The Pieces of the Living in France Puzzle

How does one begin to complete the puzzle?

You may be asking yourself this very question if you’ve been dreaming of living your life or just a part of it, in France. Or maybe you think it would be just fabulous to have a pied-à-terre in Paris or village house in Provence where you can vacation from time to time? Doesn’t it all seem so daunting? And it can be if you think you have to complete the puzzle, bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece…yourself.

But, you don’t.

Fortunately, you have us. It’s our job to take you from a box of irregular pieces to completing the whole picture with as little effort as possible and without the worry of making mistakes along the way.

Now, you may be thinking that because you have lots of experience buying and selling real estate in the States, or have managed many administrative tasks in your lifetime, that there’s no reason to hire people like us to help you do what you believe you can do yourself. And maybe you can, but do you really want to make all the effort, spend a lot of time learning all you need to learn and again, take the risk of making costly mistakes? Remember, France is a very different world, with a different language, different system, different laws, different everything.

The answer is no…unless by some chance this is your chosen vocation.

Even the most accomplished of folks come to us, because they’re smart enough to realize that they aren’t smart enough to know everything they need to know, nor have the experience they need to have in order to feel secure, depending on their own capabilities.

We’ve recently had many requests from people who think they just need to complete one piece of the puzzle to fulfill the whole picture. Take financing, for example. This is the corner piece of the puzzle that determines the budget for the purchase. So, maybe you were surfing the Internet, found a few apartments or homes that fit your dream wish list, but now you need the financing? So, you turn to us. And maybe you proceeded on your own, bought a property that needs renovation, and you’re not well enough resourced to find a contractor? Meanwhile, you see we work with accomplished designers and contractors so you hope we can fill in that one piece of the puzzle for you? Some of the other requests we’ve had have to do with banking, utility connections, long-term or short-term rentals, immigration issues, etc., etc., etc.

It just doesn’t work that way—when you see each piece as independent from the others. Just like thinking you can renovate your property room-by-room, and still live in the property without breathing in the dust, you can’t successfully make this dream come true by seeing each element without seeing the whole picture. They aren’t…they are all integral, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle must fit together. So must the elements that can make this dream to live in France come true.

This is where working with us makes the difference between success in completing the picture or not. It all starts with a consultation with me.

(Photo by Patty Sadauskas)

I’ve changed the direction of many of our clients in the two brief hours of our meeting, in person or on Zoom, simply because I offer ideas and strategies that they hadn’t considered. More often than not, the ideas they dream don’t equate to the reality and that’s where I can offer up a truer picture—having the experience of living in France for almost 30 years. For example, a mature single woman may have dreams of living in a stone cottage in the Occitanie, but did she consider that she will need to get a French driving license (difficult and expensive), buy a car (expensive) and still end up lonely, even if tending the beautiful garden of her dreams in La France Profonde? What comes to mind is “be careful of what you wish for!”

Without this consultation, we don’t have the framework for the puzzle. And isn’t that how you start a jigsaw puzzle? By putting together the outside, straight-edged pieces? This is where we start.

During the consultation, we’re going to discuss every aspect of your goals, hopes and desires…as well as your expectations. Together we’re going to put them into perspective and then find the ways to put it all into action…one piece at a time, and in the right order.

In essence, we provide all of the services you need related to living and investing in France, some of which are part of a package, others are add-ons. If I don’t have the specific answer to a question, we have the resources and a way of finding it.

The bottom line is that not only should you not do this alone, without professional advice, but don’t do it piecemeal. Let us help you complete the picture from the framework to the final touches.

Sure, there is a small cost to the consultation, but it applies toward many of our services, and is absolutely necessary before you can move forward toward fulfilling your dreams.

To see everything we do, here’s our link to one-stop living and investing in France.

And to book your consultation with me, visit our Consultation page or email us today.

A la prochaine…