As it turns out in our quest for a house, finding the house and getting the money in place was the easy part...
The game really started once we decided to buy the house. Again we were told by a number of people to give up any hopes of living in France since, as Americans, we couldn't live in France and work in Switzerland (part of me still isn't sure if we can). Who do we ask? The seller Mrs. R? 'Oh ja - of course you can - you are American you can do anything you want.' She drives a Jeep and has a John Deere tractor - clearly biased - and she is selling the house. Maybe Vinny the banker could tell us if were legal. 'Like, yeah, it's cool. Why not? Why wouldn't we want your tax money?' Or more like why wouldn't you want our loan business in this market....
Vinny was quite helpful though - he is from the town where we found the house. And his brother still lives there. So he was off to a party in the village and was going to check out the house. He'd make sure it was OK and try to help us with the value. He did come up with a nice value for the house using his little formula provided by the bank.
That lead us to the next question - how much to pay for the house? Vinny gave us a number based on square footage and build-able land. Only about 2/3 of the land has a high value because - the rest is open space that has to be left natural. Or so they say. So we had an idea of what to offer. But OK Vinny, let's look at the comparables. 'Oh we can't do that. The agent does that.' Ok - no agent. What to do? 'Ask the neighbors? The mayor? ' Vinny did a a few strange things with the computer that I can't mention here and we came up with a final number....
Time to make an offer - we haven't quite done this whole house buying without an agent thing before - so clearly I left it up to Aimee. Mrs. R and Aimee work at the same company together so it seemed natural that they meet there. Nothing too serious - coffee in the marble floored, art adorned visitor center. Sounded easy enough. Aimee sat down with Mrs. R and a nice cup of coffee. Aimee then proceeded to tell her that we were offering 10 percent below the asking price. That was pretty much the end of discussions... Mrs. R literally got up and stormed off. That could have been the end. Aimee stopped her and probed a bit more. Then the tears started flowing.
As it turns out Mrs. R had remodeled the house to be her dream house and while Ben was unemployed for a few years (and not contributing towards the mortgage) she had to put up most of her retirement as collateral. So she had quite a bit invested in the house. Hence, her emotional state and inability to lower the price. There was talk of cash outside the deal or something along those lines ..I didn't try to get much clarification on that. After hearing about this fun outburst in the visitor center I was pretty much done with the house...
There was a quiet period. A few weeks went by. A few emails. Not much action.
So we still had to figure out how much the house was really worth. Time to visit the mayor. We were told it was a good idea to talk to the mayor before trying to buy a house in France. So we made an appointment and went with the kids (Seth was ipoded for the meeting). The mayor turns out to be a very kind older man who used to work an international company in Basel - same one as Aimee and Mrs. R. He was quite excited to have a REAL American family moving into town. He loves America - and all things American. Loves Boston. New York is great! He has a few Brits in town now and wasn't sure but thought he might have an American married to a French - but they blend in. We spoke to him for about an hour and tried to have our two major questions answered:
Can we live in France?
How much is the house worth?
Of course we could live in France. No problem there. Why not? You are so nice. You have such a sweet daughter. (Seth was ipoded in the lobby) You would be such a good addition to the town. Please come live here.... That sounded great. Then we probed on the law. The response from the mayor was - 'OH NO - You have to make sure you can live here before you buy the house! Don't buy it without making sure you can live here!' Um. I thought that was why we were all gathered at the town hall at 7PM on a Tuesday. His final response was 'I don't know - you'll have to ask the French government.' OK - thanks for that. I sort of felt like the Powerpuff Girls were going to swoop down and tell the Mayor that there was an urgent problem in Townsville...
Response to question number two: house value. 'Oh we can't talk about that. It is private. But may I ask...how much are you going to pay?' Then we started to get into the details of the property. We asked about what the process would be if we finished off an outbuilding to be a guest area. 'Just declare it for taxes.' What if we add a bit to the back of the house? 'Just declare it for taxes.' How about a pool in the 'natural area' of the yard? 'Just declare it for taxes.' Three ring circus with elephants and a lion? 'Just declare it for taxes.' OK I see where this is going. We started to like the mayor....
It really was a good meeting - we all got along. We got along so well that he decided to tell us that Mrs. R. had been in to visit him quite a few times. And she wasn't happy. And the next door neighbor was with her. And there was a land dispute. Oh no!
So to recap - not sure if we can actually live in France PLUS a land dispute... As nice as the house is and as much as the mayor wanted us in the town I was pretty much at the point of walking away...yet again.
WOW run do not look back is my take, not that you asked for it LOL
Posted by: Neil & Sue OLeary | 29 September 2009 at 22:02