Sud de France 4.3.2: 10 Tips for House Hunting French Style

Part 2: Driving Miz Crazy

There is nothing more exciting than speeding down a one lane country road while your driver is talking and looking you in the back seat. It’s the fun part of looking for houses with estate agents--realtors. They know the roads and love being out in the French vineyards and sunshine. And since they want to show you several houses in an hour or so, they go as fast as they can between them. 

It adds a touch of danger to house hunting that you won’t find anywhere else.

So if the itch hits you, here are some more tipsfor finding a house in the South of France.

Tip 6. Negotiation. The asking price of a house is usually negotiable but estate agents don’t like lower prices because they cut into their fees. In France as elsewhere owners think their homes are worth more than they are asking for anyway but you need to bargain. The current recession means there’s a surplus of houses and not too many (or any) buyers. It is truly a buyer’s market.

Looks good but it the whole top floor of a house.

Tip 7. Notaire Fees. On top of the price of the home you the buyer has to pay for a “notaire” or a notary to do the paperwork; title searches etc… The notaries represent the French state and not either party in arranging the sale. The work of the notaire takes about two months. It’s all paperwork and grind slowly indeed. The notaire’s fee varies (it’s about 7-9% of the selling price) but it will adds thousands of Euros to the cost of the house. 

Often when buying directly from a seller an under the table payment is negotiated to reduce their taxes and your notaire fee. For example, if the asking price is 175,000 Euros the seller might take 150,000 officially and you’ll give them a separate check for 25,000.

How did this big bed get to the 3rd floor?.

Curiously some notaries will leave the room once the officials papers are signed to "go out for a smoke’.' But it is really so that the extra check can be passed between buyer and seller in private.

Tip 8. Furniture Issues. When buying a village house consider negotiating with the owner to have them include the furniture in the deal. When you see a big bed in a third floor bedroom you have to wonder how it got up very narrow circular stairway. Owners are often happy to avoid having to remove things by including them in the sale.

Tip 9. The Crazy Brits. There are a lot of homes around the South of France that were bought by British people in the last decade or so. They’ve remodeled them and many are now on the market. You can tell a Brit’s home the second you walk into it. They have cut every corner possible and have create a little British village house in the middle of France. Paisley and floral wallpaper (to remove), faux ”oriental” features (to trash) and all sorts of strange tinkering (see photo). The Brits also favor small electric “hobs” with convection no oven to actual stoves.

No stairway to heaven it's the attic access.

My favorite corner cutter is the jet toilet. An ugly, water saving toilet that sounds like a jet plane taking off each time you use it.

Buying a home from a Brit add 10% for the work you’ll need to do to make it a tolerable place to live.

Tip 10. Size Matters. We all grew up on movies like the Three Musketeers with sword fights up and down huge staircases. Well those were Hollywood sets. Rooms in real castles are tiny and a village house can be really very small. When you’re looking for a house in France you need to scale back your size expectations. Our 3 bedroom house in Washington State had 2000 square feet (200+ sq. meters) of living space and was as one realtor put it “kinda small.”  Now that we’ve been in France we are excited when we find  a place with 1100 sq.ft.(120 sq.meters) of living space.

No room for the 3 musketeer fights.

But when you find that place in the village of your choice you’ll find that life takes on a whole different dimension. And after all that’s why you go through the whole exercise in the first place.

Sud de France 2.6 : It’s raining, it’s pouring, it’s time to go to the HyperU.

There are 300 days of sunshine a year in the Herault but today and yesterday were not among them.

It has been raining since early yesterday morning and it washed out our plans to go to the big antiques fair in Pezenas. It is the universe telling us to slow down I guess. But there is something we can do today we can go to the HyperU.

Pronounced Ee-Par-Oe (as in shoe) it is France’s version of a super Target or Wal-Mart except that it is more a cultural adventure than a shopping opportunity.

First of all before you go shopping you have to remember to take along your own grocery bags. There are no plastic bags to be had in any French supermarket, seriously and for certain, none. You don’t have a choice between plastic or paper cause there aren't either. If you haven’t brought your own grocery bag then everything you buy is piled up loose on the counter after the cashier scans it and you just have to figure out how to carry it out. Some folks stick their noses in the air and say “who cares?” They put everything back into their carts and go out to their cars where they throw all the loose items into their trunks.

The shopping carts are different here too. They are chained together outside the store and you have to put an Euro into a slot to release one. The Euro then rides around the store in the cart’s slot with you. When you are done with the cart you stick the chain back into the opposite side of the coin slot and it returns your Euro. I suppose this reduces cart theft but who knows?

They sell a lot of wine at the HyperU at prices that break your heart. for example we’ve found an exquisite "Fitou" red that sells for 2.99 € or $4 USD. Then there's the Chateauneuf de Pape that sells for under $10 USD or half its price in the US. And none of these wines have been shaken and bounced about in the hold of ship for four weeks either. This is happy wine, calm wine.

The HyperU understands French culture and so it has created a sort of  Farmer’s market in each of its stores. Although they sell lots of packaged products and meats in Styrofoam containers like American supermarkets, they’ve kept real people working too. They have actual butchers and fishmongers, and real bakers and a real cheese market.

But big treat in a French supermarket is the other shoppers. Here in Clermont the people we live amongst are delightful. For example, roll down an aisle and if a couple of old folks are chatting and blocking the aisle, eveyone just waits. When the old people notice the blockage they quickly move aside saying “oh pardon, pardon, je suis desole” (I am so sorry) and smile a warm smile that says that everything is alright with the world. No one gets upset.

People come to the market dressed. No sweats here. No flipflops. A lot of style and some real flash is on display. In the market kids are on their best behavior too. That means double doses of sweetness. And I have yet to see a French mother lose her temper with a child. Usually they laugh at misbehavior and say something to the child like, “You really don’t want to be like that.”

The checkout lines are mind boggling to an American. So far on almost every check-out line I’ve been on the credit card readers have gone out. Cashiers will bang on them and jiggle their wires and if all else fails unplug them and switch them with a reader from a closed checkout lane. This is the old French strategy of moving problems along rather than spending lots of time solving them.

And all the while, during the breakdown, the people on line remain calm. No one’s cursing or scooping up their stuff in annoyance to find another line. More often than not, they'll begin to pass the time by having existential debates about the meaning of card reader breakdowns and whether the card readers add to the alienation of the shopper.

But no one gets upset. Once I was on a line and the card reader died. Within  minutes the guy behind me starts singing to pass the time. He’s doing his entire repetoire of old Charles Trenet tunes. Everyone is smiling.

Then the other day on a checkout line I handed the cashier my money and when she hit the button to open the cash drawer, nothing happened. She shook the drawer, hit the button, tried to pry it open with her fingernails, but the lid stayed shut. A few customers offered suggestions but the drawer was sealed.
So she called a supervisor over for help. The supervisor pushed some keys. and she tugged at the drawer. She even used her official supervisor keys on the cashier’s computer but nothing worked.

Finally the supervisor pushed the cashier back and staring intently at the cash drawer took a long swing of her arm and came down hard on the lid with her fist.

The crowd gasped.

The drawer made a little popping sound and the lid sprang open. Smiles broke out all around. The supervisor straightened her jacket and brushed off her skirt and walked away to the general approval of the crowd.

For her it was just another day at the HyperU. 

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 2.5: When the Google fails where are the cops when you need them?

We had planned to turn ourselves into the police today. 

According to our long stay visas within a week of arriving we are supposed to check in with the local Prefecture of Police.  

Naturally we go online to find it and when we Google “Prefecture” we get the web page for the Sous-Prefecture in Beziers. There’s a little Google map on the page to help find them and I zoom out to look for landmarks in Beziers.

To my surprise as the map takes in more area, I discover that the arrow is stuck in the town of Montblanc some twenty miles from Bezeiers. Okay I think, perhaps it is part of the metro area of Beziers just as parts of Long Island are part of metro NY. 

But I'm unsure of this so I go to Google Earth which finds the address again in Montblanc. Well if you can’t trust the Google and Mama Google Earth who can you trust? 

So Diane puts on her high-profile intimidate-the-locals suit and grabs her corporate lawyer attaché case full of papers and we head out to meet the cops.

The drive is uneventful. We roll through the hills of the Herault and reach  Montblanc a typical southern French town that has grown as a retirement community with loads of small newish townhouses. 

As directed by Google we turn off the D-18 make a right on the Rue de la Paix and a left onto the Avenue Edouard Herriot. But after passing by a block or two of residences it’s clear that the Google has steered us wrong. 

When all else fails in France you go to the nearest Mayor’s Office and beg for help. Every town has a mayor and every mayor has the kind of power that a Boss Tweed or Mayor Daley could have only dreamed about. Want to put a terrace on your home get the mayor’s okay and it’s a done deal. Want a house? Ask the mayor.

But things are not going well today and as we open the door to the Mayor’s office and the doormat gets caught and is dragged along until it jams the door halfway open. We push at it but it won’t budge. 

Sacre bleu! The Americans are destroying City Hall. A secretary sees us and shrugs. She comes out and gives the door a hard rap, freeing it. She passes me with a grim face and I try to be invisible. This is probably a really bad moment to ask where the Prefecture is—but we do it anyway. 

"Where is the office of the Prefecture?" The secretary looks at us as though we are morons from space who have landed on the wrong planet. 

"What Prefecture? “She asks and Diane explains that we have a slip of paper from the Consulate in San Francisco that says we have to see the police when we arrive in France. She hands the secretary the wrinkled 1x5 inch strip of paper that was slipped into our passports by the Consulate. 

It is a sorry looking piece of paper that looks like it was hastily cut out of a larger piece of paper and it hardly looks official.

If anything it resembles an amateur's ransom note. 

And even worse it is written in English. The Consulate sent a note in English and not French. 

The secretary looks at it and puts it down as though it is covered with dog poop. Her expression says “What is wrong with you people?”

Score another point for the morons.

She shakes her head, goes to her computer and prints out a map--a Google map--with a large red arrow pointing to a spot in the middle of the city of Beziers.

“La,” she says, “C’est la.” It is there.

I look at the map and notice that the scale is so big that the arrow covers most of the city of Beziers and the tip of the arrow is pointing to a blank white space.The Google has struck again.

But we smile, we thank her a million times and gently ease ourselves out the door making sure not to get it stuck again.

Back in the car we get on the road and I’m feeling like an outlaw--like Bonnie and Clyde, like enough is enough.

If the cops want us badly enough let them stop hiding from us. Come out in the open "flics" and find us. Otherwise we won’t can't find you. 

Maybe we will go to our very own Mayor and throw ourselves on her mercy.
Ça va?

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 2.2: Villeneuvette

In France you don’t have to find things to do, things find you. 

Driving down a local road we saw a sign for a restaurant we had been told about. Turning into the little road the sign pointed to, we came upon the town of Villeneuvette--a walled village from the 15^th century or earlier. And in the middle of the town was a wool weavers fair. 

A serious wool weaving fair with weavers dressed in wool clothing that was rural French couture well before the reign of Louis XIV. There was a wool spinning exhibition and people were selling everything from wool toys to wool pillows. And they had a table for a hands-on kids wool class, complete with background music performed by an accordion player. Or maybe the accordion player was with the wine bar? I wasn’t sure but a good, though weird time was being had by all.

The other interesting thing about Villeneuvette is that it is a better example of community redevelopment than anything I’ve seen in the states. No Main Street Projects or Civic improvement group. The town was falling apart for years and the final blow was the loss of their water due to some changes in the water level due to expanded demand from the bigger towns.

So the folks got together and went back to their roots to pull the town together. First they got the water system repaired by pressuring the regional government and then they turned to their past for their future.

Villeneuvette had been a textile town for centuries. It was known for the quality of their products. So the town used its skill in making fabric to become a ‘crafts village.’ The restaurant anchors the town and draws people to it and then there are several small shops selling fabric and other things and there is a crafts gallery.

Okay it’s a gorgeous setting. The town is surrounded by vineyards and it really looks like a village out of the 16^th century. Well that doesn’t hurt but it’s the pride of the people that got to me. They call it a renaissance and that’s true.

All in all that was a pretty good discovery to make on a lazy Sunday when we weren’t even looking for anything to do.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer