One day last week I found myself house hunting. This came about because a couple I have known for a few years, and who have been coming to the village on holiday every year, hanker after buying a property as a holiday home. This one cropped up and I offered to go along with them and take a look.
It's a short distance from the small holiday home we had and in a great position. It was clearly two dwellings at one point, now joined together.
Unlike many houses in the village it has good access to generous off road parking.
As you can see, it's literally at the foot of the château.
The land at the back has two levels of garden as well as plenty of hardstanding parking space and a lovely outlook over the village.
Inside it was not in good shape, suffering from layers of badly done alterations over decades.
The main living room had a fireplace and was a good size, although it was actually a step down from the other part of the house. It looked like this was the other dwelling and below the level of the road because of the way the road had been built.
The agent who showed us round had never seen the property before. She struggled to open windows and doors and was unsure what some of the rooms were for, such as this one. The electricity was off and it was hard to see in some of the rooms. If I do this again I will go armed with a torch!
The bathroom was horrible.
The house was not really habitable although it had been lived in until fairly recently.
At the back there was a large garage. After the visit we retired to the bar for "debriefing" where we bumped into a local builder who knew the property. He said that at one time it had been used as a garage business.
There were also numerous underground spaces.
This cave seemed to go way back and probably goes as far as the château.
The couple rejected the house because it would have required too much work to bring it up to an acceptable standard. It reminded me of many of the properties we looked at when we were house hunting ourselves in 2007 and again in 2014.
It's in an excellent position and has enormous potential to be turned into a really nice home - if you have plenty of time and money. It occurred to me as I looked round it that if it had been for sale at the time we found our current house we would have seriously considered buying it. We could have lived in the little cottage just a few door away while it was renovated, doing some of the work ourselves.
In actual fact it also occurred to me that we could still buy it, selling up in the UK to release the funds to do it. We would then have the choice of a village house or a rural house for our dotage, being fully committed to living in France and no longer having an option to go back to the UK.
Realistically it's a lot of house for the money but it's not for us at this stage of our lives. If we do burn our bridges and sell up in the UK we would be more likely to move to somewhere more modern, easier to maintain and cheaper to run. I think a time comes when charm has to give way to practicality.
The little house we bought in 2007.
The house we have now.
Unbelievably it's now nine years since we moved into our rural house. How time flies!
The DIY and renovation stuff was fine when we were younger- but as we get older it is nice to stop, and spend more time enjoying the fruits of our labours! That property needs an awful lot of TLC. I hope your friends can find a more appropriate property
ReplyDeleteThe little house we bought as a holiday home was in much better condition and we still spent a lot of time and money on improvements. Such places are not easy to find.
DeleteThat house looks a lot like ours did when we bought it.
ReplyDeleteOur terrace house in Loire Atlantique was much older, walls almost a metre thick in some places. The best thing about it was that it forced me to contact electricians, plumbers and menuisiers, thus widening my social circle of friends. The worst thing about it was all this socialising occurred before the invention of mobile phones and I spent more time than I cared for in the village phone box, always on the verge of running out of change.
ReplyDeleteWe certainly had to get to grips with the language pretty fast! Or at least learn all the words for things like roof, drains, floors, etc!
DeleteOh how I wish we had a cellar and a cave underneath :-) Cheers Diane
ReplyDeleteHouse hunting for a friend sounds fun, lots to see but no great decisions to make unless you find something that you would like yourself. In the UK it would be difficult to find a property in such poor repair and I understand the temptation to embark in a major renovation, but you need time on your side, patience and energy, all lacking in later life,
ReplyDeletewww.mylifeinflipflops.blogspot.com
Who doesn't love a nosey round a house that's for sale?!
DeleteI certainly would not buy a house in that state at my age! One purchase of a ruin that turned into a money pit put me off for life. Much more sensible to find somewhere new and easy to maintain for your dotage.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fact that most houses rarely make a profit when sold. You're lucky if you can recoup the money spent on them, which is rather different to the housing market in the UK.
DeleteWe will not get our money back on that place when we sell it (it's rented out at the moment).
DeleteSame here. We have tended to think that the money spent on the house is instead of holidays as we rarely go anywhere else now.
DeleteI remember 20 plus years ago when me and my ex were looking at houses in limousine, what we were thinking of taking on we must of been mad the condition they were in . I've now got a lovely holiday home in normandy
ReplyDeleteI think we could have taken this one on if it had been available when we were looking in 2014, but not now.
DeleteNeither Mr FD nor myself like DIY. We bought our house in 2005 and there are still rooms that needed decorating when we moved in that still need decorating! Not badly, but the paint is chipped, or things are a bit shonky. I want to move to a modern apartment in Clermont Ferrand, but Mr FD is less keen. So for now we're in our 200-year old house that needs things doing to it, that we probably won't do!!
ReplyDeleteWe have found that you stop noticing such things if you leave them for long enough!
DeleteA good example was the wiring in our previous house. The light switches in the kitchen dangled in mid air at the end of a wire that passed through a cup hook in the ceiling. We had got used to them and it wasn't until a new visitor noticed them and was distinctly horrified that we thought "ah yes, we should fix that"!!
I wrote a blog post about it:
Deletehttps://averygrandpressigny.blogspot.com/2009/10/diy-moment.html