[Bevdeforges]

The problem is the apartments are being offered by many "different" agents...so do you have to pay each separate agency to just SEE one of their listings?

The way this works in is that you can visit the apartment for free, but you owe the agent their fee if you take the apartment. This makes it vitally important that you don't let any agent show you an apartment you've already seen with another agent, because if you take the apartment, you'll owe both agents their fee. (No such thing here as fee splitting.)

The other trick is that you need to make your decision quickly if the place is half way decent. (And have all your credit info readily available and complete.) Nice places are in short supply in many areas and most landlords pretty much have their choice of tenants.

 

[Bevdeforges]

I have about 10 acceptable looking apartments in our price range saved to my Seloger ., some with street locations, all with agent info, no good?

Just be very wary of the pictures posted online or in any other ad type listing. You really need to be on the ground to be able to explore the area a bit, at different hours of the day if possible, etc, etc. Lots of places that look more than acceptable in the ads can have major flaws conveniently out of camera range.

When you say you'll be getting a VLS-TS, I'm assuming this move is retirement related, so a "visiteur" visa, I guess? The VLS-TS only refers to the notion that you'll use the visa in your port as your "residence permit" (titre de séjour) for your first year in . At the end of the year, you renew your titre de séjour and get an actual card - the carte de séjour.

 

[Bevdeforges]

OK, I take it you're planning on moving over there, staying in temporary quarters (the gite or AB&B) while you look for more permanent housing. Different people do those things a bit differently depending on their requirements and intentions. The key thing with the temporary short-term residences is that you should try to find temporary digs where you can receive postal mail (though these days, most stuff comes via email or SMS on your phone). Obviously, the other requirement is Internet connection and/or a French phone number.

Figure on maybe 3 months in your temporary quarters - just in case. Since there are whole bunches of other things you'll need to attend to on arrival - like trying to open a bank (necessary for renting a place and setting up other systems and services), getting a French mobile phone and actually running around with an agent to find a long-term apartment.