Somebody asked me how do you find a good Building Company to help in the construction of a House. After a bit os searching, I have just found some information on a site that might help my readers, if you are looking for a builder to build your dream house. Its a French Organisation that helps people find a good builder and offers good advice. the site is at : http://aamoi.chez.tiscali.fr/
AAMOI is the name of the organisation. It stands for l’Association d’Aide aux Maîtres de l’Ouvrage Individuel. This very roughly translates to: The Association for Aiding people Managing private building projects. Or, in everyday language, helping the person who has hired the builders. They provide a lot of useful basic advice on how to avoid problems. They also provide a very inexpensive service to help you resolve issues (including legal assistance). I’m just getting to know them so I can’t tell you much more, but if anyone knows of them, perhaps you can provide reply to this post with more information. They have tons of information and a Forum. Unfortunately the site is only in French, so you will likely need some basic French (or have a friend who does) to get started.
The association was originally formed by 30 families that got ripped off by builders, so their culture seems to be to help other people avoid this. One of the most interesting pages on their site is: http://aamoi.chez.tiscali.fr/le-top.htm This page gives their opinion on major builders throughout France (the good, the bad and the ugly). Each builder is colour coded (green for best, black for worst, with yellow and red in-between).
Hope this is of some help.
What an excellent idea and one I will remember for the future should I decide to renovate a property in france again. I truly wish that I had had this type of help renovating my french property. The project at times has nearly broken me but finally I am nearly finished. I have had problems with nearly half of the artisans and at times have decided to fire them and do the work myself.