A Cariad Life

We have now left Greenville, SC–it was such a warm and hospitable place, and we so enjoyed connecting with the owner of our apartment and friends while there. If you ever get a chance to visit, you should! Great food and culture! Yesterday, I was able to celebrate my mom’s 75th birthday with her here in Asheboro, NC, and tomorrow, we celebrate Darrell’s Dad’s 81st birthday with him in Mt. Holly, NC! We are making him biscuits and gravy at his apartment (food is love for the Martins:) On Sunday about 1:30pm, we fly to NYC.

Closing on our sale of Repos a Riberac is Tuesday, December 6 at 10am (French time) and 4am, our time, here on the East Coast. I’ve tried to talk Darrell into getting up at that time and toasting with a mimosa (?), but he would rather just wake up on Tuesday morning knowing we are homeowners of a French property!

So, what is the process for buying a property in another country? In short, a bit complicated and much like taking a shot in the dark. On Monday, we received an email from the 3rd party notaire outlining how much we needed to provide (in euros) at least 48 hours (72 hours if there is a weekend in there) before the closing date/time. In addition, we needed verification from our bank of where the funds came. We had to have funds in the notaire’s hand by Friday, December 2.

First, we had try to estimate how much American dollars would be required to meet the designated Euro amount with fees and the exchange rate. We then used WISE to make the transfer and thankfully, they guarantee an exchange rate. It was all sent yesterday! The guarantee is important because the rate is constantly changing. Take a look at this website to see for yourself:

https://tradingeconomics.com/eurusd:cur

Guaranteeing a rate is also really important because at the amount we’re sending, a difference of just one cent is a difference of about $2500. Interestingly since we sent the money yesterday, the rate changed by one cent (not in our favor), which means we saved $2500 doing it yesterday instead of today–timing is everything. Although the euro to dollar exchange rate is the best it has been in 20 years, the dollar is not as strong as it was in September. Meaning if we had bought then, it would have cost about $25,000 less…oh well! But… buying now is still $25,000 less than if we had bought in the Spring. I am learning that there are just some things outside of our control, and we have to roll with it.

The other thing we have been working on is getting our utilities set up in France. It is a bit of loop to navigate. It seems you have to have a French bank account and French phone number to set up utilities, but you cannot get either of those unless you are a resident. We have figured out a way to get an online european bank account thankfully, but the phone number was going to be an issue. Paul, the innkeeper, is working with us to transfer their land and mobile numbers so that the B&B keeps the same numbers for all the marketing–this means we can use that number to set up utilities!

We started the utilities set-up process today in a 90 minute call with a very friendly and helpful French person (who spoke English) and whose company works as an intermediary for gas, electric, internet, and phone providers. The service is free for us to use and the providers pay for the company to provide the service. She laid out very clearly our options for internet and phone, and the costs of gas and electric, set up our contracts, including our payment system, and put everything in place so there is no lapse in service. This process seems so much more efficient than our process here of calling each individual company. We learned that internet, cable, land and mobile phone is incredibly less expensive than US (33 euros/month!) Gas, understandably with the war in the Ukraine, is much higher.

The final piece remaining is our visa/passport situation–they are still not here. I did reach out with some questions to consulate last night…we’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, we are enjoying our time with family, friends, and biscuits, barbeque, sweet tea…