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Sorry but the FNAIM provides insurance, it isn't just a club, and is probably the largest real estate insurance agency in France.

I do not know where you live, but on the French Riviera commission is nearly always a standard 4% + 19.6% of VAT = 5%. Unless you have a really impossible to sell property you should be negotiating the agency down to this price. You can look at paying an agency as "an excuse for a commission" or as payment for a service but as you say you are not obliged to use them.

I have never heard of anybody using a Notaire as an estate agent, as you are suggesting, and I do not recommend calling Notaires asking them if they have any properties for sale or trying to get them to sell your property. They are solicitors and usually very busy people.

I don't see that fsbo is very advantageous in that it is simply a trade-off between time and money. There is nothing to stop you advertising your property simultaneously via agency and private fsbo web sites. However, Krek, that still leaves them the problem of how to do visits...

Phillip.