Purchase of 'The House with no Name'

I did a little bit of homework before rushing into buying a house in an attempt to have everything vaguely in place – so this week was the time to get everything into action. The first job was to get a surveyor to check out the property for us – the French are always appalled by this idea (as they think that surveyors always find too many things wrong!) but as this house is pretty substantial and has several cracks – not to mention the fact that it relies on a well for water and is not on mains-drainage - we felt that an expert opinion was in order. During the course of my work I had met a very well-qualified bi-lingual surveyor (name available on request) and he agreed to visit the property on our behalf the following week. One problem became apparent when he asked for the address and I realised that the property didn’t have one – no name, no number, just the name of the road, the nearest village, and a postcode which encompassed an entire commune. Luckily our agent agreed to meet the surveyor and guide him to the house on the appointed day, but it made me realise that arranging furniture deliveries, France telecom/EDF visits etc. could prove very difficult in future so we will now have to work out how (and what) to name the property to make life easier for everybody. No doubt it will involve plying the Mayor with drink!

The agent had emailed through copies of all the ‘Expertises’ that had been carried out (like the ill-fated UK Home Information Pack) so I forwarded a copy of these to Mr. M the Surveyor who promptly rang up to make sure that we were talking about the same property – I had originally shown him the website details of the house and he had based his quotation on the amount of rooms listed there, but the ‘Expertises’ mentioned a hallway, bureau, cave, 2 garages and 2 additional attic rooms which, in his opinion, made this a ‘different animal’! We renegotiated the fee and, as it turned out, the poor man ended up spending a solid 8 hours at the property.

The Surveyor’s Report put our minds at rest about several issues – the cracks have been explained, the water & drainage situation appear to be normal (for France!), and even the fact that the Expertises regarding the electrics had, in several rooms, mentioned ‘Danger de Mort’, this was ‘something that they always say’ and is just a question of adding a few earth sockets. So far, so good. And now on to the mortgage....