| Home shopping French style They wanted to be more than just tourists on their frequent visits to the City of Lights, so they decided to buy an apartment. What ensued was an eye-opening venture into a foreign world of real estate. |
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PARIS — Who hasn’t lingered in front of a real estate window while on a trip far from home, just wondering? We certainly did when we moved to Paris, especially when we found out how hard it was to find an apartment to rent in the “city of lights.” It was a great time to be in France then. The Internet economy was booming; the dollar-to-franc exchange rate was in our favor and getting better. Yet that was January 2000. But fast forward. The ensuing bubble burst, and the uncertainty that followed was played out in our lives. Somehow we managed to hang on and now six years later, we are settled in Belgium and able to plan longer than six months out. Our trips to Paris — three hours away — then became filled with familiarity and friends and ended on a bittersweet note as we returned at the end of the day to a cramped hotel room. Our thoughts turned again to buying that apartment here. It wasn’t such a crazy thought. After all, according to the National Association of Realtors, 40 percent of the homes sold in the United States in 2005 were second homes, either used as investments or for vacations. Why couldn’t we have a home away from home, a Paris pied a terre? But just how do you go about buying an apartment in Paris? We had heard that it was difficult and expensive. There is no Multiple Listing Service as in the United States, where with just a few pieces of information fed into the computer, you can see hundreds of properties for sale. Instead, what each agency window front has posted up is what they have in stock to show you. And there are usually three or four agencies within a tenth of a mile radius from each other proudly displaying their 20 or so listings, sometimes fewer. You would have to stop by each individual boutique to find your dream apartment. And once you have found your apartment, there is more to pay than just the negotiated price. There is a notary’s fee, building maintenance fee, transfer file fee, and so on, that can come out to an additional 10 percent of the cost. If you want it all translated in English, there is a price for that, too. The English-speaking property finders will do all this for you for about 2 percent of the purchase price in addition to introducing you to a bank that will lend you 80 percent of the cost, not including the notary’s fee. As the French usually buy with a minimum of 40 percent down, this is a generous offer. If this is not enough to deter you from buying there are inheritance and succession issues to consider as the current French rules favor passing assets from fathers to children, bypassing the wife/mother altogether. Writing the purchase agreement with the right structure will warrant a visit to an English-speaking lawyer versed in French inheritance law and who will charge you his inherited French lawyer rates. We took all this into consideration and as we were based in Brussels, decided to seek out an English-speaking property finding agency to help us with the property search. The more we looked into them, the more they sounded suspiciously like normal Americans who had bought their own apartment and now were turning around and helping fellow Anglophones intimidated by the foreign language and unfamiliar process. In some cases, these folks did not speak French all that well. We found this out while interviewing prospective agents. One had the phrase, “Je ne parle pas français?” or “I don’t speak French” down pat. Another couldn’t understand that the waiter was asking him which wine he preferred after ordering the house red, “Bordeaux ou Brouilly?” Silence. I decided to try apartment hunting out for a week on my own. How hard could it be if people speaking less French were able to discover and secure a purchase? I started by walking around the neighborhoods we wanted to buy in and talking to a couple of agents. We also checked into another resource available, a weekly publication that lists properties for sale by owners. What we saw was that in the five years since we had lived in Paris, real estate had appreciated 20 percent per year. Unfortunately for us, it meant what we could afford got smaller and smaller and we were only looking for a modest one-bedroom apartment. Even more unfortunate were the apartments that were available. Some of the listings I saw could be described in one word: ambitious. I quickly learned that “masarde” means slanted. This means that part of the square footage they listed existed under a slanted part of the structure, usually the roof of a typical Parisian building or split into two levels. My husband is 6 feet 4 inches tall, so quaint, slanted structures are not an option. When I finally found an apartment with the total square footage on one floor level and straight walls, I excitedly showed a friend claiming, “This is the best one I’ve seen so far! Do you like?” She kindly replied, “If this is the best that you can afford, then go for it.” When I showed my husband, he left, not only with a bang to his head from the low beams but feeling depressed and thinking, “Is this all?” In my excitement, I chose to overlook the partial partitions that divided the small, rectangular space into three “rooms,” and that it was located on the ground floor of a dark courtyard where the other tenants had to pass through the terrace to get from one building to the next. Then there was the nicely renovated apartment that didn’t have an elevator. In the typical Hausmanian style apartments (the nicely sculpted buildings from the early 20th century) the ceilings are at least 10 feet high, so about 20 steps between floors. The listing said it was on the fourth floor with a balcony, which is built standard on the second and fifth floors of these buildings. When we questioned the owners about it, they said they had the official paperwork that clearly denotes the location of the apartment on the fourth floor. They had counted the floors from the where the concierge (building manager) was located, but you had to walk up one flight of stairs to get there. Taking into consideration the different way the French and Americans count floors, this would be a sixth-floor apartment to people from the United States. I couldn’t imagine anyone in my family willing to make that trek with their luggage, nor would many prospective American renters. By the end of the week, wiser to the real-estate market, we saw the few remaining apartments left on our list. We almost canceled one appointment but were too intrigued by the description of a “balconette” and walking distance to the Champs de Mars. This apartment was for sale by owner. The difference between dealing with an agent and an owner is that with an agent, there are certain degrees of professionalism and guarantees. With owners there are no guarantees, legally or otherwise, until contracts are signed in front of an official. This particular owner, an animated, older woman, seemed very excited to show us the apartment and talked animatedly about racial equality. She told us that she was the one who would be deciding who the buyers would be and that she was looking for buyers who were quiet and correct. She seemed happy that we were a mixed-race couple. The apartment was in a nice building from the 1930s but in need of a total renovation. The seller had inherited it and the previous owner actually had not lived in it until his last days. It seemed there had been no maintenance done to the property since it was built, meaning lead pipes for plumbing, frail electrical wire, and cracked windows. Despite its unchanged state, it was the best apartment we had seen for the price. We wanted a second opinion and our French cousin came through for us by confirming, yes, it was expensive for the state it’s in but a good value for the location. Ah, location. This apartment was in the 15th arrondissement — Paris is divided into areas named this — but on the border of the chic 7th. It also was near the Champs de Mars, the field at the base of the Eiffel Tower. From the balcony, you could see the top of the tower. And one great benefit, aside from paying the lower taxes from being a “middle-class” arrondissement, was looking out the window and seeing the fancy 7th arrondissement properties, whereas they look out theirs and see the less ornate buildings of the 15th. We could have found a more questionable arrondissement where we could have gotten a bigger apartment in the $450,000 range — $1 million apartments are not uncommon — but a less sure return for the money. This was it. My cousin’s husband decided to help us make the offer. This took on a weird dimension in French etiquette. He started talking about shared acquaintances with people the owner had mentioned in our earlier conversation. Lots of flowery, complimentary words and finally the proffered deal. The owner, excited that we had wanted to make the offer, gave her response in kind. “Yes, monsieur, I’m 98 percent sure it will be you. Because look at you,” pointing with open palms raised towards my husband. “And look at you,” pointing to my cousin’s son who is Eurasian. “I’ve always brought my children up to respect every one of all races. If all parents did this it would be a much better world.” Then, “I have to confirm with my husband. I will let you know by 1 p.m. tomorrow.” We waited 24 hours, unable to leave Paris or in my husband’s case, unable to sleep as 98 percent certainty wasn’t enough. The next afternoon came, and there was no call. We decide to call her, and when she finally answered, she was not able to give us a reply and seemed quite agitated. “I’m waiting for my husband to come back. I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning.” My husband at this point couldn’t wait any longer so asked her outright, “Do you have an answer, because I couldn’t sleep.” “I’m sorry monsieur,” she said. “I will call you tomorrow.” Click. All our hopes were deflated. Then a few minutes later, I received a call on my cell phone, it was the owner asking to speak to our French cousin’s husband. We sat around him, our breath caught in our throats, hoping that it would not escalate into a bidding war. The owner was touched that we wanted the apartment so much, but being a first-time seller was unsure of how to handle some delicate technical matters. Our cousin’s husband, savvy in French negotiation tactics, assuaged her concerns and was able to bring the negotiations back into our favor. We quickly met that afternoon with some written guarantees signed by first-time sellers and first-time buyers, none of it technically legally binding but at least a first step in trust and agreement toward a final transaction. Driving back to Brussels that evening we still didn’t understand what had transpired, if we had actually bought an apartment, or even if this mysterious woman actually owned the apartment. But three weeks later, everything was made legal in front of a notary. Our adventure in property owning in France was only beginning. Next week: Patty Truong and her husband bought the apartment. What did they have to go through to renovate it so someone could stay there? |
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