I realise it’s been a long while since our last update and there’s a lot to report so I’ll do my best not to get bogged down in the minutiae (not my strong suit, I know). Despite seeing a place we really liked, we already had planned a number of viewings for the following week so we went ahead with those. We saw two places SW of Perigueux on Monday morning and then three places in the Thiviers area plus one further south on Tuesday. Out of those, one was a potential but it wasn’t ideal. We had Wednesday off and then went out with an estate agent on Thursday and Friday. We saw four or five places each day and out of those, we really liked two of them, but both were out of our price range. We determined that it wasn’t really worth it to see places through agents since their fees made places we liked unaffordable and furthermore, the three places that we really liked so far we had found ourselves. We talked about putting in a low offer for one of the expensive places if our top prospect didn’t pan out but it never came to that.
We had arranged to see the prospect a second time on 1st November since one of the sellers was going to be in town then. The sellers are two brothers who are selling their father’s place; he died back in February of this year. One of our friends who lives very near the place is an estate agent and she agreed to accompany us on the visit. The seller also brought a friend of his, also an estate agent, who is English but has been here for many years. We didn’t see anything to put us off and our friend agreed it was a great place so we put in an offer that day. Originally, they wanted €185 but had reduced it to €175 a month or so ago. We weren’t planning to spend that much but in the end, I’d be hard pressed to find a more perfect place so it would have been very difficult not to try for it.
Our first offer was for €160, hoping to meet in the middle at €167.5 it being a buyer’s market and all. It took them over three days to come back to us, during which time we were getting more and more concerned. Eventually they rang and said they would take €170 and we countered at €165. At this point, we got very excited because we were only €5K apart so figured it was a done deal. So although we didn’t start celebrating, we were starting to feel positive about the outcome.
Things took a turn though when we heard back from the other brother a day later. He sounded rather peeved and said that regardless of the reasons we gave, he thought the house was worth €170 and they wouldn’t budge from there so don’t bother calling back unless we were willing to pay that. We gave it some thought and decided to take him at his word so the next morning, yesterday, we called and left him a message. We didn’t hear all day so we finally tried the other brother early last evening. He eventually called back and we told him we’d pay the current asking price. He said they had someone coming to see the place today so they couldn’t give us an answer right away.
So at this point, we thought we weren’t going to get it. We thought for sure they would come back and say they had another interested party and wanted us to pay the original asking price which we couldn’t do even if we wanted to. We couldn’t really figure out what we’d done wrong and why they’d gone from nice to nasty. We did a fair bit more drinking than usual throughout the week due to the tension, but we really went for it last night in an attempt to drown our sorrows.
Anyway, we got a call around noon today from the nice brother saying that they’d talked it over last night and today and decided to sell us the house. The main issue for them was, because the house has been in the family for generations, they wanted it to go to people who really wanted it. They’re not officially tied into the sale for a few weeks until we sign the purchase agreement but we were encouraged to see that they already took down one of the classified ads for the house. So there’s some possibility things may fall apart but we’re about to have some champagne to celebrate anyway.
A couple of nice omens in relation to the saga. The first is that we put in the offer on 1st Nov, the first day of our second year here. The second is that I’ve flopped three 4-of-a-kinds on a single night and a fourth the next night playing poker. This means that I was dealt a pair and that same pair plus one other card were the first three (of five) community cards dealt. The chance of this happening once is 1 in 10,000 so for it to happen three times must be something like one in 100 million (I got a C in stats, sorry).
In other news, I finished the time keeping app and already got paid for it. Furthermore, I can now say I’ve completed the first version of our e-book app for eLeaf. We’re very close to actually signing up some publishers so hopefully, I will have an example to show you all. Will has played a bit of guitar but we’ve both been a bit distracted all week so neither of us was terribly productive. The cats are good but a bit nutty today since they didn’t get to go outside due to the nasty weather, but otherwise fine. The new house is also good for them in that it already has a cat flap and a staircase (Louis especially likes to perch on the steps and stare out at the world below).
Ok – I promised to keep this short and I’ve got some champers to drink so I’ll leave it here.