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~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

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Category Archives: Property in France

Cider Days

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France, Les Iris, Normandy, Property in France

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

apple trees, apples, autumn, Buying a house in France, calvados, cider, Food, France, Normandy

Autumn is all about apples in Normandy and, by association, cider. Normandy is the only region in France that doesn’t produce wine, but it makes up for it with an amazing array of cider and its more potent cousin, calvados.

We’ve tried much cider and calvados in Normandy. Everyone with a couple of apple trees seems to have a go at brewing. When we were house hunting in the region, no visit was complete without the owner offering a sample of their very own tipple, and we’ve seen more than a few dinner parties off with a bang by introducing their DIY calvados.

Orchard with sheep, Normandy

The nearest cider maker to Les Iris, signposted on the main road to Sainte-Opportune-La-Mare, is excellent. Like champagne, his cider comes in doux, brut and semi-brut.

Cider, Normandy

He also maintains a vigorous vegetable garden, and sometimes sells extra produce alongside the cider. He takes the children into the garden, lets them choose their vegetables, and pulls the selected plants out of the ground, shaking off the rich dark earth. It’s the freshest lettuce and rhubarb in the world.

Vegetable garden, Normandy

In our garden there’s only one very old and gnarled apple tree standing guard by the gate. One of these days it will go: until then, it insists on producing an abundance of large green-red apples that turn brown within seconds of being cut open. Still, we’re delighted to have a token apple tree, and one of these days we might plant another, of the cooking apple variety.

Apple tree, Normandy

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An English Garden in Normandy

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Property in France, Things to do

≈ 3 Comments

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architecture, France, Gardens, Gertrude Jekyll, Les Bois des Moutiers, Lutyens, Normandy, Varengeville

This is a month for visiting gardens. After showers in April and May, Normandy in June is in greenish bloom. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the most famous garden in Normandy. Shortly after, I visited another, less famous but equally wonderful garden–let’s call it the most famous English garden in Normandy.

The house and garden Les Bois Des Moutiers were created from 1898 onwards by the Mallet family, who hired the then young English Arts & Crafts era architect Edwin Lutyens and the wonderfully named and widely influential garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.

Les Bois Des Moutiers

Gertrude Jekyll is famous for creating gardens that feel like series of outside rooms. Each one has its own scheme of colour, scent, and seating.

Les Bois Des Moutiers

Les Bois Des Moutiers

Les Bois des MoutiersBench, Les Bois Des MoutiersLes Bois des Moutiers

Look at this amazing wisteria, trained to grow as a tree. The gardens, with their hedges and bushes and secret paths, create a wonderful natural playground for children.Honeysuckle, Les Bois Des Moutiers

Les Bois des Moutiers

You can hike around the extensive land behind the property, and there are wonderful views. The house can be visited by private appointment only. And should you love it enough, ask about buying it as the family are seeking to sell to the right, suitably considerate, buyer. Price on application only.

Les Bois Des Moutiers, Varengeville, Normandy

The property is situated in the charming Varengeville-sur-Mer, which is south of Dieppe on the Normandy coast and just over an hour, cross-country, from Les Iris.  Hike up the road outside the property to the church at the top for a spectacular view of the sea.

Les Bois Des Moutiers, Varengeville, Normandy

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From Normandy to Isère and Chalet Chic

18 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Les Iris, Property in France

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Chalet, Decoration, France, Home, House in France, Reims, Skiing, thatched cottage, Travel

Over the years we’ve opted for the two-day drive from London to the Alps for our annual ski holiday. It’s probably easier to fly or take the ski train, but with young children and the amount of stuff we like to take, it feels easier and cheaper to drive. Driving necessitates an overnight stay and in the past we stopped in Reims where there’s a surprisingly stylish Best Western with family rooms, excellent champagne to be sampled, and, should you fancy a bit of sightseeing, a magnificent cathedral.

This year we took a new route, staying overnight at Les Iris. This raised a few questions. Driving from Normandy to the Alps was a new route; would it take much longer? And with snow and record-breaking low temperatures in France, would our village, in the Seine Valley, be accessible?

Vieux-Port Garden, Winter

Last year, in the heavy snow around Christmas, the villagers were snowed in for five days. The owner of the one 4×4 that made it up the hill out of the village found himself buying in bulk from the bakery and delivering bread each day to the village’s 60 or so residents. This year, in the event, the local famers had cleared the roads of snow and ice, and the driving was straightforward. Despite -15 degree temperatures outside, the cottage was warm: thatch is a natural insulator, and does a wonderful job of keeping the cottage cosy inside.  The drive to the Alps was marginally longer overall, but it was worth the extra miles to avoid staying in a hotel. The drive from Normandy to the Alps took 9 hours, including a long lunch break and several service station stops.

We skied this year in Vaujany, a lovely village with excellent access to the Alpe d’Huez ski area. While there, we had a chance to explore some beautiful French properties. We stayed in Chez Nous, a self-catering mini-chalet, that’s part of Chalet La Maitreya. From our floor to ceiling windows there were fantastic views along the valley.

Chalet, Vaujany

View from chalet, Le Perrier, Vaujany

And we enjoyed many entertaining evenings with friends at their beautiful home in Vaujany, La Boite Qui Brille. I just love how they have decorated this modern chalet, proving that you can use contemporary colours and materials to build a cosy and welcoming space.

La Boite Qui Brille, Vaujany Chalet

La Boite Qui Brille, Vaujany chalet

Fireplace, La Boite qui Brille, Vaujany chalet

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Five reasons to buy in France

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Property in France

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Buying a house in France, Notaire, Property

Everyone gave us reasons not to buy a house in France. The impenetrable legal system. Totalitarian mayors. Unthinkable plumbing and sewage systems. The Euro! (This last, in retrospect, was probably the best reason). Everyone we knew seemed to have a friend who had had terrible trouble with a property transaction in France. Practical strangers volunteered their (mostly negative) opinions. We had bought and sold homes in London, never in France. London had not been easy. We expected the worst.

In the event, the transaction couldn’t have gone more smoothly. (I have written elsewhere about the bits that were difficult – finding the right house in the first place, and dealing with the French bank.) There are many places where you can read about the legal process of buying a house in France, including FrenchEntrée, Angloinfo and French Connections. Here are some of the books we found helpful:

These are the five top things we most enjoyed about the transaction.

  1. No gazumping! Rather wonderfully, the written purchase offer, the offre d’achat, prevents the seller from showing the house or considering any other offers after yours has been accepted. Having been gazumped (outbid after our offer was accepted) a few times in London, this started things out on a positive footing, for once.
  2. No surveyor! Surveyors feature prominently in London property exchanges, though it remains unclear to me what value they add. The sale price never seems to change, no matter what horrors the surveyor finds in the house you are buying. And there is always something that is not discovered by the surveyor – the boiler, inevitably, breaks down beyond repair the week after you move in. In France, our seller had kept excellent records of all works done on the cottage. He was a retired builder from Paris’s 16th arrondissement, and he had looked after the cottage carefully. Moreover, the French legal system requires the seller to secure independent reports on heating, electrics, asbestos and much more. Those reports were more thorough than anything we had paid a surveyor for in London.
  3. No lawyers! In UK property transactions, every step you take, every move you make is a legal one. The lawyers wrangle over which surveys can be done and which appliances are included in the sale and what will be done on which date. In France, property exchanges are overseen by the notaire, a public official who conducts searches, prepares documents, and collects the taxes. The same notaire acts for both parties. The process is heavily regulated and requires extensive disclosures from the seller, meaning we didn’t need a lawyer to secure the right documentation or set an appropriate timeline.
  4. Meet the notaire! In the UK, completion is purely a legal act, done by fax and email. It is quite possible that you might never meet the seller in the flesh. (They are running away before you discover all those faults the surveyor didn’t spot). In France, the Acte de Vente is an event. The buyer and the seller meet at the notaire’s office. Our notaire was based in a low-slung, modern building near the centre of a market town. The entrance had the feel of a GP’s office, but inside the corridors and offices were lined with traditional glass-fronted mahogany book cases that were stuffed from floor to ceiling with fat, ancient legal texts. The notaire was youngish, very tall, and utterly professional. During the previous weeks he had proven particularly effective at convincing French bank clerks to do their jobs in a timely manner. Intriguingly, there was no sign of a computer in his office. The huge desk which stretched diagonally across the room, leaving the rest of us an odd triangular space in which to arrange ourselves, was entirely covered with untidy stacks of case files. The meeting lasted about an hour. The notaire went through the paperwork section by section, checking that all was in order. Finally we all signed each page of the contract, and by the end my hand ached. And then we all shook hands with each other several times, and the notaire hurried us out and went off to greet his next appointment.
  5. Welcome home! Like sellers in London, estate agents tend to disappear from the scene once the exchange is done. In France, our estate agent – mid fifties, easy-going and athletic, always up for a drink and chat and never even a bit pushy – had made other arrangements. We would all, he announced, go back to the cottage after the completion. And so we did – the estate agent, the seller, as well as the seller’s daughter and granddaughter, a couple from down the street, and the children from next door. We drank champagne which the estate agent had arranged with the seller to chill at the cottage in advance. Boat on Seine, NormandyThere were candies and cakes for our children. Our seller, glass in hand, took us around the house again – showing us every light fixture, where the pipes were situated, how the electrics worked, hidden cupboards he had designed, and we could see how much he loved the cottage and how sad he was to leave. We knew he would be returning to the area for medical check-ups, and we invited him to visit when he did, and knew that he would. And then everyone left, and we walked down to the end of our garden and finished the champagne, watching the boats go past on the Seine.

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Money for Nothing: A French Bank Odyssey

01 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Property in France

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

buying a house, Club Med, French bank account, Property, Relevé d’Identité Bancaire, RIB

Everyone told us that buying a house in France would be hard. For us, buying the house was the easy part. Our seller and the estate agents were a true joy to work with. The hard thing – the thing that nearly scuppered the whole deal  – was our French bank account.

We were warned to get a French bank account even before we found a property. That dealing with French banks was hard. We didn’t believe it could be that hard. For four reasons.

  1. My husband has worked for two of the major French banks
  2. Among my husband’s clients today are all of the major French banks
  3. My husband speaks fluent French
  4. My husband already had a bank account in France

In a past life, my husband did a stint as a G.O., or Gentil Organisateur, at Club Med. This involved a bit of teaching tennis, a bit of acting, a bit of customer service, and a lot of partying by the beach in Corsica.

* Image is representative only

Incredibly, he was paid for this work, and the money went into a French bank account. And stayed there for two decades, while he embarked on his proper, respectable career. Then one day my husband went looking for his account details to help buy a property in France.

As soon as we had our offer on the house accepted, we got in touch with the bank. The account was pre-digital: there was no cheque book, no credit card, and no cash card. And most importantly, no RIB. The RIB, or rélévés d’identité bancaire, is a piece of paper that shows your bank account details and address. To do anything financial in France, you need the RIB. To get a utilities account. To pay the phone bill. To get insurance. To buy a house.

The bank assigned us a Conseillère personelle, or customer advisor. She was polite and well-spoken. She advised that it would be no problem to get an RIB, cheque book and bank card. This was two months before we needed the RIB.

A week later, we had a phone call. Copies of our passports were needed. We promptly had these notarised and sent them on. We also started transferring funds into the account.

Two weeks passed. Nothing arrived in the mail. We phoned, and discovered our conseillère had taken her summer holidays and would be returning two weeks before our deadline. We were assured this would not cause a problem as everything was in order. We went on holiday.

We returned to find a hand-written letter from our conseillère. An apology? No – a request to see our wedding certificate and proof of the source of the funds we had transferred into our French bank account. Just in case we were up to something. No RIB could we issued until it was confirmed we were not terrorists.

We sent off the requested evidence. We started to panic. With only ten working days to go before we closed on the house, we had to transfer funds to the notaire’s account (a sort of escrow account), or we would not be able to close.

Five days passed. And then, joy! The RIB arrived. Now we would be able to transfer funds to the notaire. We phoned our conseillère. But once again, she was on holiday. But it was no problem they told us – she would be back in two days’ time, the day before we were due to close. And no, there was no one else who could, or would, help us.

At this point, two things happened. First, my husband logged a complaint with his contact at the bank. Second, the notaire, nervous about getting his fee, decided to take things into his own hands. He called the bank.

And then everything fell into place. Our funds were transferred. We closed on the house. We still haven’t, however, received a cheque book or a bank card. We wonder whether our conseillère was reprimanded, and is now exacting her revenge. We’re considering changing banks. But could we really go through the pain, again?

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How to Buy a House in Normandy, Online

19 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Les Iris, Property in France

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Buying a house in France, House in France, House in Normandy, Property, real estate

It took us six years to find a house in Normandy. We started visiting the region when our older daughter was almost one. She was learning to speak, and we wanted French to feel as close to native as it could to a child living in London. When we bought Les Iris she was seven, and her sister three.

Why did it take us so long?

There are several reasons. The one I want to dwell on today is the technology of buying a house in France. If you don’t live in France, it’s hard to get excellent information about French property. Even if you speak French fluently as we do (full disclosure: by we, I mean my husband).

I do everything online. And have been, for the last 10 years. I buy food online. I buy clothes online. I buy Christmas online.  I bought my kitchen sink online.

Really. When you have young children and a full-time job, shopping is one of the things that disappears. Fast. Walton Street, Marylebone High Street, Westfield: who has the time? Five minutes in the pharmacy at lunchtime is as close as I get to physical shopping these days. So I went online.

When you shop for a property in London there are wonderful websites like Zoopla and Globrix. You can look at property for sale on a specific street. You can see what properties have been bought recently nearby, and for how much. You can find out the crime rate, and which schools are best. For France it was even more important to have this information before driving up to five hours to see each property.

The information just wasn’t there, or I couldn’t find it. There is detailed historical population and employment data available from INSEE. But I wasn’t able to find information about crime rates, school rankings or property sales. Is this stuff really not out there? Does anyone know? If you do, please let me know.

More than anything, I wanted a website that would let me search by location. I wanted to look at the satellite imagery of the area around a house even before I talked to an agent let alone made the trip to France. I never found a site that did this, exactly. Often agents wouldn’t even share the coordinates of a property so that we could plug them into our satnav.  Many rendevous were arranged in parking lots outside churches and town halls. Perhaps the agents were afraid we would try to cut a direct deal with the owner.

Floor plans were extremely hard to come by. At best, there was a hand-drawn approximation. Pictures on property websites were often partial, hiding the major road behind the hedge, or the electric pylon at the end of the garden, or the old mines under the property that were in danger of caving in at any moment.

Many homes we saw were listed as ‘habitable’. Some of these were in excellent condition. Others had holes in the roof, asbestos in the walls, no heating or no discoverable sewage system.

Things have improved recently. The site where we found our cottage, Green-Acre (formerly ImmoFrance), has gathered traction with estate agents, and today the site lists over 70,000 French properties in all of the major European languages. You can search for property by town or area and sign up for email updates about new properties. CapiFrance.co.uk, which has a network of estate agents working under its brand name, has a portal in both French and English, and has listings from over 300 estate agents.

British-run sites have also worked to fill the gap. Somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 British live in France, depending on whose estimates you believe. Many more are looking for homes in France, and agencies catering to English-speaking buyers abound. We found Domus Abroad and A House in Normandy to be particularly helpful, offering high levels of personal service. Other useful sites were the Sextant French Property Network, Rightmove France, Leggett and La Résidence.

We also did a lot of offline research. We bought property magazines. The French like to own country homes, and Normandy is near enough to Paris that it attracts editorial attention. The magazines Maisons Normandes and Belles Demeures can be picked up in newsagents. There are also property specials in weekly news magazines like Le Point.

Late in the day, we discovered that notaires, as well as estate agents, can hold property listings. Often these will be advertised on a board outside of the notaire’s office, or in the regional trade publications available in the reception of the local notaire’s office.

We got to know local estate agents. We walked around the towns we liked and noted down the names of estate agents, then built up a relationship. In person they were friendly, full of local information, and professional. They’re also a pleasure to work with once you find a house and I’ll write more about that later.

Agents we spoke to included Patrice Besse, a Paris-based agency specialising in castles and manor houses with a significant portfolio in Normandy. This is property porn at its best: very little you can afford, and looking at it will suck hours from your life. There’s even an iphone app. More realistic in our bit of Normandy were Cany immobilier and Le Forestier.

In the end, we did find our property online. Technology caught up with us and one morning there it was, in my inbox. Les Iris.

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