Frants and Fraves (4)
The winner of The Château Game will be announced very soon, I promise!
I know I have touched on this subject before, but, buying real estate in France is beyond annoying. In the States, you view properties, you find one you like, you put your heads together with your agent, and you write an offer. That written offer is then sent to the agent that represents the home and sellers. They either accept, reject, or counter the offer, just like poker, bet, check, or fold! If the sellers accept and sign off on the offer, a deposit is made, followed by the due diligence time period where the buyers do inspections and make sure that all is in the expected condition. Once the due diligence period is complete and the buyers sign off, funds are deposited into an escrow account. Once the financial train has completed its run, and the escrow company is certain there are no other claims to the property being sold, docs are signed and you are handed the keys. (I do know that the process is slightly different on the East Coast - using lawyers as opposed to an escrow company)
Easy! Done! Home!
I would love to get to the written part of the process in France! It all starts here as a verbal back and forth. Generally speaking there is only one agent involved - the sellers agent - no one represents the buyers needs! Listings are generally not exclusive in France (meaning that your property can be listed by a multitude of agencies), consequently agents/agencies do not want to work with other agents/agencies, heaven forbid they have to split their commissions. We are bucking this system by having our own agent who is representing us in the purchase.
The mystery Château has three owners, siblings, who are, of course, not in complete agreement, but are willing to move forward with the sale at the negotiated price, and we have been assured that all is well and moving forward, albeit at a snails pace.
I will not tell you that we have stopped looking at properties, because that would not be the case, we have a few scheduled just in case our current deal somehow goes south. But assuming that the moving forward gets up and moves forward, we are committed! (and I don’t want to hear - “you should be committed” from anyone! LOL
So for now all I can share is… a lot of Franting, and know that we are counting the votes, so please keep playing the Château Game! I promise the reveal of our new home will come very soon!
