Finding the One!
As we were not quite successful with the online ads, my wife walked into some agencies about a week before we went on vacations to the French Alps.
In one of the agencies, she found a flat that she thought we’d definitely wanted to see. She told the agent that we’d like to visit that apartment and we want to visit it as soon as possible.
The agent was hesitating. It turned out that the next day he’s going on vacation and he’d be back only by the time we would be already hiking in the mountains. We didn’t want to wait two weeks and to risk that the apartment would be sold by that time, so my wife and the agent agreed that the next day one of his colleagues would call her to agree on an immediate visit.
Suffice to say, that call was never made.
Laziness? Ignorance? Jealousy on commissions? Who knows…
There was an agency right next to our residence. We used to stare at its shop windows and dream about apartments, but this time it was for real. Lilla went in and asked about a few apartments.
Lo and behold, the agent not just answered a few questions and set up some visits but that evening he sent us the files of even more apartments that he considered interesting for us.
Before we started our quest to find our new home I would have thought that’s the bare minimum, but he was the first and the last agent who did that!
The apartment I just wrote about was among the freshly proposed ones. We had two other visits already fixed, but one was more his choice than ours, though we didn’t mind when he originally proposed it.
But things changed. We decided to cancel that visit. He really insisted, he insisted too much in fact. Even though he was the only agent thinking about what we might like, I didn’t appreciate his style, I was even considering to cancel all the other visits with him, but my wife convinced me to calm down.
Finally, we convinced our agent that we don’t want to waste anyone’s time and we prefer to visit the ones we really wanted to see but if we don’t want to make an offer afterwards, we’d visit the one he insisted on.
The first residence we saw was very well located, in our favourite area between Antibes and Juan-les-Pins. Not far from Antibes city centre and not far from the beaches of Juan either, still in a really calm street.
The flat had a nice potential, it seemed really easy to cut off a third bedroom from the salon. But unfortunately, it had some serious flaws. It was on the ground floor, that we already knew, of course. The kitchen was small and in fact, there was no place in it for a properly sized fridge. One that is sized not much bigger than a hotel’s minibar is a big no-no for a family of almost four. I know, I know. First world issues. After all, we are living in that part of the world.
It also had a door to the garden which was common — I mean the garden, not the door luckily -, but they claimed that the patio was privately used. Exactly the kind of unpapered conditions that we don’t like at all.
So we were soon ready to leave and to visit the other apartment in La Fontonne, the most Eastern neighbourhood of Antibes. This was the one that the other agency was lazy to show us. In order not to take a forbidden left turn at an abandoned crossroads, our agent took a much longer path and we were following his scooter. I didn’t even know where we were by the time we arrived. I didn’t realize how close we were to the centre of the neighbourhood and in the end, to the beach.
The visit was kind of strange. There were two agents, one from another agency who we didn’t see before. Neither of them tried to sell the apartment for us, they didn’t try to convince us, they didn’t try to do anything in fact. They let us look around, walk around and answered questions if we had some. In the meanwhile, they were chit-chatting if they were neighbours. We found out later on that the agent we hadn’t met before and the seller were actually living in the same building.
In short, we liked the apartment pretty much.
Its layout was a bit curvy and all the rooms and the kitchen opened to one nice big terrace. The bedrooms and the corridor were not in the best shape, especially the wallpapers in the corridor and understandingly in the kids’ room, but the living room and kitchen were really nice. We even liked the colours of the kitchen, especially that green and white checked tiles on the wall.
It also had a private parking place and a cellar. But the cellar is not its only place where we foresaw to hide all my wife’s our clothes. On the corridor connecting the bedrooms with tha salon, there are two big built-in closets. For the sellers, one of them hid a desk with an old-style workstation including the screen plus a clothes dryer.
Its terrace was among the biggest ones of those we had been seen so far and it’s definitely the most pleasant one with its wooden tiles and artificial grass. Its width and a lot of access to it plus its sunshades make it very usable and comfortable.
As the flat was an the first floor, the view was not something miraculous, but one could see the sea. Luckily the apartment was not advertised with a “sea view”. I didn’t even notice it this first time. On the other hand, my daughter recognized the playground on the other side of the road the first time she went to the terrace.
What is very important the second bedroom was big enough to serve for two kids!
We also liked that there was a dedicated hall. In our previous flat, we entered directly to the kitchen without a real place to get off your coat and shoes, after this entrance seemed welcoming.
The apartment was not in perfect conditions after all, but it was ready to welcome a new family without any significant works needed. It had everything we needed for the coming few years and its price was just in our budget.
After taking a walk around the residence, we decided to make an offer and fixed the appointment for the next day.
If you are an experienced real estate investor or just an enthusiastic amateur, you might already see that we sailed ourselves into a bad position. We liked the apartment. We haven’t seen any other that we liked even just nearly as much. In other words, we were afraid of losing this chance and anyway, we were convinced that the apartment’s price was quite realistic and it had been on the market for only about a week.
Our offer was only 7 percent below the asking price. As I said we were afraid of offering less. I think this can be a huge difference between buying a place to live and buying for investment. At least I verified the prices in the neighbourhood and the price per square meter is still quite good.
We were about to leave on vacations in a couple of days. We agreed with the agent that if a counteroffer is needed, we don’t have to go to the agency to make it, but we can just sign a paper on our own and send a photo of it via email.
Not surprisingly we had to make that counteroffer, the sellers were willing to go down only by 2.5%. Not a great news, but it was still more than nothing and we were happy that we found our new home. We still are.
A few days after we came back from the mountains we signed a pre-contract, a so-called “compromis” in French. It basically means that you want to buy the apartment and it determines the next steps leading to the handover of the keys.
A few days after the signature, the buyer gets all the papers related to the flat. All the reports, controls, etc. hundreds of pages. And you have to sign a significant amount of those… It’s really boring, long and even challenging with a 20-month-old lovely little girl.
From then on you have 10 days to convince yourself that it’s a bad idea to buy the apartment. If you don’t have the buyer’s remorse by the end of that 10 days, you have to put down the deposit. In our case, it was 5% of the price. Then you still have more than a month to seek a bank who will finance the deal for you, if you decide to go with a mortgage.
But even when you receive the loan offer from the bank you have a few days to think. In fact, for a few days you must step back and think about it and you cannot proceed. This is in order to defend the client from abusive banks. The point is that the bank cannot make you decide under pressure on the scene and that you have the option to back out of the deal saying that you don’t like the offer that you received from the bank without risking the loss of any money.
We had a very good experience with our bank, especially with our agent. She was a real expert, she always prepared everything on time and was on time. I never worked with an agent or service provider so knowledgeable.
But life is not so simple as that, we decided to take two loans. The second one had very good terms through my employer, managed by a third party company.
This third party is not only responsible for getting the employer’s loan but also helps to find a bank for your primary loan.
The first time we met the mortgage broker working for the just mentioned third party, we were not convinced about her abilities. She seemed helpful, but… Okay, our French is not on a native level, but it’s not that bad at all… She told us that after signing the “compromis” the buyers usually have 45 days to find a financial solution. We asked that how much time does it mean in practice. After some serious thinking, she replied that it’s one and a half months…
Either she was dumb as a box of rocks or she thought we are some stupid foreigners. I don’t know which one is worse, but most probably we should have stood up from the table at that very moment.
Maybe she was right about us and that’s why we did not walk away…
