Buying a House in France: Where It All Began
Anyone who has ever bought a house knows that the process is not an easy undertaking. Complications spike when you are buying your first house in France, a country where you are still trying to get your head around the various antiquated administrative processes, speaking a language that you are not totally at ease with, and facing a global pandemic. For the next few posts (it might be 4, 5, 6 or…depending on how many twists and turns we get ourselves into), please join Silviu and me in our house hunt in France.
Home Sweet Orsay
It’s not our first time buying a real estate property in France. We bought our current apartment in 2018, two years after we arrived in France. It’s a 75 m², two-bedroom apartment in the centre of Orsay, a town of less than 17,000 inhabitants, over 20km away southwest of Paris.
The apartment is spacious enough for two, with a balcony encircling it. It’s 10 minutes away from the train station that takes about 50 minutes to get to Paris. Basic conveniences such as the post office, bakeries, hair salons and doctors are just a few steps away. Last but not least, there is a lot of greenery in this area and the apartment is just a stone’s throw away from the woods where we do our trail runs. There’s nothing much to whine about regarding the location.
Why We're Buying a House in France
There are a few reasons why we decided to move into a house, especially only three years after we got our apartment.
A Bigger, Greener Prison
The global Covid-19 pandemic is the key impetus. Like many French, we crave bigger accommodation with some personal green space after having lived a year of complete and partial national lockdowns. In the event of more lockdowns in the future, a bigger and more verdant prison would definitely be more comfortable.
Neighbours from Hell
It’s also because of Covid-19 that we realise that it’s impossible for us to keep sane with the upstairs neighbour that we have. The thin walls and the boisterous, inconsiderate young adult with his regular late parties drove us up the wall during the first two lockdowns in 2020.
We also have a next-door neighbour whom we very rarely see, and we first learned of his existence through the nocturnal commotion that filtered through the thin walls. Every few months, we can hear some screams and shouts in the middle of the night passing through our bedroom walls. Sometimes, this noise comes with a din that sounds like someone moving furniture. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it messes up our sleep.
Last but not least, we have neighbours who
- left a trail of broken eggs along the corridor. If it was an accident, the culprits should have cleaned up the mess. Silviu and I studied the trail pattern of the eggs; it seemed intentional.
- peed in the lift. We suspect it might be one of the several older residents who had a mishap with their bladder. Luckily, it only happened once, but it took a few days before the odeur cleared.
- never close the entrance door (even though there are three small signs on the door, reminding residents to do that).
- are inconsiderate in the usage of recycling bins.
€250 a Month for This?
Another push factor is the extreme frustration that we have experienced with the Managing Agent (the “Syndic”) of our apartment building. We are currently paying monthly management fees of €250, and we believe that the deplorable building management does not justify the monthly fees.
Stuck in the Lift
For instance, it took the Syndic close to six months last year to have the lift fixed. In the first couple of weeks, we saw the Syndic send technicians to repair the lift. But a few days after each visit, we would see the same sign attached to the lift, announcing that the lift was again out of order. So, this situation went on for close to six months before the Syndic resolved it for good. During this period, Silviu and I had to lug our groceries three floors up from the underground parking to our apartment.
During one of these on-off ‘Fixed’ lift episodes, naive Silviu and I thought the lift was finally working and took it to get to the underground parking. We entered the lift, pressed the button, and the lift descended smoothly to the parking level. The door remained closed. Closed.
It was the first time in my life being stuck in a lift. I have spent a great part of my life in Singapore, and then four years in Hong Kong, two cosmopolitan cities where skyscrapers and lifts are ubiquitous. Yet, my first experience of being stuck in a lift happened in a little apartment building in a little town in France. Fortunately, the help button worked and put us straight through to Otis support; assistance arrived in thirty minutes.
The Door That Never Locks
There’s also the perennial issue with the lobby door which doesn’t lock. To enter the building, it used to be that a visitor first needed to enter the compound by passing through the main gate (first line of security—not very secure either as anyone can enter either with the passcode or a security badge), and then buzz his host at the lobby door. For the past two years, anyone can enter the building directly once he gets into the compound—the second line of security is gone.
Silviu tried contacting the Syndic through their online platform by filing a complaint on the malfunctioning lobby door. When Silviu first complained, the Syndic repaired the door within a few days or maybe a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, they fixed it…but only for a few days.
Silviu tried informing them again through the platform. This time round, the Syndic changed the online status of his complaint from “Open” to “Resolved.” Doesn’t “Resolved” mean that they have fixed the issue? We checked the door; the Syndic did not even attempt to fix it. Silviu tried one more time, and history repeated itself. In the end, we just gave up.
Open to Anyone with a Hairpin
Then there’s the problem with the letter boxes. The wooden letter boxes are not well-made and anyone can easily open each letter box with just a few hard tugs of the wooden door or a turn of a hairpin. Oftentimes, we would find the lock of our letter box had been tampered with. We suspect that there are people trying to steal our deliveries.
Nowadays, we do not take the risk of having valuable purchases dropped off in our letter box. We prefer to have our purchases delivered to a nearby safer pickup point such as our supermarket.
The Last Straw
Most of these issues existed before the pandemic. They cropped up from time to time but did not pose glaring problems to us. However, these niggles became unbearable during the first lockdown.
During the lockdown of one-and-a-half months, the upstairs young adult (or rather old teenager), having no venting outlets for his energy, illegally entertained himself with overnight parties. As for the next-door neighbour, the occasional bout of screams was perhaps his way of releasing his lockdown stress.
Prior to the lockdown, Silviu and I spent little time at home during the work week. That might be the reason why we did not pay much attention to the other inconsiderate actions of our neighbours or the Syndic’s incompetent mismanagement. Or, it was more likely that we noticed them but were too lazy or lethargic to complain. However, as we were confined to our four walls and had more time on our hands to scrutinise our environment during the first lockdown, these harmless niggles in our lives became threats to our mental health.
Result: we have to get out of this apartment and move into a house.
House Hunting in France, Mid-Lockdown
The 2020 summer holidays came soon after the end of the first lockdown. We were glad to have regained our freedom and ready to start travelling; our desire to move out slightly cooled down after being released from the apartment. We decided to wait till September 2020 before embarking on the house hunt, especially since the French property market (or rather the whole nation) usually stagnates during the summer holidays.
Our house hunt began in September 2020, the start of the new school year. Before we could actively launch our project, the second lockdown, albeit less strict than the first round, was imposed on us. With our work and the restrictions on physical movements, our search proceeded slowly.