House Hunting Part II - The blue house in the woods

Our initial enthusiasm and excitement for the house hunting process had begun to fade when fate played her hand. 

Our first view of the house from the road

Nigel from Piegut Immobilier had been trying to persuade us to view a blue painted, modern, timber framed house in Busserolles. We had seen it from a distance many times and discounted it because it did not fit our criteria of “character stone property” and I made it clear to Nikki that I had no desire to live in “a blue, wooden garden shed”. However, we had come to trust Nigel’s judgment based on a previous day out with him and so, when we agreed to a second day of viewings with him, we agreed to have a “quick look” on the way past.

We were smitten! There is no other way to describe it. Here was a beautifully designed, well insulated house that was ready to move in to without any work required. No new kitchen needed, no new bathroom, no need to replace or refurbish a single thing. It sat in three acres of its own attractively maintained parkland and enjoyed a fabulous view that could be appreciated from the large covered deck.

On top of that, it was 10 minutes walk to the village baker in Busserolles, a village that had already given us a great welcome to France and where we had started to establish new friendships. Having driven hundreds of kilometers hunting for a house in the Perigord Vert, we had found one just 3 minutes walk from where we were already living!

Only one problem – it was outside our budget.

Open plan living area

We expected that we would be able to negotiate the price down given our position as cash buyers but as it had only been on the market for a few weeks it seemed unlikely that the vendor would be keen to move very far. However, our experience of the previous weeks of house hunting had brought us the realisation that our budget was not going to buy us a house that would come close to our criteria without the need to spend a significant sum on refurbishments.

Given my need to stay focussed on establishing a new business (don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my promise to tell you about that - you'll just have to keep following the blog!), the opportunity to purchase a property that would provide no distracting refurbishment projects seemed like a damn fine idea!

Main Bedroom

We could also see savings in other parts of our overall budget – removal costs to shift our belongings over the road would be zero (just me at one end of the sofa and Nikki at the other, off we go up the lane; simples); heating and running costs for a modern, energy efficient property would be lower; we even had our own trees to provide logs for the wood burning stove.

Aerial view showing our rented house
(red pin at the top) and the blue house
(blue pin at the bottom) with yellow
line marking the plot boundaries

Using every logical reason we could think of (remembering of course that buying a house is largely an illogical, emotional decision!) the budget was adjusted as far as we could go and we decided to make an offer, although it was well below the asking price.

Rejected!

Not surprising I guess but disappointing non-the less. “Ah well, it’s not the only house on the market”. We went through the “plenty more fish in the sea”, “more pebbles on the beach” routine and supped another glass of delicious Bergerac red.

It didn’t work. All the reasons that had made us fall in love with the ‘blue house in the woods’ in the first place stood up to our attempts to dismiss them. We wanted that house so badly; more than any other house we had viewed, we could visualise ourselves living there. Panic ensued when we spotted another immobilier showing clients around one day - showing people around ‘our’ house!

So it was that we went back with a revised offer but this time we stipulated that we wanted to purchase the house complete with all its contents. Our thinking was that by removing the need for them to organize a removals van to return to the UK, it would be an attractive prospect for the English vendors. On our side it meant that we would not need to purchase expensive items we would require such as wardrobes, a washing machine and a garden tractor (a must have when there are three acres of grass to mow!). Whilst we would end up with some unrequired surplus items (five sofas would be a tad excessive for a two bed house!) we had learnt that there was a good market locally for second hand furniture, so we could recoup some of our outlay.

 

Our approach worked and the revised offer was accepted – we celebrated with champagne that night!