Remote working in Meribel

A snowHead

Hi all,
I’m remote working in the U.K. at the minute and looking to move the home office for the winter. I’m thinking somewhere like Meribel because of the size of the ski area. It’d be hard to get tired of doing the same runs there! There’s also other activities like a 25m pool too.
Just had a couple of quick questions if anyone can help please:
- What’s the best website to find more long term flat rentals? I’ve tried Airbnb and HomeAway, but the owners are saying short term only when I contact them.
- Is the broadband pretty fast and stable? I‘d be be using MS Teams a lot.
- Is there good remote working or season working community there?
I think that’s it, but will post if I can think of anymore.
Cheers!

A snowHead

give AMS rentals a try, most of their flats are higher end and have broadband.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Sdutch, Have a look around the forum -- there have two or three similar threads in the past couple of weeks...

Oh -- and Welcome

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I'd echo @BobInCH re the Verbier Satellites. Out block of owners has already had a couple of enquiries from the managing Immobilier asking whether anyone is interested in a season rental. There's usually one of these in any season but this is early and usually, the enquiry comes to an individual apartment owner, rather than a broadcast.

Traditionally, the rate here would probably be about CHF 10-11'000 (£8,700-£9,500) for a seasonal rental, - that would be from early December through to the end of the ski season after Easter. This'd be for a 68m² 2 Bed apartment, central heating+Hot water incl., 25MBps wired Broadband and cable TV incl UK channels. plus underground parking. But no one is being forthcoming on the rates - and discounts - being demanded from potential clients this year. This is for the La Tzoumaz Satellite and for continuous, exclusive use i.e. no 'owner's weeks' when you'd have to decamp.

As a tip, consider what an apartment rental owner needs to accrue in order to 'wash their face' re underlying costs. For the above, that would be about CHF 6'500 (£5,600) which is about six weeks rental. But with the agency cut, that goes up to more like 8-10 weeks rental. The logic being that if you can better the rentals from the 'guaranteed' 6 school holiday weeks then it will become cost-effective to take up a season rental.

Two factors are unknown, of course. First (in your favour as a client) is that the 'guaranteed' weeks aren't at all guaranteed in a Covid crisis. Conversely, as has happened over the summer, a lot of local Swiss/French may opt to staycation ski and take up the slack (or some of it) lost from bookings from Germany, UK and Benelux.

My other piece of advice is to choose a location where there's something other than just skiing within easy drive, just for a bit of variety and for Weekends when the place is drenched in school holiday visitors and/or you just want a change of scenery. Oh, and as mentioned elsewhere, double-check that there aren't too many major group excursions planned for your candidate destination: we 'lost' a week this year to the 400 French Medical Students who descended on the place in what is usually a very quiet, off-peak week.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Just be aware around tax implications of working abroad if you're a PAYE UK tax payer working for a UK company. Worth speaking to your company about it if that is the situation.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

I was wondering 'How would anyone know?' - this when I recalled we had an employee who commuted to/from Sydney (sic) for 9 months before he was found out. Obvs not every day, but he was 'shuttling' between the two after hooking up with an Australian girl who couldn't move to the UK. He got away with it for so long because a. his UK location was fairly remote, b. there were still phases where he could come into work next day if something came up unexpectedly c. it was a tech company that embraced WFH early on and d. he left his mobile on and in the UK then picked-up messages remotely.

In practical terms (as opposed to legality and tax), I suppose a major problem is that you can't leave the UK without having your passport scanned. So the Home Office knows you're not in the country any more, even if you Eurotunnel and drive, and your passport isn't scanned by the French/Swiss. I wonder if we'll see a Channel migrant reversal? People from the UK trying to get across to France without their passport being recorded at Eurotunnel/Ferry ....... although they'd then have the problem of getting back: I assume that if you're scanned by GB Immigration at Calais Eurotunnel/Ports and there's no record of your having left the UK, someone is going to want an explanation ...

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

If you do manage to spoof the systems to let you work offshore unnoticed, you could take the next logical step :

https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/16/developer_oursources_job_china/

snow reports

We did a season in Brides les Bains and rented through Live the Season. Brides has a 30ish min commute on the bubble to Meribel but you get a lot more for your money and the living is a lot easier.

I’m not sure I could live that near to temptation AND actually work but if you can make the most of it!

You know it makes sense.

Many thanks for all the pointers everyone!

From the reading I've done on HMRC, I should be fine for a few months. Brexit might be an issue, but there's a few months' grace with the French government on that too from what I've seen.

Appreciate the AMS rentals recommend, @skimottaret. Just looking at that now!

Cheers @LaForet, I'd not thought of it from the landlord's perspective. Definitely makes more sense for them to do the season rather than the pay monthly type situation I'm after.

Thanks too for the tip on Brides les Bains @Wi11iam! I'd not considered it because of the distance from the slopes, but the bubble lift sounds ideal. I'll see what flats are available.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@Sdutch, We're looking at Brides Les Bains too for the same reasons......I'll be wfh and like the idea of a short 'commute' on days off to the slopes and possibly during flextime. We're booking with Live the Season but also looked at https://www.seloger.com/ and https://www.leboncoin.fr/ both of which have private apartments advertised. Also worth looking at this group on Facebook - Property for sale or rent in Les 3 Vallees - a number of apartments in Meribel / Bozel and others - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1243498865782377.

Do let us know if you end up in Brides - always good to have people to potentially ski with sometimes Smile

A snowHead

Just because a place in France says it has broadband don’t assume it’ll be fast enough for videoconferencing without checking first. The download speed might be ok, but you could end up with under 1mb/s upload which will have whoever you’re talking to moaning about it. A 4G hotspot might be faster in some places.

A snowHead

In my experience broadband in France is much better than broadband in the UK. In the mountains, if you have you're own dedicated line, which you will do by the sounds of it, you can still expect speeds that match, or likely exceed, London.

My girlfriend lived 5 minute's walk from the gherkin until 2018 and fibre only became available the year she moved out at a speed of about 40mbps. Now in Nice our home line gets 200mbps - more than my office in London used to get. In Courchevel we were getting 60mbps down and 5mbps up (no fibre but something called VDSL2). You'll be fine.

Help!!

Remote working in Meribel

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