{"id":17251,"date":"2021-06-03T22:06:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T20:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=17251"},"modified":"2021-06-06T18:25:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T16:25:03","slug":"got-there-in-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/got-there-in-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Got there in the end"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two stages in the French property sales process. In the beginning you sign a ‘compromis de vente’ that expresses your intention to buy the property. It sets out your and the sellers rights and obligations and usually, after a brief period (10 days?) during which the buyer can withdraw from the process without obligation, the latter pays a 10% deposit. Then after a period of 3 months, which can be reduced by paying an additional fee, the ‘acte de vente’ is signed at which time the former pays over the rest of the purchase price plus fees and taxes and becomes the new owner.<\/p>\n

The prime difference with buying development land compared to an existing building is that the buyer doesn’t have to pay anything on signing the compromis de vente and only hands over a deposit when they have acquired a development permit, or ‘permis de construire’. This is because obtaining a permis de construire can be a fraught and risky process and if they are unsuccessful, the buyer can withdraw fom the transaction without penalty.<\/p>\n

I signed the compromis de vente for the land in Fleurac on which I plan to build a new single-storey house in the first week of January after which I did find that obtaining a permis de construire for it was indeed a fraught and convoluted process. Some of my problems originated with MCA, my original choice of builder, who let me down by doing essentially nothing between the end of last year when I expressed an interest in one of their house designs and the first week in April when I kicked them into touch.<\/p>\n

By then I had developed my own design and started the process of applying for a permis de construire for it, which was promptly kicked back by ‘les architectes des b\u00e2timents de France’ (BDF) the national organisation which has the responsibility for protecting France’s heritage and traditions. They said that my modern design was unsuitable and, at the end, clearly indicated that they didn’t think that any building should be allowed on my parcel of land, which was outrageously beyond their remit, as the local authority responsible for planning had approved it for building on.<\/p>\n

I also objected strongly to being dictated to in such an off-hand manner and took the bit between my teeth. The mayor of Fleurac agreed with me that BDF had over-stepped the mark and told them that as Fleurac is not in an officialy protected zone, it was the commune who should decide whether my house should be allowed to go ahead and it was its view that it should.<\/p>\n

And so, six months almost to the day after signing the compromis, today was the day when I signed the acte de vente for the land in question. But not before further hic-cups which I’ve now learnt are only to be expected in France. I mentioned in my last post how tortuous it had been to execute a transfer of a \u00a3sterling amount from my UK bank to my French bank account and how it had been explained to me that I just had to shut up and expect the system’s delays.<\/p>\n

This was like a red rag to a bull, of course, and I complained bitterly at my bank how it was incomprehensible to me that a process that would take 2 hours in the UK takes 2 days in France. In fact the transfer arrived in my French bank account late yesterday evening and as I could not complete the subsequent transfer from my account to that of the seller’s ‘notaire’ myself, I fired off an email to the bank saying that it was essential for them to implement it as soon as possible in the morning and then let me know when the funds would arrive in the notaire’s account.<\/p>\n

I needed to know that as if the delay was going to be 24 hours as I’d been told, I’d have had to postpone todays’ meeting for the signing of the acte de vente. But I had an early meeting on site with a prospective contractor so was unable to contact my bank first thing and it was getting on for 11.00am by the time I was able to get into the branch. I’d learnt my lesson about not bothering to get anything done over the phone and knew that I’d have to ask the questions of the branch face-to-face.<\/p>\n

And lucky I did, because what did I find? They hadn’t even seen my email let alone opened it, read its contents and actioned my request. This would almost have been a hanging offence for a bank in the UK but they seemed fairly unperturbed by it all almost as though this was normal practice. CA in Montignac really are hopeless and seemed somewhat shocked when I demanded that things happened immediately.<\/p>\n

My email was found on the clerical assistant’s computer (why is checking incoming emails not the first thing she does every morning after logging on?), its contents printed out and an immediate transfer made as I’d requested. When I asked how long it would take for the funds to arrive in the other account, I was told 2 hours which was quite a lot different to what I’d been told yesterday, so with nothing more for me to do, I left.<\/p>\n

I emailed the seller’s notaire telling them of the problems I’d encountered, to check their bank account and to let me know if the meeting scheduled for this afternoon would have to be cancelled but shortly afterwards I got a call saying that the funds had arrived and by late this afternoon the acte de vente was signed and I was officially the owner of the terrain at Labattut Basse in Fleurac. And I was so exhausted by the events involved and the long day I’d endured yesterday that I couldn’t wait to get home and take a nap!<\/p>\n

I met the contractor this morning at the Mairie at Fleurac before showing him the way to the site and took the opportunity of dropping in my ‘d\u00e9claration pr\u00e9alable’ for siting my caravan on the land before and during the construction works. They’ll find it when the Mairie opens tomorrow and here’s a mock-up that I included showing roughly what it will look like when the caravan is there.<\/p>\n

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Quite honestly, with all of the work I’ve been doing on my house in recent months and weeks and with what I still have left to do before I can move out, I can’t now wait to get into the caravan even with all of the inconveniences that it will involve. I think that the first thing that I’ll do is sleep non-stop for two days \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two stages in the French property sales process. In the beginning you sign a ‘compromis de vente’ that expresses your intention to buy the property. It sets out your and the sellers rights and obligations and usually, after a brief period (10 days?) during which the buyer can withdraw from the process without … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17251"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17260,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251\/revisions\/17260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}