LIVING THE DREAM

Buying a house in another country is a big deal, there’s no two ways about it! It can take years of planning and then there is the search for that perfect property – ‘the dream home’.

For Yorkshire couple Andrew and Jacky, it took them 4 years to find the house of their dreams, and only after a strange twist of fate!

Initially, they hadn’t a clue where in France they wanted to buy but after Jacky took a residential French language course in the Sancerre, their focus began to narrow down to the Loire Valley.
They started to visit several property agents (l’agence immobilier); their brief was quite specific: “we don’t want remote, and we don’t want a huge building project.”

Jacky, who is a food safety and product development executive says: “On a fruitless trip in October 2019, we were driving back to Rotterdam to catch the ferry to Hull. We were feeling down, to be honest, and felt it was a wasted journey. I spent a few hours surfing around the Internet in the hope of spotting something… and then, there it was, a house that we hadn’t seen before and with an agent we had never spoken with.”

The agence immobilier was France4U! The agent, Linda Bakker, looking after the Loire Valley and Sancerre.
“I was a little surprised as we had thought France4U was mainly covering the Burgundy region” adds Jacky, “luckily we were wrong!”

The problem for Andrew and Jacky was that there was no way they could visit the property, as they were on their way back to the UK. So, they rang friends in-country, and arranged for them to view the property with Linda. Their friends loved it and urged the couple to return to France to view it for themselves.

Long story short… they had found their dream home!

Located in Varennes-lès-Narcy, a commune to the southeast of Sancerre in the Nièvre department in eastern France, the sale was completed in September 2020. Of course, COVID got in the way and there were a good number of cancelled trips to see their new purchase and it was not until July 2021 that they finally got the keys to their new home in France.

Having said that, they have no regrets and love the house which is in a small hamlet close to the ruins of the Château de Passy-les-Tours.