Its the Law The
French property buying process is closely governed by law, and
commits the seller and buyer at a far earlier stage than in
England. This is a very good thing, as it means you're not
so worried about being gazumped or the seller deciding not to
sell to you after all on a whim. The basic sequence
is that when an offer is accepted, both parties sign the compromise
de vente, (which can contain get out clauses, such as
subject to getting a mortgage) and then there is a seven
day cooling off period during which either party can withdraw
from the agreement without penalty. A deposit is paid at
this time, and after the seven days both parties are committed
to the sale. After all the legal stuff is done, a date is
set for the signing of the Acte de Vente, pay the rest of
the money, everyone involved signs it and the property is
yours. Simple, really. Go in low Le
Vivier was being offered for sale as either three separate lots
or one collective lot. Each of the three lots had a large
building on it with a share of the estimated hectare (2.5 acres)
of land. The asking price for buying them together was
quite a bit cheaper than the sum of the individual prices, but
the estate agent suggested that they would struggle to sell them
as three individual properties, so we should go in with a low
offer if we were interested in buying. So go in low is
what we did, so low in fact that she nearly fell off her
chair. To cut a long story short, we negotiated for nearly
two weeks before we reached an agreeable price, about 20% less
than the asking price. Bargain! Is
it ours yet? It
turned out that when we were told our offer was acceptable, it
was not the vendors that was saying that, it was the agents who
had a minimum acceptable price written down in their notes, so
we were a little worried for the 10 days it took to contact the
vendors that they might change their mind. But they
didn't, and to help speed things up a little, we went back out
to Normandy to meet the agents and vendors, and sign the
compromise de vente. This was then passed around the five,
yes five vendors (they were a family who had inherited a share
each when the father had died) and eventually posted to us in
England. A week of suspense From
the day after the letter arrived we had 7 days to withdraw, but
so too did the vendors. We knew we didn't want to pull
out, and we had no reason to suspect they might want to, but it
was still a little nervy waiting for the 7 days to pass.
It had taken a lot longer to get to this point than we had
expected, we thought it would have been a matter of days, but it
was a month between us making our initial offer in mid April and
receiving the compromise de vente in mid May. Oh
well, we got there eventually. So
now we wait From then on it was a just a
matter of waiting for the notaire, the French solicitor, to do
his work. It seems to be a bit of a secret as to what he
does and how he goes about it. We were told that there was
nothing we could do to find out how things were progressing, all
we could do was wait for the notaire to say he was ready.
In early July we went back to Le Vivier to be present when the
new boundaries were marked out. We didn't have to be
there, but our agent said it would be a good idea as we could
make sure the boundary would be placed where we had been told it
would. We didn't have much input to the process, ...and
wait We waited another month
with no updates, although we phoned our agent on a regular
basis, so we started contacting the notaire direct to see how
things were progressing. He was a difficult person to get
hold of, but eventually we got through, only to find that the
paperwork was almost complete but they had not even applied for
one of the most important pieces of paper we needed before we
could complete. Because we were buying agricultural land
over 1 acre in area, the land had to be first offered to other
farmers connected to the property at the same price as we were
paying. It was really a formality, most of the surrounding
land is owned by the people we were buying from, but procedure
has to be followed, and this procedure normally took two
months! It really should have been started right at the
beginning, but for some reason it wasn't. However, the
vendors agreed to pay extra to have the paperwork processed in
only a month. This was a bit of a setback to us, as we had
hoped to be in by the end of August at the latest, but there was
nothing else we could do now but wait longer.
Finally, while phoning the notaire's assistant yet again to see
if we had a date yet, they suddenly asked what date we wanted to
complete on! Now, was our answer, so we were given 22nd
September, 11am as the completion date. This was confirmed
by our agent the following day, so we packed up and got ready. Time
to pay I paid the balance of the money
using an online international money trading company called xetrade,
which saved me about two thousand pounds on what it would have
cost if I had used my bank in England. Not only do xetrade
only charge 8 pounds to do the transfer, the exchange rate they
give is about 5% better than the rate any bank would give
you. Well worth looking into if you need to transfer money
abroad. It was a bit nerve wracking when I had made the first
payment using xetrade, sending several thousand pounds for the
deposit off into the ether, wondering if it would make it, but
it was fine, so sending the bulk of the money was a little less
worrying at this time. And so to France We
bought a big old trailer on ebay from some guy in Nottingham,
loaded up the bare essentials and caught the overnight LDLines
Portsmouth to Le Havre ferry on 20th September. We camped
at the very well appointed municipal campsite at Flers on
Thursday night, and met up with our agent in Flers on Friday
morning. The signing was at our notaires office in
Domfront and took about an hour to complete. It was fairly
informal, most of the vendors were there, the notaire read
through the Acte de Vente and our agent translated, then
we all signed on the dotted line. I'd had a brief scare on
Thursday evening when I found out the money hadn't arrived yet,
but apparently the bank held on to it until the end of business
and it was there first thing Friday morning. What a
relief! The money I had sent was a little short of the
total required, they don't tell you the exact amount until the
day of the signing, but I was only 130 euros short so I paid in
cash at the meeting. All sorted and the property was
ours. Time to celebrate After a quick lunch
back in Flers, our agent took us to the CIC banck and helped us
open an account. The manager was easy going and spoke
fairly good English, and we soon each had a French bank
account. Continued in Moving
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