France: Our house sale fell through

Yeah. Deeply frustrating, non?

We’d been pushing things at our end (as has our buyer) for some weeks, with the delays being at the bottom of our very small chain. These were first time buyers, and their solicitor got wrapped up in a non-issue that ultimately screwed things for us.

To step back in time, briefly…. Once upon a time, Main Road, Tolpuddle had a row of allotments behind about 8 of the houses, abutting the end of their gardens. Long before we arrived, the residents collectively agreed to buy the land so they could expand their gardens. So when we arrived, we had a potted history of the sale and two deeds for the sale (one for the house and old garden, and one for the new land).

So, many purchases (including ours AND our buyer’s) have taken place without so much as a raised eyebrow under this arrangement. That is until the first-time buyers’ solicitor took a look and decided to take it all the way to the mortgage company for their approval. They decided it was a risk (it isn’t) and the proper course of action would be to apply for a change of use for the land from allotment to garden.

Wanna know the real irony here? The mortgage company in question is the same one that our buyer used to purchase their house. Hilarious.

So now the first time buyers have been scared off. They have pulled out and our buyer is now looking at a minimum 8 week period to have a Change of Use application considered by the council.

All this while we are out of the country. The garden is getting horribly overgrown and we continue to pay Council Tax and Home Insurance. So, we’ve decided to put the house back on the market but also to leave some wriggle room for our buyer to continue the private sale with us.

Watch this space for developments…

EDIT: we just heard from our buyer that she’s had second thoughts too, so it’s a good thing we’ve moved on this already. She’s going to go ahead with any viewings amd may sell if things go well, but if not then that would be OK too.

Health update

Today I had my long-awaited MRI to help finalise my spondyloarthritis diagnosis. I’ve had these scans in the past (for my epilepsy) so I was interested to see how things may changed since my last one.

I was very mindful of my less-than-ideal CT scan appointment that ended up with an ambulance ride and admittance to hospital, but that was at a very low point in my condition. This time I came prepared with Cushion In A Bag™ so I could sit down while waiting. As it happens I only had to wait 2 minutes and I was in!

While the CT scan was 45 minutes of standing in awkward positions while in pain, the MRI was me lying down on a cushioned base, and I even had a leg support! So I was perfectly able to stay still for the duration of the scan.

The biggest change since my last MRI was the visual display. Staring up at the ceiling I was greeted by a soothing video image that changed periodically, had a changing background colour and (best part for me) each scan run was represented on a divided progress bar so I could see exactly how much of the process was left. I found a site that shows a similar system in use

I did notice that the birds on one video flew in exactly the same pattern each time it was shown, so I was immediately suspicious and declared “I will not clean!” before they taped me up and pushed me out of the air hatch. (One for the Silo fans there).

So, just a week to go before my outpatients appointment with the additional blood test (easy) and Shingles vaccination (horrible) having been undertaken as instructed.

The sheer volume of paperwork from all this is really building up. Fingers crossed that by the next blog post I’m on the new injections.

Eguisheim Wine Festival

I mentioned in my last post that the grape harvest is in full swing here in Eguisheim, and as part of that (and all across France I suspect) comes an annual wine festival.

Our tiny village homes about 1,400 people normally, but during the festival we’d been warned that the number of people swells to 10,000!

We’d been encouraged to come along by our friends at Timothy’s Microbrewery so headed there on the Saturday. I had to pick my time to make sure I was able to do some walking. We found that the Saturday leg of the event was more geared for the evening (my worst time) so came back on the Sunday mid-afternoon to catch the parade.

We had a great time, and thanks to Cushion In A Bag™ I was able to sit and relax as well as wander around and take photos (album here) which meant I could stay out longer than I’ve been able to previously.

It was a great atmosphere and really inclusive too, as local kids got to not only take part but dish out wine from the parade floats!

In all honesty it was a little weird wandering around with our festival drinking glasses having to pay to sample wine when on any other day it’s just a case of rolling up to the showroom for a degaustation, which is what we’d done earlier in the week at Wolfberger in one of its seven tasting rooms across Alsace.

Armed with a little AI prep as to what wines in particular we should look for we were able to make the best use of our 3 free tasting samples, and we walked away with 6 bottles of wine for home too. Just the 19 others to visit….

Tax office visit

I’d been asked by our financial advisers to obtain a French tax ID number as part of them setting up our Assurance Vie. They had, offhand, suggested it was as easy as going online (warning: not much in France is really that simple) which we found not to be true, so being the troopers we are we downloaded the forms and completed them by hand.

We also though handing them in to the local tax office would be our best bet to check we had everything correctly completed, so along we went one afternoon. There was a very small queue to get in, and we soon found that it was because someone was physically triaging the forms outside the office rather than people being allowed in.

In some ways this mirrored our experience at the visa application office in London, where someone was allocated to check paperwork before letting people in. Not sure if this is a uniquely French practice or not, but it did give us some assurance that we’d got the forms and supporting evidence all correct.

This was followed up by a phone call from the tax office the next day to clarify the nature of our pensions. Rachel was able to explain (in French) that we pay tax on these in the UK only as part of the Dual Taxation Treaty as they are classed as ‘Government’ pensions. This then led to a rapid conclusion to the process as we weren’t eligible to pay any French taxes (yet) so they wouldn’t issue a tax ID.

Our car is nearly French

While we bumble along personally without the much desired Carte Vitale (only available to us after 3 months residency) our car has made faster progress towards being fully French. This, however, has been a tortuous process that I have left fully to Rachel!

After obtaining a Certificate of EU Conformity, clearing customs on arrival, getting our duty exemption certificate, undertaking an MOT and applying for our registration plates things moved a little closer to completion last week by our receiving an email to say our application was incomplete.

(Just a note to any French process improvement folk out there; it would help greatly explaining exactly what is lacking so appropriate action can be taken. Thank you)

It turned out Rachel’s attempt to put things in her name was the root of the issue as the car and its UK registration is in my name, so reprinting/redrafting/resubmitting the forms was necessary.

Now we are playing a waiting game watching La Poste to see what the status of the delivery of our licence plates is (currently in Lille, apparently), but soon we should be able to rip off the nasty magnetic ‘UK’ sticker for good!