ARRGGHHH!!!!! Bankers!

I simply can't belileve how incompetent our banker is. Remember my last post - thas one from March 11, a full two weeks ago? The one wherein I reported that the banker had told us everything was fine, that there would be no problem about getting the money to the notaire by April 1? Hah! All of that has changed. Today he told us that it might be necessary to slip the date by a couple of weeks, but of course he wouldn't say for sure. Does this guy have a calendar? Does he know what day it is? According to him, we are supposed to receive some papers to sign and bring to the bank. We have not received them. Today is Friday. The bank is closed on Monday. If we get the papers on Monday - which seems unlikely - and return them on Tuesday, there is little chance the money will reach the notaire by Thursday. But has he told the notaire? Had he told us? Did he care in the least? The answer to all of these questions is no. Now, it is his job to make this work, or to notify the notaire if things are not going to work on time. Has he done this? No. Who will have to do this? I suspect that will be me, or more likely our charming and unbelievably helpful real estate agent, Mikaël.

So what's the fallout from all this? Well, it means that we have to cancel the rental on the gite we have arranged for the week starting Thursday. It means we have to cancel the meeting with the electrician scheduled for Friday, and meeting with the fellow from the gas company, scheduled for the following Monday. How convenient.

On the other hand, today was also the date of the sale of the Espéraza house. That went without a hitch, I am happy to say, and the money from that, unlike the money from the bank, will be entering the notaire's coffers on Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, here's an aerial photo of the house and grounds, from Google Earth. I've outlined the property in red, and the red arrow points to the house itself. To the left of the house, following the road, are some trees, then a slim rectangle of grey and tan which is the vegetable garden, then there's more trees, with a little white blob that's the green house. Continuing to the left is the driveway and garage, then a border of trees marking the end of the garden proper. To the left of all this is a small green field which may end up as the horse paddock.

So, what to do with all this uncertainty and confusion? Take a vacation! We're off to Perpignan tomorrow for an overnight away from it all. We'll walk on the beach, eat out, wander around in the sun. Most importantly we won't be packing boxes. We won't be talking to bankers.

All systems Go!

Being of a worrisome nature, even though the bank had reassured the notaire that he should set a time for the closing on the house in Nojals, I've been waiting for that letter from the bank, the letter approving the bridge loan, to show up. No such luck. Now, of course, our mail has been forwarded - supposedly - to Ste. Colombe as of last Tuesday, although none has shown up there. So no letter from the bank. It having warmed up here a bit, we wandered over to the bank this morning. As we sat in the junior banker's office, ready to make an appointment with the senior banker for the afternoon, the fellow himself walked jovially into the office and showed us the loan approval! He had just got the fax a few minutes before. So - all is set! Woohoo!!! I will probably sleep better tonight, instead of waking up in the wee hours wondering what we'd do when everything fell apart.

So, OK, now I feel I can post lots of info and photos of the area where we'll be living. First is a link to a nearby town called Monpazier - easily the prettiest town I've seen anywhere.

Are we back in Massachusetts???

Snow! This winter has been amazing. I've never seen this much snow since we've been here and today must set some sort of record. First a little bit of background: We're back in Esperaza temporarily, having fled the cloud of wood smoke surrounding and infiltrating the house in Ste. Colombe, brought on by sudden cold weather. So we decided to take the trip back to Esperaza and stay for a day or two - and then we saw the weather forecast: heavy snow today and tomorrow, temperatures way below freezing at least through Wednesday. So here we are in Esperaza, camping out as it were since we moved most of our stuff to Ste. Colombe last week. We woke up this morning, took a look outside and saw it was snowing. Not what we'd call heavy snow but it has kept up all day, unrelentingly, and has now piled up about 15 inches of the stuff!!!! And it's still snowing. Of course we have nothing like a snow shovel; they don't even sell them in this area. We're not in any need of one, since we stocked up on food yesterday, knowing it would be too unpleasant to want to go out.

In house-related news, I learned that we can actually inhabit the house before the new septic system is installed, which will make all of that much easier.

OK, wasn't able to post this yesterday because of continuing power outages. Things seem better today, and it has stopped snowing!

"The End of an Era"

Last week we ran into our friend Stan at the Espéraza Sunday market and of course we talked of our move. He wished us luck, and saud it was in a way the “end of an era”, since many of us moved to the Espéraza area at about the same time. Well, today was the end, I suppose, since although we’ll be going back over the next few weeks to pack up odds and ends, we today moved to the house in Ste. Colombe. I’ve brought my pillows – that must mean we’re living in Ste. Colombe now. After our daily visit to the bank we stopped at our favorite local café, the Relais Occitan, for a coffee and a break. Here's a photo of the café, with owner Alain behind the bar.

This past Sunday, our friend Joan, another Espéraza resident, hosted a going away party for us. It was good to see our friends all together, drink some of the local bubbly, Blanquette de Limoux and generally have fun. Now we have the fun of doing the final stage of packing, which means most of our possessions. Real fun!

It’s pleasant to be back in the Ste. Colombe house, though. Of the three houses we’ve owned in France it is definitely my favorite. There’s something about it that feels homey. It feels like a home, not just a box with a roof, not just a temporary place to hang out. Although I loved the garden in Espéraza, and will miss it greatly, the house always had the feel of an apartment, somehow.

The banking saga continues. Surely we must be dealing with the French version of the three Stooges. I had noticed on Sunday that the paper the bank had given us, supposedly a copy of the loan application, had an income listed only for me, and that income was incorrect. Well, the banker had asked us to please stop by some day this week and provide a document showing that we in fact owned the house we were providing as surety for the loan. (We had in fact brought such a thing during one of the visits, and it was waved away.) Anyway, I figured I would produce this paper and ask about this curious income. The answer? The banker had no idea where that incorrect figure came from. The reason it was just my income was that he decided to send in the application in my name only. He then - encouraged by us - thought it might be a good idea if he added our incomes together (!!!) and, looking at the Social Security statements we had brought, he did this and sent it on its way along the cyber link he has to who knows where. He is sublimely unconcerned that the loan approval will not be provided by the deadline on Friday, so I asked him if he thought there would be any problem with the bank actually coughing up the money on time, i.e. April 1. Oh no, no problem at all. Well we’ll see, won't we. My present scheme will be to go the bank again on Thursday and point out to the banker that it will be his job to call the notaire on Friday to explain why everything is so late.

We had a similar experience when we bought the Ste. Colombe house a few years ago, using another house for surety on a bridge loan. In that instance, we applied for the loan some time in June, for a proposed closing date early in September, and received the money in October. But August had intervened and of course everything, especially at the bank’s nerve center in Paris, was closed. And things tend to wind down very much in the last two weeks of July, because everyone is preparing for vacation, and then of course it takes the first week or two of September for people to get back up to speed again. Speed? Did I say SPEED????


UPDATE UPDATE

Our estate agent for the Nojals house sent email asking how the loan application was going and I sent him back my opinion of the bank. Not long after that he wrote again to say the notaire had called the bank, and apparently woke them up. All looks good, the necessary papers will be sent directly to the notaire next week, the notaire has booked an official appointment on April 1, at 4 in the afternoon.

I'm going to bed!