ACTUALLY BUYING A HOUSE IN FRANCE

    I apologize once again to visitors to this space for my failure to maintain this journal with greater dedication. Oh, what a relief retirement will bring.

   You’ll remember that Cathey and I had already visited the Languedoc and inspected a few properties. We’d been pre-approved for a mortgage. We were THAT close.

  Well, that’s not quite true.

   I came to realize that Cathey wasn’t as ready as I was. It took her a while to digest what she’d seen, heard and felt. Not too long, but a while. I suppose that even after over 30 years of marriage, it was a bit much to expect that we would arrive at such a life-changing decision simultaneously and with the same intensity. Eventually, though, as we talked to each other, as we read about expatriate life, as we began corresponding with expats in France and elsewhere, Cathey’s enthusiasm came to match my own. There’s a lesson in that. Don’t run away with yourself when a partner is involved. Make certain that your partner embraces the same dream as you.  

   We returned to the Languedoc in the fall of 2004. Again, we stayed for a portion of our visit in the Hotel Residence in Nissan-lez-Enserune and then moved on to the Chambres du Canal in Capestang. Again, we were welcomed warmly and made comfortable by our hosts, Mr. and Mme. Sans and Simon and Julia Wollen respectively. Again, we had made appointments through a property advisor with several real estate agents.

   And again, we spent several disappointing days wasting time and energy seeing properties that just were not suitable…not even close. We weren’t about to be talked into purchasing a property priced above our means and we weren’t about to purchase a property that didn’t meet our requirements. But after three days, we began to wonder.

   As we were making our way back to our hotel, in the car of a stylishly handsome young man named Charles, the representative of real estate agent Freddy Rueda, Charles received a call from Freddy. The deal for a house that might meet our requirements had just fallen through.

   Would we care to view it?

   Why not?

   The village we entered was clearly not a tourist destination – not on the coast or in the mountains, not on a river or the Canal du Midi. Cazouls les Beziers is quite simply a typical, small, working-class French village. Typically surrounded by vineyards. Typically built on a slight hill with the church, town hall and village square at about the highest point. Typical. Just what we were looking for. But what of the house?

   Around the corner from the square, tucked behind a rather large structure that has clearly undergone a series of incarnations but is now a sort of senior center, where a narrow street narrows down to a narrow alley that discourages through traffic, sits the little village house that we now call Le Coeur de Cazouls. It grabbed us from the start with its light mustard-colored façade and bright blue front door, garage door and window frames. We loved the tile floors, the light-filled rooms – a pleasant surprise compared to the many dreary dens we’d visited that were apparently the norm for this type of close-in accommodation.

   We did our best to hide our enthusiasm when we were quoted the price…115,000 euros.

   It seems that the house was the long-time summer home of a family from the north of France, only opened during the lengthy summer vacations. With the children grown and with families and interests of their own, the house was being sold for what the owners considered an appropriate, if modest profit – perhaps 20% below its true market value. We were not about to argue. We did dicker a bit, though. Would the family consider throwing in the furnishings? We settled on a package deal…118,500 furnished, complete with dishes, silver and linens.

   Here’s where we began making mistakes, small ones as it turned out, but mistakes nonetheless. They could have led to disaster.

   We should have gone to the town hall to ask about the history of the property. We should have hired our own inspection company to look through the property prior to purchase and we should have found a more demonstrably conscientious notaire, the attorney who was supposed to be a neutral party ensuring that everything about the deal was kosher.

   You see, when a property has been determined to have had termites, it must be registered in the town hall. Ours had been registered more than 10 years previously. This is less of a deal then it might seem. In a warm, humid climate such as that of the Languedoc, houses in town centers that mark their age by the century are more likely than not to have had termites at some time in their history. The point is that, by requiring registration when infestations are discovered, your neighbors can be assured that matters are being taken care of appropriately. Uncontrolled, an infestation can spread from one house to the next like wildfire. In fact, at the time that it was registered, our house had been properly fumigated, structural damage had been relatively minor but well repaired and no hint of further infestation has come to light in the intervening years.

   I bring this up because we were not informed that our house had been registered, either by Freddy or by the company that was hired to do the pre-sale inspection. That brings into question the neutrality with which the notaire performed his duties. But let’s not single out Freddy. Let’s just say that you must do your due diligence and that includes the ‘should haves’ that I’ve outlined above. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.” So if your real estate agent tells you, for instance, that you will have no trouble getting a permit to open up your roof to build a terrace, check with the powers that be. And while you’re doing that, ask about termites.

   As I read this over, it occurs to me that prospective renters might be scared off by all this talk of termites and damage. Well, the truth is what the truth is. But know that Cathey is the type that attracts every biting bug in the neighborhood and she sleeps tight at night in Le Coeur. Unless your psyche is sensitive to the ghosts of bugs that have been dead for over a decade, you need not fear.