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| Welcome... | On the site...... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sunny July in the UK - I
wish! Flaming July is here, and the school holiday season approaches fast.
More and more people are leaving booking holidays until much later, and
who can blame them! There are many last minute bargains around - have you
booked your holiday yet? Check-out the ever increasing large range of
French property on our sites for a GREAT holiday.
So let us get the plug for our site out of the way... A big request: We need articles for this newsletter!! |
We came across a great
French language site called
Bonjour.org.uk. It is great fun - well designed & constructed.
Great use of mouse-overs, good exercises and even speaks the language! It
has sister sites for Spanish and German. We have put together a language
page on the site. Listing some other useful French language sites, and
resources.
Click here We welcome suggestions for other useful web sites related to France, property, travel, etc. |
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| Feature Article.... FROM BOHEMIAN TO BOURGEOIS | Can you help? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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My
husband and I live on a lovely former farm in the Dordogne called "Pegrillou",
where we have been letting cottages, writing & lecturing for the last 14
years, joined by our youngest son who has set up a computer business
near by. He now has a French girlfriend. After all this time of
"alternative living", we began to take stock of our lives and consider
the future. My husband, who is ten years older than me is finding it
increasingly irksome to maintain a large property with cottages that are
shuttered up for more than nine months a year. It isn't just the
gardening and DIY, it's the taxes and insurance too! Letting the
cottages has got easier over the years : I only correspond by email now,
but cleaning & laundry seems to be ever more exhausting. I have to
admit that neither of us is any good at DIY, while housework has never
been my forte. So here's a message for all would-be gite owners : if
you have to pay others to work for you, expect to pay a minimum of £10
per hour, even for cleaning & gardening, and expect to need more than 4
hours per change-over even for a SMALL cottage. (This is why I don't
accept one-week bookings and make linen hire an optional extra.)
Once we had taken the decision to "retire" and put our property on the
market, my husband and I were struck by panic : what if a genuine buyer
came along suddenly and wanted us to move out within a few months? So
we started house-hunting ourselves. We didn't want to leave the area as
we love it here and have made so many friends in the area. With our son
just down the road, we wanted to stay in the Riberac region. But we
didn't want to be letting gites again this time, or doing so much
gardening. Then, although our present "domaine" is not isolated, it is
certainly secluded. Next house, we decided, should be in a village.
Within a couple of weeks of beginning our search we found a potentially
marvellous village house in a historic village about 10 minutes drive
away. It was built in 1849 and has hardly changed since then, so has
retained most of its period features. There are 8 large rooms on two
floors plus attics & cellars and a jungle of a garden disappearing into
the valley, and there is EVERYTHING to do to it! We signed our "compromis
de vente" and paid our deposit on 22 Feb & the house was finally ours on
3 May. In between were the various stages that have to be gone
through. Firstly, 7 days "for reflection" during which either party may
back out. Then a wait for the statutory surveys of infestation and lead
- paid for by the seller, the lead examination being particularly
expensive. Of course there was plenty of lead in the old paintwork, but
this is just for information, and has no consequence. Woodworm ditto.
Had there been termites we would have had the choice of pulling out &
getting our deposit back, negotiating a reduction & getting the
treatment done ourselves, or having the seller do it before we went any
further. A certificate of non-infestation is only valid for 3 months so
we have not yet got Pegrillou tested. The time for that will be 7 days
after a "compromis" has been signed!
In
the UK, the time between having our offer accepted and completion would
not have been one in which I could have got a great deal done. This
being "La France Profonde", as the Parisians say, I was allowed the keys
and free access to tame the jungle, get craftsmen in for estimates, get
some essential repairs (notably a slipped tile) done, etc. Not only had
the house been uninhabited for over a decade but it was full of junk.
Having established that the owners didn't want any of it, I managed to
give some of it away to Emmaus and paid the equivalent of £200 to get
the rest carted away, most of it being in the huge attic and cellars.
The craftsmen are all, of course, VERY BUSY. ("Débordé is the usual
expression.) Luckily, one excellent firm who had worked for us already
was able to take on the plumbing, re-wiring and central heating; ditto a
team of plasterer/decorators and another of builders. The real problem
was finding an affordable carpenter who could start before the great
summer break. As most of you will know, EVERYTHING stops for the "mois
d'aout". Craftsmen are unwilling to take on much during July because
they won't be able to get it done before August begins, and they can't
do much in September because they know they'll have a backlog from July
. . . So effectively, unless your work begins in June you'll be lucky to
get much done before October. In our case a decent start has been made
during the early summer by most of the craftsmen. Walls have been
bashed through, paper stripped & paintwork rubbed down. The shutters
are being restored (in some cases re-made) and the electrician has
channelled much of his electric cables ready for the plasterer . . .
It's a jig-saw puzzle of a project.
My
husband wanted me to take on an architect, but that would have added 10%
plus VAT, so I'm doing my own supervision to save money. Some people
will tell you that an architect can negotiate cheaper prices so that the
final project may not cost more. Maybe. How is one to tell?
Now we are starting to sell our farmhouse, but will we get the
restoration & decoration done in time? Inevitably we'll run out of
money before we get there. For those who have not yet embarked on the
French adventure, but are still dreaming of it back in England, doing
up an old house round here is so rewarding. The traditional
craftsmen are quite used to working with good stone, marble, clay tiles,
oak floorboards, etc. Then the prices here would make Londoners drool :
I managed to buy the house for £80,000 and am hoping to make it lovely
for another £100,000. In case you're interested, our Farmhouse, two
cottages, great barn and walled swimming pool are going for £320,000!
Living here is a dream - most people who come never want to leave.
Houses are mostly beautiful and still affordable. The markets are a
riot of colour and bounty : no wonder there are so many painters and
writers living in the area. There are 500 castles and 500 ancient
churches in the Dordogne, and hotels & restaurants and even nursing
homes are such good value. My mother chose to spend her last two years
in one. And while I'm thinking about the morbid side of life, you can
get an operation done when you like and have a private room in a
hospital for next to nothing. Also the trains are cheap and
usually punctual. I bet you don't believe me, but if you check it out
you'll find it's all quite true. Perhaps that's why there are so many
English people here.
If
you'd like to see some pictures check out our website :
www.riberac.com / gites rural
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We received this email -
and we do not know the answer! But we are sure somebody out there can help
- please send replies to
" I have some
friends who have been restoring a farmhouse in France for some years and
are now ready to move out there permanently. Anybody have the answers? Hopefully we will publish these next month! Also next month
Feature
article Advert DVD to CD
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| New Properties | Contact Information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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For
Sale
- New Feature Properties: more details and photos on
www.1st-for-french-property.co.uk
Dordogne Pegrillou, Nr Riberac: Gites complex: Property includes 3 houses plus 2 barns and swimming pool. More details
Normandy Large modern detached property in 4,000 m2 of landscaped gardens, situated in a rural village 10 km from the coast. More details Nord-Picardy Large renovated farmhouse situated in the Crequoise valley. More details Midi-Pyrenees Plus...classified adverts for properties in Paris, Brittany and Normandy. For Rental - New Feature Properties: more details and photos on www.gites-in-france.co.uk
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