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LIVING IN FRANCE

Mortgages, drinking and Nice: 6 essential articles for life in France

The strict rules on getting a mortgage in France, passport changes that may affect second home-owners, making your French second home your main one, public drinking laws, language tips from the boss, and secret locations in Nice. These are The Local’s must-reads this week.

Published: 14 April 2024 07:47 CEST

A customer buys bread from a bakery in France

A customer buys bread from one of the smallest bakeries in the world, in La Rochelle. (Photo by XAVIER LEOTY / AFP)

France has fairly strict rules for those seeking a mortgage, including tight limits on minimum income and maximum loan length – here’s how it works.

French property: How to get a mortgage in France

No doubt, you have already heard about the EU’s new Entry and Exit System (EES) which is due to come into effect later in 2024 – if you have questions about it, send them to us and we’ll do our best to find the answers.

Tell us: What are your questions about the EES passport control system?

It’s not uncommon for second-home owners to decide that they want to move to France full time and make their life here – but what are the admin steps that you need to take to make this happen?

Explained: How to convert a French second home into your main residence

Public drinking is relatively common in France – you’ll see people sipping wine and beer in public parks and on the banks of rivers – but even so, you might wonder what is technically allowed by the law.

What are the rules for drinking in public in France?

From the pointlessness of ‘je voudrais’ to the absolute requirement of ‘bonjour’ – and a sneaky future tense hack – our editor Emma Pearson explains crucial differences between school French and actual, real, proper, street French…

6 things I wish my French teachers had told me

Nice, on the French Riviera, is one of France’s most-visited cities, but there’s a lot more to it than the beach and the Promenade des Anglais. Author and Nice resident Jeanne Oliver shares some of her favourite off-the-beaten-track spots.

French Riviera: 10 hidden gems in Nice that tourists miss

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How to avoid the latest text message scam in France

A new text message scam is making the rounds in France, according to French radio channel RMC, citing information from the website signal-arnaques.com.

Many people with French phone numbers have reported receiving an SMS allegedly from a delivery person, telling them that the package they were waiting for “did not fit into the mailbox”.

In French, it may read something like “votre colis est trop gros pour votre boîte aux lettres” or “votre colis ne rentrait pas dans la boite aux lettres“.

READ MORE: What to do if you have fallen victim to a scam in France

Then, the recipient is told to click a link that would give them a time slot to pick up the package (“Merci de choisir un créneau via …”)

The fake link appears to take the recipient to a Mondial Relay or other similar looking package pick-up website, and then the user is expected to enter personal information, including banking details, to arrange a new delivery.

The scam is convincing because it’s similar to the genuine messages – it’s common to get a text message telling you that a parcel has been delivered, or if you are not home the company will contact you to arrange another pick-up time or location.

In order to tell whether the message is a scam, you should verify the delivery rules for the company you are using.

For example, if you scheduled the delivery with Mondial Relay, then the package would not be brought to your home (unless you live outside of France) but rather to a specified relay point or self-service locker.

READ MORE: Warning: 6 of the most common scams in France to watch out for

Other companies, like Chronopost, may deliver to your home, but they include send information to show proof of the order, such as the package number and your name within the text message.

Avoiding scams

This is not the only type of text message scam in France. There are several others, and many of them are related to packages or the postal service.

If you have any concerns about the validity of a text message, you can always consult the signal-arnaques.com website, or the French government site Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr.

Do not click the links provided if you have any doubt about the message. A key giveaway is that the scam sites and emails tend to ask users to pay for services that would normally be free on real sites.

Similarly, pay attention to any notice of an anti-virus notification. If the website popped up with a warning that it may be dangerous to click links or that it may contain a virus, then take additional steps to verify its legitimacy before opening.

RMC reported that one person who clicked the link said: “I received an alert message from Safari saying ‘This connection is not private. This website may be trying to pass itself off as consignesinfos.com in order to obtain your personal or financial information'”.

You can also report scams or illegal content on the internet at Pharos, the government’s official portal for reporting illegal internet content.

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