Purchase of 'The House with no Name' - nearly there!

After a ‘quiet’ few weeks where very little seemed to be happening, everything is now back in full flow again and we have a completion date. The old couple who are selling the house to us were having trouble finding a new one to move into and while legally (thanks to the wonderful french system) we could have forced them out on a certain date, even I would have felt a bit mean making a couple of 80 year-olds homeless so we gave them a bit more time and have all now agreed on July 28^th!

Technically this now means that we are ‘homeless’ in France for a few weeks as we have a tenant renting our apartment in Perpignan so I am now back in the UK and trying to sort out the move ‘long-distance’ which is even harder than doing it in person and not to be recommended. The traumas of moving all our personal possessions out of a 5^th floor apartment (with a very tiny lift) and then cramming it all into a Peugeot 206 to transport it all to store it in a room in the new house pale into insignificance compared to dealing with all the relevant ‘services’. EDF were initially quite easy to get hold of but when I told the girl on the phone that I had no idea which of the 4 meters in the communal cupboard on the stairwell related to my apartment she just suggested I turn each of them off in turn. As I was leaving the building I figured it didn’t really matter whether my neighbours hated me for plunging them into darkness so went out to the cupboard and then realised that none of the meters even had ‘off’ switches. I tried again the next day and apart from an initial argument when the man accused me of giving the wrong account number (I later had to admit I thought I was talking to France Telecom!) managed to give all 4 meter readings and we managed to guess which one was mine! France Telecom was a different story – you can ring the customer helpline until you are blue in the face but if they are busy there is no option to ‘hold’ forever, they just tell you to try again another time and hang up on you! I must have tried 20 times with no success. I even tried from the UK on the ‘english-speaking helpline’ (which, naturally is only open from 9-5). During the ‘we are very busy’ speech they do suggest that if you speak good french you could try ringing the french helpline BUT you cannot access it from the UK! Grrrr. I did manage to get through on one occasion and was told that ‘yes, it is easy to cancel your phone-line but you must ring back tomorrow’ which seemed bizarre and when I questioned her further, she admitted that the computer was down! So near and yet so far. I ended up writing them a letter but am probably still paying for the landline even now!

My abiding memory of finally moving out of the apartment was when I dropped into the agent’s office to drop off the last set of keys – there were two girls at the reception desk and as I greeted one with ‘Voici les clefs de mon appartement’ they both burst into song and assured me that there was a famous french song entitled ‘Here are the keys to my apartment’......!

Purchase of 'The House with no Name' - continued

I am still grappling with paperwork and am batting it away whenever it arrives in the inbox or the letterbox by signing, initialling or putting ‘lu et approuve’ (whether I have read or approved it or not). In no particular order, here is the latest update:

1. Mortgage Broker advises that the bank is almost ready to confirm the mortgage offer – but this is subject to the valuation of the property. Am not too concerned about this as we have not asked for a high LTV ratio (Loan to Value) (am so impressed with myself for learning all these new things)!

2. Solicitor – There are 3 (if not more) options for dealing with the legalities of buying a house. The first is for both parties to use the same notaire (who work for the government and are totally impartial), the second is to appoint your own notaire (who then shares the costs with the vendor’s notaire) and the third option is to do either of the first two options but then in addition, use a UK solicitor who is an expert in french law. We are gone for the third option, in that we are ‘sharing’ the notaire recommended by the vendors (as this notaire dealt with the original sale of the house so has all the relevant documents to hand) but also using a UK solicitor (at additional expense) as our intermediary so all the documents & contracts are sent & received via her. Although we understand the language and the purchase system we felt that as this is a major investment we wanted to get all our facts right regarding french inheritance laws, french wills, purchasing ‘en tontine’ etc. When we purchased our appartement in Perpignan four years ago our family Solicitor recommended a colleague who just happened to have lived and worked in France for several years and she helped us by checking through the Contract for us. I rang "Mrs Double-Barrelled" and explained that we were in the process of buying another property and she was delighted to help (and I would be ‘delighted’ too if I could charge fees like that!). It is good to have somebody I can just forward some of the emails/paperwork to without having to worry about it.

3. Rental of our current appartement – As it is a buyer’s market at the moment it is not a good time to sell, so we have decided to rent it out. The agent came round and explained the pros and cons of renting furnished or unfurnished (details available on most websites!) and we have decided to rent it fully-furnished – mainly because our furniture is very modern and I don’t think it will look right in a house in the country, but also because we get a higher rental and the tenancy can be reviewed annually. The agent noticed a crack in some plasterwork on a beam – in fact he couldn’t fail to see it as the beam is currently supported by some bits of rough timber in case the damage gets any worse! I explained that this had happened when the neighbour upstairs had been particularly heavy-handed while laying floor tiles but that I had struggled to find a tradesman to do the job for me (it has actually been like that for 6 months!) He assured me that this was not a problem as his uncle just happened to be an ‘artisan’ and he would get him round to give me a quote! In the meantime he has given me a rental Mandate to fill in – more paperwork, just what I wanted..

4. Accountant – To avoid any comments in the future of ‘why didn’t you do it this way and save yourself unnecessary tax’ (bitter voice of experience here) I decided to just run the whole idea past our UK accountant. While he is the first to admit that he knows nothing about the french way of doing anything, he has coped admirably with finding the right place to put my french income down on my UK tax return. When I explained how the rental of the appartement would fund the mortgage and that everything would run through our French bank account (and therefore we won’t be troubled by vagaries in the exchange rate) he actually couldn’t find anything wrong with the plan! I bet he’s having sleepless nights now trying to find an error!

So, for the moment, that seems to be everything - I can’t believe how many people are involved, how much time it has taken and how much work I have been doing, but I keep looking at the photographs and realise it will be worth the effort.

Give me a mortgage please!

Getting a French mortgage (rather than through a UK bank) for the new French property seemed a sensible option – particularly in view of the fact that while the euro/£1 rate is so bad at the moment, we can keep our eyes on when the rate is more favourable and then perhaps start paying some of it off (when we win the lottery). Having had several discussions with several different mortgage brokers, I had narrowed the choice down to the one who seemed the most patient and understanding of all my questions – so I rang him to confirm that we had found a property, confirmed that we would like to take up ‘Option B’ of the various proposals he had outlined, paid the £200 administration fee and then watched in horror as my inbox filled up with pages and pages of forms to be filled in. I pride myself on my methodical filing system but this was a real challenge and it took an entire weekend (and more) to track down everything they asked for which included: Copies of Passports, Birth Certificates, Wedding Certificate, up-to-date statements of any assets (savings accounts, bonds, stock portfolios etc), current valuation of any properties we own, the last 3 month’s payslips, the last 3 month’s bank statements (to prove that we didn’t have any undisclosed regular debts), a letter from an Employer confirming your status & salary, copies of last tax returns, and, as my husband also has his own business, copies of the last 3 years annual accounts. I was very tempted to send my 10-metre swimming certificate, just in case it might be useful.

The whole thing was a massive task but made me realise why the french banks have not suffered to the same extent as others during the ‘Banking Crisis’ – they do not allow people to get into debt easily.

The feeling of relief was fantastic as I posted/emailed everything and sat back in my by now well-ordered office and waited to see if I had ‘passed the test’. (Sadly not quite as the broker rang back with 3 queries – one was that I needed to photocopy the outside envelope of the payslip (?), another was that a statement said that it was ‘page 1 of 2’ and they needed page 2 (just a list of my loyalty points I believe!) and finally querying a couple of entries on the bank statement). Finally I was assured that all was in place and ready to be sent to France for ‘consideration’. Scary!

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....

I gave in to temptation!

Regular readers (hello to both of you!) may remember that a few blogs ago I mentioned that, despite being a townie, I was beginning to feel tempted by some of the more rural properties I have been viewing. Well, we are now in the process of buying one!

I had asked some of my regular agents to keep an eye out for anything ‘especial’ and a few weeks ago was taken to see a house that I fell in love with. Despite the fact that his visit coincided with the 3-day ‘monsoon’ we experienced in March, my husband also loved it, but (being a typically sensible man) insisted on not rushing into making an offer there and then but to wait a couple of weeks until his next visit and see it again on a sunny day. He also wanted me to check out irritating little details such as whether we could actually afford it! I had an agent out to value our apartment in Perpignan and decided that rather than sell it we would rent it out fully-furnished which seems to make a lot of sense as property prices are very low so it is not a good time to sell. The rental income will pay for a French-mortgage and we will therefore only have to sell one of our two children to be able to afford it!

We went back to the property on a beautiful sunny afternoon and now that there were no clouds or rain obscuring our views of the Pyrenees, the decision was easy. Everybody had smiles on their faces when we said that we would be making an offer – particularly the agent – and he gave us a Proposition d’Achat form for us to fill in with our full names, addresses etc. and the details of our offer. He had asked me to fax it over to him that evening but in the event, was so excited about the deal that he actually came to collect the document personally the next morning, took it to the vendors, rang from their house to negotiate further (they weren’t smiling so much when they saw our offer apparently!), and then came back with their signed acceptance later that afternoon!

So, here we are again at the beginning of a purchase process, which will no doubt run totally smoothly – watch this space!