‘Par trimestre,’ she answered and he tried not to look relieved.
I said bonjour, wiped my feet and stepped forward, and the lady waved her arms as if to shoo me further in. She had a bemused but happy look on her face like an artist whose work has unexpectedly become fashionable, and now everyone wants to visit her studio. On the table by her side, there was a blank compromis de vente—a sale agreement. She was obviously willing to sign that very morning.
The apartment was everything the ad had promised—simple, blemish-free white walls and a ceiling with no signs that someone had been filling in cracks overnight. An open kitchen-dining area, a living room complete with a sofa, an armchair, an old dresser and TV corner, a double bed up on the mezzanine, and—holy of holies for a studio—a real toilet. The bathroom seemed to have a young couple living in it, but they turned out to be viewers who were squatting on the edge of the bath (yes, it even had a bathtub) discussing whether to put in a bid, and looked nervously up at me as though they were afraid I’d heard their maximum price.
There was a radio playing classical music, so I gestured to the owner (who was still being interviewed) whether it was OK to turn it off. A radio can cover up annoying sounds like a humming air-conditioning unit or a nearby clothes workshop—Paris still has lots of sweatshops with buzzing sewing machines. I listened, opened the window and stuck my head out, listened again, and heard only the distant traffic noise. Excellent sign for a Saturday morning.
Satisfied, I went to hover by the owner and the man taking notes for her biography.
‘C’est la première semaine?’ he was asking—was it the first week it had been in the paper?
‘Oui,’ the owner said. I didn’t think she’d need a second.
The interviewer nodded, and told me to go ahead with my question—for him, it was thinking time.
I started my own interrogation, hitting the seller with all the essential questions—charges, approximate electricity and gas bills, the date of the last réunion de copropriété (owners’ meeting), when the next ravalement (expensive façade clean-up) was due, whether the toit (roof) was en bon état (good condition—obviously she was going to say yes, but it’s worth asking to see the reaction), whether the building was planning any other communally paid work such as a renovation of the courtyard, and, apologizing for being indiscreet, why she was selling. Again, no one is ever going to say, ‘Because the neighbours hold all-night bongo and firework parties and breed cockroaches which they feed to their pet baboons,’ but it’s always interesting to ask.
‘I retire in three months, so I won’t be coming to Paris any more,’ she said.
‘So this is your pied-à-terre?’
‘Yes, I come here for one or two weeks a month. And my husband joins me now and again, of course. I’ll be sad to sell after fifteen years, but the children have places of their own, and we can’t justify the expense.’
All in all, it was the equivalent of the car with one careful owner.
‘Er, Madame …’ The couple from the bathroom were looking even more nervous. Time to put in a bid, it seemed. I didn’t blame them. The apartment was sensibly priced, excellently located, and had a great feel to it. Lived-in, but by someone who loved the place.
‘Go ahead,’ I told them, and they closed in.
Out on the landing, the guy who’d been conducting his interview was on the phone, and seemed to be telling his girlfriend that she ought to have come with him because he was sure the apartment was going to sell.
Going downstairs, I met the man I’d seen in the courtyard. An investor, I decided, looking to buy to rent. The polite thing to do would have been to wait on the landing and allow him to pass, but I pretended not to have seen him and clattered halfway down the flight of stairs between the second and first floors.
‘Oh, désolé,’ I apologized, and turned as if to go back up.
‘Non, non, je vous en prie.’ He beckoned me to come past, not managing very well to hide the fact that he thought I was being impolite.
‘Non, j’insiste.’ I turned, walked back up the stairs and gestured him through. As he passed, thanking me, I told him, ‘The apartment doesn’t interest me, anyway.’
‘Non?’ He looked intrigued.
‘Non,’ I said, not wishing to elaborate, but with the slightly pained look on my face that is achieved by picturing a sani-broyeur. ‘Bonne visite,’ I wished him, and went on my way.
With any luck, I’d wasted enough of his time, and instilled enough doubt in his mind, to let the young couple seal the deal.
Taking the plunge
This chapter doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive housebuyers’ guide, so I won’t even try to go into all the legal niceties of property deals. But the most reassuring thing about buying in France is that a deal is a deal. Buyer and seller sign the compromis de vente (pre-sale agreement), with no lawyers present, and the seller then has seven days in which to panic and retract, without incurring any penalties. Once those seven days are up, the buyer has to pay 10 per cent of the sale price to the seller’s solicitor (notaire) as a deposit, then usually has three months or so to put together the finances and find their own solicitor to oversee the transaction.
Buyers can pull out and get their deposit back if the bank refuses a loan or if the obligatory checks (for asbestos, termites, lead paint, etc.) aren’t satisfactory, but they are in no danger of being gazumped.
This protection explains why apartments sell so fast. If you visit an apartment that has been advertised in the Particulier, you have to go along with ink in your pen and the courage to sign there and then. And
