Christmas in southern
France saw us as typical
holiday makers with our rose tinted glasses!! - by the end of January we
had rented an
apartment and moved in - crazy!
A few short months later
we had discovered how
little we knew about living and working in France; an expensive exercise
that saw us return
to the UK to lick our wounds.
Not to be defeated, we
spent a year
researching properly how to get it right and spent many weekends driving
around large parts of
France that would be accessable for a holiday home/weekend retreat. It was
important to find
the right location - you can change a house but not where it is. We knew
by now that it had to
be a place in which we felt comfortable, we also had to be honest with
ourselves about what we
could afford and soon learnt to dismiss the cheap and cheerful - the 'pay
peanuts and get
monkeys' philosophy applied here so that we had to be realistic with our
aspirations - out
went the chateau!
Eventually we fell in love
with a location and
a house, which to boot had two gites attached. No problem we thought, we
can run these from
England, particularly as we were planning to visit every other weekend and
because it was in
the south eastern corner of Brittany, 2.5 hrs from Cherbourg. All went
according to plan, we
ran the business successfully and had some lovely times with visitors,
some of whom later
bought property from us and then became friends. Our problems started when
we had to return to
England. Each time we crossed that strip of water, it became a greater
drain on our emotions
because we had become a part of the community, even to the extent that the
entire village
celebrated our wedding with us!
Decision time! - having
bought and sold many
properties in the UK, and with years of sales and management experience
behind us (together
with a good grounding in French for one of us!) we were encouraged by
the 'locals' who felt
that there was a space for us to set up an Estate Agency.
1997 saw this happen in a
small way with one
office and since then, despite the hard work, we have never looked back!
Chapter two brings us to
expansion - during
our search for caring associate agents, we stopped for lunch in a
beachside restaurant like
all honorary French people might do. 50 metres from the bright blue sea
we made the decision
to up sticks and move base camp to Olonzac, in the centre of Languedoc - a
massive change from
being in the middle of the countryside to being in a vibrant town.
From one end of the
country to another sounded
drastic at first, particularly as some of the children now had settled
jobs and our parents
were still in England - no problem, with the courtesy of budget airlines,
trains, cars and
coaches the country is shrinking quite dramatically!
We have often been told
how lucky we are to
live here - luck has nothing to do with it, hard work and determination
are key. The totally
different quality of life makes us happy to share all our experiences,
good and bad, and thus
Select Homes in France was established to provide a service that puts you
in contact with
highly professional agents, all known personally to us, in your chosen
area. Not easy when
purchasing a house in your home country is even fraught with problems, and
that is in your own
language. We try and solve some of these problems by having English and
French spoken by us
and our
agents. We take you through all the stages of house hunting and purchasing
so that you can
enjoy it. Visiting France grows on you and purchasing a property here
helps you put down roots
in this fascinating country.
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