Some of you may be aware that for the period April 2019 through until July 2021 we renovated a nearby house to let as a gite (it took much longer than we hoped due to covid lockdowns and material supply issues) - the buying process and renovation was covered here:
Shortly after completing the work and after a couple of holiday lets we got distracted with another nearby property to renovate as an investment - we had our home valued by Estate Agents and were pleasantly surprised, which made us wonder what the gite was worth? - so we had that valued also and again were pleasantly surprised.
Throughout doing the work we had absolutely no intention of selling the gite as we had really taken to the house, the village and the neighbours. We took the difficult decision to sell the recently renovated gite to enable our next adventure. The gite sold to the first people that viewed it - they are a lovely couple from Ireland who are now thoroughly enjoying the house and the location. The sale went through in mid-December 2021.
Unfortunately after the Compromis de Vente had been signed by all parties on the gite, the house that we were hoping to buy was withdrawn but we continued with the sale anyway (it did briefly appear again then disappeared once more!). We also showed interest in another house that has also fallen through.
I have detailed in another thread what we are next planning to tackle, and we are following the suggestion from @graham and are about to appoint a maitre d’œuvre:
As requested by @Stella I will be providing regular updates of this project also - it will be great to get the full potential from our original small holiday home purchased in 2014 which became our cramped permanent home in 2019 when we moved from UK prior to Brexit.
I have however in the meantime taken the experienced gained from buying and selling a number of houses in France the ongoing renovation work over the passed 8 years and…yep you guessed it I have joined the team at an Estate Agents.
I have to admit that it wasn’t exactly part of my grand plan of moving to France and setting up a gite -to become an Estate Agent - but and it is a big BUT, I have to admit I am really enjoying it. My office is now in St Emilion so what is not to like!:
Compared to my office old in UK on the edge of Milton Keynes - the drive though the vineyards of St Emilion (with the roof down obviously) as my daily commute really isn’t too bad at all.
For the roof down reference see here:
I had to try and convince one of the owners of the Estate Agency that I had an understanding of how the French property market operated and that my French was up to an appropriate level - and after an hour of informal chat and a test of translating property details English>French and French>English to my amazement I was accepted.
I had the challenge of adding an extra activity to my AE status - and eventually after several failed attempts online I followed the approach of @Stella and went in person to the local Infogreffe Tribunal and within a couple of minutes it was done (had previously failed for 7 weeks on the website trying to achieve this!)
I have to embark on a fixed amount of statutory training and a huge amount of information to take on but it is great to have a challenge again.
The work environment is in an international team (French, Italian, American, Belarusian and British) and with this I hope to rapidly improve my French. The team are all remarkably tolerant of my never ending list of questions - in what I think is French!
I hope that I can offer realistic advice to potential clients on the renovation options at particular properties - from the previous renovations that we have undertaken.
So if you are in the area of St Emilion pop in to say Bonjour - and obviously if you are interested in buying/selling a house in the Gironde area I would be delighted to help.
Bordeaux & Beyond, the property specialists in the South West of France. - you may even notice one of the houses on the homepage in the Sold section!
