Yesterday afternoon, Mrs L and I signed away our French home to its new owner. we hope she will enjoy it as much as we have.
The last couple of days were not good ones, unfortunately. EDF, despite assurances, had not reconnected the electricity. This was cut off following a dispute over an estimated bill. Disputing bills in France has somewhat different outcomes to disputing them in the UK as we discovered. Eventually, we paid the disputed bill in order to get the power reconnected and they refunded us almost the exact amount – and we had to pay to have the cheque converted from euros. Except, of course, nearly twelve months on, it hasn’t been reconnected. I don’t think we did well out of that deal.
The other problem was that the house having been empty for nearly two years, the water pipes had suffered. Two of the flexible hoses in the bathroom had deteriorated, gushing water when we switched it on at the mains. As we were only there briefly and I had no tools with me, a simple fix became impossible. The new owner is unfazed – as I said, it’s a simple enough fix.
So, we took all our personal belongings, said our goodbyes to the neighbours and parted company with our French dream. A dream that in the last couple of years had become a nightmare. It still didn’t make it any easier leaving for the final time, though. The memories of nine years hung heavy as I closed the shutters for that last time.
Despite the difficult times, despite the wicked extortions (and didn’t they rip out their final pound of flesh in the final accounting) indulged in by Barclays France, despite a solicitor that seemed more on their side than ours and despite the misery of trying to cope with intransigent demands for money that we just didn’t have, a little piece of my heart will forever remain in that little corner of southern France.
Au revoir.
I understand your ambivalent feelings Longrider. We signed our french house away in April, having never actually reached the stage of moving there. The intention was to renovate it to get it nice and comfy until we were retired and were able to downsize here and spend long periods there. So we did all the work and had some great working holidays over 5 years but then economics, health and family concerns made it increasingly difficult, until we realised a move there would be impractical. It’s nice to be free of the financial and maintenance worries but I miss the place like mad sometimes.
Incidentally EDF were fine but SFR (broadband and phone) were a nightmare to deal with and wouldn’t stop their ‘prelevement automatique’ – their only customer contact is a call centre, which of course in in french on a quick connect number for subscribers and useless for people in the UK whose french is crap. Every other approach generates a letter or email reply telling you to phone the customer call centre. Fortunately the bank were helpful and stamped on it for us.
Ambivalent is right. I am glad to be finally rid of the French bureaucracy – the cartels that exist among the authorities and big business to the detriment of the individual, but I miss the place terribly. Like you several years’ worth of working holidays improving it were an investment that will now benefit someone else.
Having decided to start a new life in France in the last years of the last century and then pursued that decision to the extent that apart from a small private pension I have nothing to do with the U.K. means I have learnt how to deal with French beauracracy; at the moment under Hollande life is about to become more expensive for several reasons, the least because he is a socialist, but where I live has an attraction too strong for anything the U.K. could ever offer to return, in France one has to learn how to duck and dive just like anywhere else.
I always hoped you’d be able to hold on to it LR.
Sorry you had to let it go.
Once Barclays France foreclosed it became an inevitability. Unlike the UK banks, the French ones are vindictive and unforgiving. Telling them before the problem becomes default that you have lost your job is merely an invitation for them to foreclose. They are not interested in solutions only repossession and auctioning the property – and there is always someone in the know looking for a quick investment. The whole thing is corrupt. The bank wouldn’t speak to us directly – only through a solicitor who wouldn’t speak to us either. So we had to hire a solicitor just to speak to the bank. The whole thing is a cartel with them all making work for each other at the expense of the poor sod who just lost his job.