A Cariad Life

Just typing that date means it is our oldest son’s birthday–22! Wow–time really does fly! We are so proud of him and how grounded he is. Noah has just finished his last interview with a tech company, has a sweet girlfriend, and is enjoying life in his new house (with 7 other guys). Ah…the life when you’re in your early 20’s!

Friday, September 2, was also a big day for us: On Thursday, after reaching out to the Inn keepers in France, we learned that they had just received another offer on the property (I had to take a deep breath because this sounded a bit like our first experience), but they had not responded yet and wanted to hear from us first about our offer and could we possibly talk on Friday? We knew it was time to make an offer–the closing of the house went through on Monday, and we had the funds in hand now, so we said, “yes, let’s talk and we are prepared to provide an offer.” So…at 7am our time we connected via Whatsapp (kind of embarrassed that I never had used this before, but it worked well.) It was 4pm for them, just before guests were checking in.

Here is where it gets interesting buying a property in France…sellers don’t necessarily have an agent and we, as buyers, didn’t have an agent in France either. The gist of the initial process is you just say, “we would like to buy your place for this much (state euro amount).” It’s all a bit nerve wracking and personal, but we did it–we made an offer!

I won’t go into detail about the actual cost of purchasing, but these were some of the things we had to consider when making an offer:

First, getting a French loan for a French property as a US citizen is almost impossible (due to the fees charged to French banks by the US when making a loan), so we knew we would need to pay for the entire purchase in cash. Our house, although it sold at a good price, did not go over asking price as it might have 6 months to a year ago, and the profit, as most of you know is impacted by the additional and necessary costs, such as the agent fee of 6% and most of the closing costs–paid by sellers in the US. Adding to the equation, when purchasing a home in France, the buyer pays the cost of the sale, that is the taxes and the un-biased third party notary who puts the contract together and ensures the sale goes through. If you are catching what I am saying, as Americans selling in the US and buying property in France–these costs fell to us on both sides of selling and buying, and in France, those administrative costs account for about 7.5% of the price home one is purchasing, specifically if that home is not a new one (the one we are buying was built in 1850:) All this to say, we had to consider those costs as well.

One final benefit and one of the reasons we are even able to buy this property in France right now is the exchange rate. For the first time in 20 years, the dollar is equal in value to the euro, at some points even worth a bit more. This is great for us, as earlier, this property would have cost us quite a bit more as our dollars would not have gone as far. Although we might have made more on the sale of our house a year ago, it would have cost us more in the exchange from dollars to euros–timing really is everything! All of these factors went into putting our offer together.

Thankfully, the Inn keepers thoughtfully considered our offer and a couple of hours later called us back and accepted! They shared they could not think of anyone better to take over this business. Well…there was a bit of jumping around and dancing after that call! On Monday, they will visit the notary, and we’ll begin the process of drafting a Purchase Sale Agreement with the agreed upon price (which I did put in writing via an email–I am a former CHRO after all:). Once that is drawn and the necessary deposit is made into an escrow account, there is a 10 day “cooling off” period for buyers should they decide to back out. Once that day passes, we work towards closing. I learned that as part of closing there is an inspection, paid for by the sellers, that is required in France and has already been done on this property as well as water drainage review, all required by France. The entire process should be just under 3 months–whew!

So…with that hurdle cleared and more certainty about where we were going to be living and working, we then had what we needed to start the visa process. I have read so much about this process and how long it takes–that I thought I would provide you with a first hand account here of what that looks like so far–(you know, if you decide that you too want to live in France for the long term!) Note–we are applying for long term visas that allow us to work, not visitor visas.

1. Apply online at https://france-visas.gouv.fr/web/france-visas/long-stay-visa
   • Any visitor who is planning to stay in France longer than 90 days has to apply for the long term visa before they go to France. Once they are in France and want to renew the visa for another year, they can do that there. They cannot do that the first time though.
   • To apply online, one must have their passport information, share what they plan to do in France to support themselves, where they will stay (this is why we needed to nail down our offer first), and how they plan to support themselves. The application also requires an approximate date of when ones plans to be in France–no more than 3 months from the appointment at the consulate in the US.
   • Once one has applied online, each applicant gets a code to use to sign up for an appointment at the French consulate–applicants have to go to this appointment in person and bring all of documents (with copies) There are approximately 6 cities in the US, and for us, San Francisco was closest (though still a flight away)
2. Register for the appointment at https://visa.vfsglobal.com/usa/en/fra/apply-visa
   • Once the applicant enters the code from the online application and bit more information for each applicant, one is provided an appointment time for all in the party (it is a 15 minute slot, which tells me we better have our stuff together). I signed up for the courier service which will return our passports to us after approval. This means that once we apply in person, we won’t have a passport until the final process is finished, which could be up to 3 months. Without courier, Darrell and I would have to return to San Francisco to pick up our passports. We also signed up for photographs to be taken there, as they seem to know what they want, and we don’t want to get it wrong.

Our visa appointments are at the end of September, so in the meantime we will get a purchase sale agreement (one of the documents we need) and our other documents in order.

Lots of people have asked us if we have a visa already, as if that should be done first–based on the questions I’ve answered in the visa process, it doesn’t appear that the visa is the first step as our visa, as entrepreneurs who are purchasing a running business will require that we present a contract for a property. Please note these are just my experiences and learnings for our situation–why someone is going to another country, would change how they complete their application, when they start the process, and what is required.

I know this was all a bit technical; interestingly, these are the details and items I get asked the most questions about. The other day, someone asked me, “how did you ever get approved for a visa?” as if they are impossible to obtain. I think there are some misconceptions out there about the process, what is required, and the order for completing steps. Of course, we don’t have a visa yet, so I guess we’ll see! One thing for sure is that the French are known for their long paperwork…we’ll just take it one step at a time and read all the fine print!