Tweedpipe

After having your offer accepted I imagine you must be jumping for joy, or at least your better half is........

TimFountain

You should ask here what she calls herself before passing judgement....

Tweedpipe

Just to wind you up a bit.....
Our French-born, anglo-French son, during one of my many overseas assignments, was excited when I announced that we'd decided he would live in the UK with Mme TP for approx a year. When I returned a year later and asked how he enjoyed things, his very first reply was, "It was great, all the kids called me The Frog! That was brilliant" And with a wicked smile he added, "They'd never seen a frog play cricket before!"
We then moved back to France for a short period, and in his new French school (after being asked where he'd come from with his newly practised accent) he was immediately given the nickname Ze Rosbif, which he took to very proudly! In fact the way he accepted it - with humour, more than likely increased his popularity. I can't vouch for it, but knowing him he may well have told his new French friends that he enjoyed his morning plate of baked beans with plenty of garlic.......

Jack_Russells4ever

France is not the only place in the EU with worthless Eastate agents. For a moment I thought this thread was about Estate agents here in Hungary. Totally worthless, Never return emails, never return voice mails and seldom can be found at their offices. 6 years ago when I was in the market for a property here in Hungary trying to find a property was a nightmare. I finally found an agent that wanted to sell a property and found the property I purchased. Subsequently I learned from the Hungarian neighbours that their experiences are just a bad. Customer service is a joke here.

TimFountain

Just a quick update. The acte de vente has just been signed and we now own our slice of France. We did find a very proactive and helpful RE agent for this sale.

As a sidenote, I am discovering the joys of a landlocked piece of agricultural land. Backstory - we made an offer to buy the 5.5 acres of meadow that was for sale, behind the property, mainly to preserve the very pleasing view. Turns out that the original access to the field was lost when an old peoples home was built a few houses down from ours. The marie at the time brokered a deal to allow access across another field to the meadow, which was signed by the meadow owner and the owner of the small field through which access was granted. This was all done more that 30 years ago. Fast forward to today, and the owner of the small field has passed away and the son of the owner has managed to get the land use of that 1 acre field changed from agricultural to buildable and is trying to sell the 1 acre plot. He is refusing to acknowledge the right of way his mother signed. I understand his viewpoint, but it looks like this will go to court for a judge to decide, as land rights-of-way that have been enjoyed for more than 30 years appear to carry a lot more weight in terms of enforcement. We'll see. We have told the owner of the 1 acre plot that we would be willing to buy the plot, but not this year as funds are tight. It's a mess and the owner of the 5.5 acre meadow is very PO'd with the son.

Listen Very Carefully

Well best of luck taking a case to court in France is all I can say...

TimFountain

It isn't me who will be going to court. It's the owner of the meadow, who is very PO'd that their sale has been harpooned by the owner of the other field. The Marie fully supports the original access agreement and will speak for the meadow seller. I'm just watching from the sidelines!

TimFountain

Quick update. We are here for a few weeks. We came for a 'vacation' and to prepare for the move. A vacation would be a stretch, as the previous owners had lived in the house for 55 years and had apparently never thrown anything away. My French family understands that viewpoint, for me it's been challenging... The previous owners had supposedly cleaned up, but in reality, I've already moved 7 transit van loads of rubbish to the Déchèterie, and there's 3-4 more transit van loads to go. Days of sweeping, vacuuming massive spider webs encrusted in dust and just cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning.... And we haven't even started on the garden. But the house and village are all that we had hoped for, and my local family has been a huge help.

Annetje

Lovely pictures !
I hope you will enjoy your new life !
Just a tip : If people leave stuff in the house, just ring a charity company and they will come and take it away.
That's what I did and they took everything, including very old looking paint.

Also ; 7 transit vans loads is more than all my belongings together ... And another 3-4 to go ... Did you buy a castle ?

philat98

What do those charity companies do with the stuff? I wish we had those in Italy.

Annetje

Some of it they clean / repair and sell on I believe and some of it goes in the skip

And now I remember the name : Emmaus ...
Here is their website in French I'm afraid.

https://emmaus-france.org/


Edit to add : they also ship usable stuff out to countries in need so, before going to the dechetterie, always consider if it might be useful for someone else.

TimFountain

Not a castle, but there are a lot of outbuildings... I'm pretty sure no one wants old offcuts of wood, broken chairs, old cans of paint, children's outside playscapes (broken) and lots or dust, sawdust etc. etc. Just junk!

White Trash

The outlook from the back of the house is magic. No matter what sort of day you have had, sitting down with a glass of whatever floats your boat, and seeing that view will put the world to rights.


I was born in Portland, a long time ago.