Home owners

As the French saying goes, "Qui cherche, trouve."

And we have found our house. Finally.

It was the culmination of a long search, twelve months in fact. It involved trawling through a thousand real-estate ads on a multitude of websites, innumerable requests for more photos and more info, and around 70 actual viewings.

We cast our net wide, over many departments, and drove a lot of kilometres.

Our search ended on a cold, grey February day, as we were shown through the Maison de Maître that stood on an elevated site, overlooking the surrounding farms, between the villages of Bazens and Frégimont.

Cliona kept nudging me in the back ... an auspicious reaction.

We returned a second time to see our mansion on the hill, with its unusual square pool, its saffron garden and its view to the distant Pyrenees.

A few days later we made an offer. There was a bit of toing and froing through the agent, until we agreed on a price. We put a formal, written offer to Mr and Mrs Negrello. They accepted and the deal was done.

So here we are, in the Notaire's plush office at Agen, solemnly signing a promesse unilatéral de vente.  In France, the notaire is a government-appointed solicitor/conveyancer who processes all the paperwork on a property transaction.

His methodical, clause-by-cause explanation took three hours.

Incorporating the additions and addendums, the sales contract ran to a staggering 240 pages. It included all the diagnostic checks, obligatory before any sale.

A dapper, good-humoured man in his early sixties, our host told us his grandfather was also a notaire. But, in his day, a compromis or promesse de vente amounted to just three pages.

The solid rock of contemporary bureaucracy has been laid down layer upon layer over 80 years.

Fortunately, we only had to sign once on a tablet. It electronically added our signature to every page.

The "cooling off" period has passed and we have paid a deposit.

We are now home owners in France.