Maintenant, J'habite En Abeilhan: When a Vacation Becomes a Lifestyle

Maintenant, j'habite en Abeilhan

When we decided to buy a house in France, we embarked on a journey that had many more questions than answers. The first was where in France did we want to live? The second was how we would find houses to look at since we lived in California and couldn't spend months in France looking? The third was if we found something, how with limited French and no knowledge of the French legal system, were we actually going to complete a purchase?

We had spent time in Brittany, the Loire Valley, Provence and Languedoc-Rousillion and of course, our favorite city Paris. Our plan was to buy a house or flat now (at least two bedrooms) and spend vacations there for a few years until my husband was ready to retire. Then we would hope to spend several months there at a time. We wanted an area that was popular with tourists so that the first few years we could rent when we were not planning on being there.

Two other considerations were budget and weather. We tend to vacation off-season in the fall, winter and spring. While Paris can be charming in the cold and rain, the countryside isn't. So we rejected Brittany. Our other consideration was budget. We didn't want to spend more than $150,000 total. That condition put Paris, the Loire Valley and Provence outside our consideration.

We planned to spend three weeks house hunting. We limited ourselves to Languedoc-Rousillion and the Dordogne. Using the Internet, we identified several realtors and companies that act as a liaison between foreigners looking to buy and the realtors. One of the advantages of using an intermediary is that they work with several realtors. In France there is no such thing as multiple listings. Each realtor only works the listings that they have.

I wrote to many individual realtors and companies apprising them of our budget and travel plans. Some said our budget was too low for their listings and others said they couldn't make plans so far in advance and to call them when we arrived. Being a bit compulsive, I didn't want to wait until we arrived to set up appointments, I wanted things scheduled so that we could use our time effectively.