There's no going back now!

After signing the Compromis, you have a legally enforced ten day cooling off period. This gives the option to change your mind without financial penalty . During this time no one involved in the process can do anything. Their hands are tied.

On day eleven we had to transfer our deposit to the holding account of our notaire who holds the funds until completion. This sounds simple right? It actually caused us a few issues. We had decided to use a money transfer company to arrange the transaction and they made this sound like they would just take care of everything for us. In reality it was an ordeal! We had to transfer the money in stages from our UK account as there were limits on the amount for international transfers. These funds were then held by the transfer company until the full amount was available and also until the exchange rate was in our favour. Finally everything aligned and the deposit was paid. There was no going back now!

For us there was nothing to do now but wait. It was now the end of January and we had been given a tentative completion date at the end of April. Behind the scenes however, there was lots going on.

The bank in France was still looking at our request for a mortgage and literally everything was hanging on a favourable outcome. Meanwhile the notaire had arranged property searches on the house and land and made an application to SAFER (Société d’Aménagement Foncier et d’Établissement Rural) on our behalf. If you buy a house in a French agricultural area you have to notify SAFER and make sure they do not want to buy the property or land for agricultural reasons. Once the request is submitted, SAFER has two months to inform you they would like to purchase the property. Whilst we were reassured that this rarely happens there was still a possibility that our dream could be snatched from us and there would be nothing we could do about it.

As we had added a clause to the sale contract regarding permissions for a pool and extension, we also had to wait for a decision to be made by the local authority. Again a process that takes two months.

So with the Notaire, estate agent and the mortgage advisor updating us on progress every now again we had done everything we could for the time being and so began the long, long wait. It was torture!

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