Having already decided to look for a property in France. We had finally found “our Area”!

After a heavenly two-week sojourn in the Gers, we were smitten. So smitten, in fact, that we decided to chuck it all in and look for a holiday home in this little slice of French perfection. Easier said than done, of course.

Enter the Great Gers House Hunt of 2019.

neon sign

First stop: the internet, that vast and bewildering beast. Armed with our GCSE French and a healthy dose of optimism, we plunged into the abyss of online estate agents. Hundreds of them. Thousands of listings. Enough photos of stone cottages with swimming pools to make you question your entire life. It was overwhelming, like trying to choose a croissant from a pastry counter the size of the Grand Canyon.

Days morphed into a blur of scrolling and sighing, as our “maybe” list ballooned faster than a soufflé.Our poor inbox groaned under the weight of property links, each one a tempting whisper of French bliss. But keeping track of it all was a total nightmare?

messy postit notes

But then, a stroke of genius! The spreadsheet, our glorious digital knight in shining pixels. It became our battlefield, our oracle, our therapist and the tamer of property pandemonium. We colour-coded, we categorised, we compared square footage with the zeal of Olympic-level data miners. Finally, we had a semblance of order in the chaos.

Order and chaos scrabble tiles

The list of potentials shrank, the agents were contacted, and the dreaming intensified. We pictured ourselves sipping wine on sun-drenched terraces. The first viewing trip loomed, a thrilling mix of excitement and existential dread. Would our dream home be a crumbling money pit or a sun-drenched haven? It was time to move this online foray into the real world!

Merci avoir lu

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