by several « blank » viewings to fine-tune her taste. A few months later, she sends her agent a photo of a house she spotted on another agency’s website. Immediate reply: « I know this one well, we sold it to the current owners… but it’s no longer for sale, this listing shouldn’t even be online anymore. » The owners, caught up in their own relocation search, had pulled the property off the market — but the other agency had not removed the photo from its site. The agent contacted the owners she knew well directly. The purchase went through, with an extended possession-handover clause to give the sellers time to find their own new home, which they did fairly quickly this time. Coincidences like that only happen when someone genuinely knows the market — and knows you.
The specialised property finder goes further still: this is their full-time trade, not a one-off favour. Over the years they build a network of direct contacts with dozens of listing agents. The result: they often get access to properties that aren’t publicly listed yet — a seller quietly testing the market before paying for an ad, for instance. The finder picks up on this before anyone else does. The finder can even contact listing agents who can, in turn, look for new opportunites.
And here’s the argument that should win over any listing agent reluctant to collaborate: a finder who brings you a serious buyer is a potential sale without having had to chase it yourself. 50% of a commission always beats 100% of nothing.
Floor area and land registry: a trap that changes shape from country to country
Two topics come up again and again and deserve close attention before signing anything:
Declared surface areas don’t always tell the truth. It’s not unusual for the declared land area to be smaller than reality, simply because a smaller area means lower local taxes, year after year. This gap needs to be identified and resolved before the deed of sale, not after.
Every country calculates things differently, and it often catches newcomers off guard. In Portugal, for instance, terraces — even open ones — count towards a property’s « habitable » floor area, unlike in France, where this generally isn’t the case. It’s also worth checking how basement space is calculated, and whether it’s included in the advertised total. A listed floor area only means something once you know exactly what it covers locally — which is exactly the kind of detail we break down country by country.
The land registry deserves its own check too, especially if an extension is ever on the cards: is the remaining buildable potential real, or has it already been used up by a previous extension, declared or not?
The bonus tip almost nobody thinks to give
Visit a property twice, on a weekday and on a weekend. A noisy neighbour, a factory that seems dormant but fires back up on Monday morning, a kennel that only comes alive on Saturdays: none of this shows up on a single Tuesday-afternoon viewing.
And if you can, favour a winter viewing over a summer one. Trees in full leaf can hide a view of a road, a building, or a neighbour that won’t become obvious until autumn — well after signing.
Finder or not, the same precautions still apply
One last word of caution, and it applies just as much to a finder as to a listing agent: working for you doesn’t automatically make a finder more thorough on the legal and tax checks. They also want the sale to close — that’s how they get paid, the same 50% commission mentioned earlier. Nothing in their mandate guarantees they’ll dig deeper than a classic agent unless you explicitly ask them to.
These precautions are never skipped on the assumption that « they work for me, so they’ll check properly. » They apply the same way, whichever professional you’re working with.
123 PROFESSIONS IN OUR DIRECTORY… IF YOURS ISN’T THERE, IT MUST BE A RARE BIRD.
FIND THE PRO YOU’RE LOOKING FOR – IT’ FREE!
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