I heard of an English couple the other day who have just reduced the price of their house for the third time so desperate are they to sell and return.
The house – honey stone, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a pool and about three acres of ground – sits close to one of the ‘beaux villages de France’ and has been renovated to a high standard.
The wood floors of the drawing room meld into the tiles of the kitchen; bathrooms have top of the range white sanitary ware and outside, two flagged stone terraces are wide enough for some rather stylish entertaining.
The grounds or the ‘parc’ as it is called here have been tended to by a weekly gardener and the familiar random plantings of chestnut, willow trees, fir and mimosa give way to a small orchard of cherry, plum, almond and persimmon.
Nothing disturbs the eye, for the land dips and rises to the distance and in past times I have sat there as a heat haze enveloped the hills in a shimmering haze, listening to the splashes and shrieks from the pool.
Do I detect a touch of lust as you read my words on another grey and drizzly day? A yearning for another life, another place where there truly is time to simply stand and stare?
Well, it can be yours for a mere 200,000 euros and will probably go for 175,000 euros or even slightly under – just over £152,000 at today’s rate.
And no, there isn’t a catch, no nasty surprises to uncover, no crippling annual taxes, no homicidal neighbours or muck spreading farmers.
That is just the way it is and has been for a good ten years or so. Leaving the European Union is just the final nail in the property coffin.
Sure, there are parts of France where prices have held – sort of – and are selling to those who want to establish residency and its guarantees before the cut-off date.
But not that many. The hardest lesson for those who’ve bought, renovated and now want to sell, is that French property is not an investment. Don’t expect to make a killing now even if it seemed a steal at the time.
Just accept that the new bathrooms, new kitchen and even pipework were done for your pleasure not to add value when you come to sell, then there will be no disappointments.
The couple selling the house described have always been fairly realistic on that score but now as derisory offers come in, they have a low-level nausea at what they’re about to do….if lucky.
They’ve realised that to buy somewhere close to at least one of their grown-up children they will be lucky to buy a small one-bedroomed apartment. One can see the despair – not too dramatic a word – etched in their faces on the return from house hunting trips.
They settle back on their terrace and resign themselves, partly pleased, to another summer of long days and short, sweet nights. They cannot imagine themselves back in a flat, their collected treasures sold or given away. They cannot imagine living in a place where the view from the window is of streets and other houses – feel claustrophobic at the mere thought of it.
And as for the two rescue dogs, the cats and the hens – well, they’ll deal with that when they have to; when there is no going back.
Perhaps, like me, you ask ‘But why? Why do you have to leave it all?'
I know the answer before I ask because I’ve heard it so many times. The grandchildren. It is always the wife who itemises all they are missing; the weekly, perhaps daily contact; being there for birthdays and holidays….being needed.
The husband, like many men, frankly has no strong feelings on the matter but over the years of their marriage, he has learned that an unhappy wife makes an unhappy life.
I have two grandchildren, one three and a half, one six months. I have seen the older one three times and the baby not at all. If I were still allowed to fly, I probably would have seen them several times for I love London and any excuse, but there we are. Perhaps I am an unnatural grandmother in that birthdays and presents are not important to me, so I forget.
Unnatural in that the thought of a day spent with a crying baby and a fractious toddler fills me with horror not with yearning. Of course, I like them well enough but I don’t know them so I have no real idea if they’re lovable or not.
Actually, it may surprise you, but I get on rather well with children for I don’t treat them as petted pups to be spoken to in a sing song patronising voice. No, I give them the respect of asking their views and opinions and listen gravelly to their answers and I find they respond to that, as do we all.
I’ve stopped explaining myself to those like this woman who asks: ‘But don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be there to see them growing up?’
By saying no, it seems I shock them. I always do. So now I nod sympathetically and wish them well in their hoped-for new life.
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