Money, Money, Money!

Today has been all about money! (It should have been about doing some writing work, but ho-hum!) When buying property abroad the exchange rate can really mess with your finances. You agree to paying 21,000€ for your house and if you aren't careful the £18,300 you think it's going to be suddenly becomes £20,000.

So, I have been chatting via email with a currency exchange service all day, as I am rubbish on the phone, to work out the ins and outs of setting up what is known as a forward contract. Basically it means that I 'buy' my currency now, at the current exchange rate so I don't get any nasty surprises when I come to the day to send the cash over to the notaire! You can lock in the rate for up to 12 months, but if you complete before then there's no charge to get the cash earlier and you can make an arrangement to extend it or renogitate it if things take longer than expected.

Given the chaos in the markets these days, what with killer viruses and Brexit instability we decided that we'd really like to make sure we know what we will be paying for come the day we complete our property purchase. Obviously, we run the risk of missing out on a higher rate should things improve, but we are setting it at an amount we are happy with and thus insuring ourselves against having to pay more for our house than we need to.

We have narrowed our search down to two properties and are waiting for restrictions in France to be lifted so that our surveyor can go and check them over. We know that both need a lot of work, and that it is going to take us quite a while to get them exactly the way we want them, but despite the lockdown making things difficult we are starting to get a little bit excited that we may be buying soon!

The first house is my original first love! I fell hook line and sinker for this one the moment I saw it - it's also a steal for the amount of house and land we will be getting for our money. The second property, the white house with its attached barn, is super cute but it is tiny and therefore what we can do with it is limited.

Both have over an acre of land, so our main hope (we have finally decided) is to set up a small and exclusive glamping site - if we can get the permissions to do so. I wrote to the mairie for each property and have asked if they think it likely that we would be granted permission to set up our glamping site, so the decision may simply come down to which one says yes it would be possible!

If we can do this, it would give us an income, with a relatively small outlay, coming in as we renovate and reconfigure the houses to suit our needs. This is really important as both houses would need a lot of work to make them liveable - let alone to make them ready to receive paying guests!

The first house has a lot of living space - but it is an absolute wreck. It needs everything doing to it (it doesn't even have a loo or a bathroom at the moment!) but the potential is huge and would mean we could add a chambre d'hôtes to the business plan, and I would be able to create a fully accessible letting room on the ground floor of the barn - which would be my dream. We would also be able to turn the rest of the downstairs part of the barn into a gîte (or a soundproofed music room - which may well be what we plump for!) whereas with the little white house we would only really be able to create a small gîte.

The little white house is liveable, but the layout is really peculiar and I think would only really become permanently liveable if we ripped everything out inside and started from scratch! It has been used as a holiday home and if that was all we wanted, then we'd be able to live with the odd-shaped bedrooms and the tiny, shower-only bathroom. I am a bath girl all the way because of all the aches and pains (and the POTSy nonsense making standing up to have showers pretty impossible). There is a small workshop too that could be turned into something, but I'm not sure just what!

Every day we are moving just a little bit closer to our goals, and with every step we take it feels as though we are getting ever closer to our move. I have accepted that whatever happens it will be some time before we make the move permanent - but it is actually happening at last and that feels momentous. Won't be long now before we make one of these beautiful places our home.