As previously mentioned, we fell in love with Josselin. With my decision style, once I find a place that ticks every box, plus feels really great, I tend to make a decision and jump in. So, we did.
Renting or Buying?
Common wisdom re: a move like this is to rent a 90 day short term rental, long enough to qualify for the long stay visa, and keep looking once you arrive. Also, relo experts recommend finding a long term rental for your first house in a new country, which is then easier to leave if you decide you want to be in a different setting, area, or even country.
The French rental market has a host of protections for renters, including the ability to gracefully terminate a lease without much penalty. Because protections skew in favor of the renter, finding and securing a long term rental can be difficult. Retired, self-employed, or expat applicants are all at a significant disadvantage.
Also, France does not use credit scores at all to determine eligibility, instead, rental eligibility is tied to employment verification and salary as well as the use of rental guarantors. A fee-based rental guarantor essentially agrees to pay the tenant’s rent and other charges if the tenant defaults, and guarantor companies do an extremely thorough job of background checking an applicant’s financial and rental history.
Rentals come in a few varieties – unfurnished/unfitted, with an empty kitchen needing all cabinets and appliances; unfurnished/fitted, with the kitchen basics in place; and furnished. ADA accessibility and elevators are not something to take for granted, and even if there is a lift it’s often minuscule.
French landlords are not allowed to ask if you have pets nor technically permitted to discriminate against pet owners – but realistically, they can and do if they are aware of pets, and large dogs as well as multiple pets are in particular disfavor.
Observations on the French Housing Market
The French housing market is much different than the US. There is no multiple listing service nor any easily accessible record of market comps and market data. Most realtors represent the seller, and also represent the buyer because they’re showing and selling items from within their agencies listings. They are, however, willing to execute a buyers agreement or either a flat fee or a percentage of sale, and in that case they will search for and research listings from all area agencies on your behalf, as well as handle all showings, negotiations, and paperwork for you as well.
One additional bonus of the French real estate market is that every house is thoroughly inspected as part of listing, and those diagnostics are available to potential buyers upon request.
A house can take 3 to 4 months to close in France.
- The process begins with a letter of intent (Offre d’Achat) submitted from buyer to seller, and upon acceptance the house is no longer marketed or shown. The letter specifies a deadline two weeks out to complete the offer paperwork.
- At that two week point, the preliminary contract (Compromis de Vente) is executed – ours included about 40pp of contractual paperwork in alternating paragraphs of French and translated English, as well another 100pp or so of all inspection diagnostics as part of the sale documentation.
- Once that is signed, the buyer has a 10 day cooling off period before they have to submit a down payment of 10% of the sale price. After that, things get really quiet as the Notaire works toward the closing date. Note that with the consumer protection emphasis in France, the buyer can pretty much withdraw from the sale at any point until the final sale is signed.
- At close, the remainder of the purchase price and all fees are wired to the Notaire, and the final contract (Acte de Vente) is signed.
In France, allowing the buyer to occupy as a renter before close, or the seller to occupy as a renter after close, are pretty much unheard of. The risks to the property owner are considered to be too great under French consumer protection law.
House Shopping
Because we have pets, a large loud dog and two chaotic cats, we decided that renting was not in our best interest. Housing prices in Brittany are very low by Seattle standards, although it’s important to also note that the housing market is flat and slow. A French home purchase is a place to live, not an investment.
We reached out to an English-speaking realtor (immobiliere) to look at a couple of houses we’d seen online. We weren’t really prepared to buy, but just wanted to get a sense for what French homes are like and what our money would buy.
She was fabulous, even though she had just moved away from the area and was laid up after a bicycling accident. She also endorsed Josselin as a fantastic place for us to be, well-aligned with our interests, and lined us up with a couple of local agents and a few houses to take a look at.
One of the questions we were exploring was whether to live in town or in country. It is generally recommended that expats find a place in town to more easily be part of the local community as well as have easy access to amenities.
We have lived in small towns and large cities, and I personally am very tired of traffic congestion, busyness, crowds, and noise. I have an aunt who lives a couple miles outside of a small town, and I have spent many hours on her back deck watching the neighboring farmer bale hay and naming the birds in the orchard trees. I want that lifestyle!
We looked at one house in town, one house in a very small town, and two houses in the country. I really did not like the shared walls, the bustle and noise, or the traffic of being in town. At the end of the day, we need to do what’s right for us, not follow a generalized recommendation, and we prefer rural.
La Petite Marcherie
The fourth house we saw was a mystery house, not listed yet. (Click above for a photo gallery.) It was perfect for us!!! It is a rural house in a small hamlet, an old building with recent renovation, great inspection results, plenty of room for us and our roommates* Christopher and Gera, a lovely garden, and quiet, peaceful, low-traffic surroundings about 8km out of town. Y’all – it had a glorious solarium. I was sold.
It’s 3 bdrm, 2 1/2 bath, has a full daylight basement with lots of multipurpose space for crafts and hobbies, and is on .4 acres. It’s fully furnished and gloriously colorful. It has a main floor wood stove plus electric radiators, has a fairly decent energy rating and utility cost track record. It’s on city water, septic, propane for cooking, and while there’s fiber to the house, everyone in the area strongly recommends satellite Internet instead. There is not much cell signal in the area. It’s a fantastic dark sky area for Kit’s astrophotography and astronomy pursuits. It’s in a small hamlet of about 8 houses and farms, and is on a low-traffic dead-end road.
We thought about it, talked to our financial people, and the day before the listing would have gone live, we submitted a full price letter of intent, with a request for all furnishings and fittings. The buyer accepted the offer as is.
I. Am. So. Excited. About. This. House!
Our Details
We submitted our Offre d’Achat on August 19, signed our Compromise de Vente on September 3, and are working toward a December 18 close. It was all done remotely, and the Dec 18 close will be done long distance as well.
We are going to sell our Renton house – we’re listing it Nov 1 – because if and when we come back to the US we’d like something quieter and in a less expensive area. (Hello, peninsula!)
Since the French house is fully furnished, we are not shipping a lot of personal goods to France. Still, medieval re-enactors have a lot of stuff that is not readily available in any local retail area. We have arranged to ship two pallets, 43″W x 43″D x 72″H. This is an investment that works out to $27 per cubic foot, which definitely guides minimalist choices! Our shipment will include clothes, re-enactment gear, personal/family memento items with meaning, and hobby stuff. For me, that’s costuming/sewing, metalsmithing, and multimedia art. For Kit, that’s medieval fencing, astrophotography, tactical wargaming, and 3d printing. Doesn’t every couple who moves overseas take a golf case full of swords (plus a medieval crossbow) with them?
Our pallets are being picked up this Thursday, Oct 23, and a U-Haul U-Box of stuff will go out to the kids on Friday, Oct 24. We have a service clearing out the house Monday Oct 27, and then the final house sale countdown begins – carpet replacement, deep clean, staging, photography, etc.
Since the house will no longer be inhabitable at that point, Kit and I (and the pets) are moving out to the Ravencroft Home for Misadventuring Medievalists on Oct 27. We will rent from them for several weeks, and then will leave for Christmas in Wisconsin on Dec 17. Then, we have tickets to France on January 3! Squee!
*Our roommates Christopher and Gera are our medieval re-enactment alter egos – and they have a LOT of stuff and tend to hoard supplies and gear.
**Does anyone want to buy a lovely 2019 Lance 1995 travel trailer?
House Snark 