How to buy a dream home in France with very little money

Part 2.
We pushed open the door and walked confidently in.
‘We have an appointment at 10 a.m.’
The phone jangled. ‘Excuse me a moment’. The moment lasted twenty minutes.
Why is it that staff always jump to answer the phone, at the expense of the people who have made the effort to appear in person. Just calm down, calm down and relax.
We walked over to look at some enlarged photos of some very impressive houses in the region. Unfortunately, on putting on our reading glasses, the small-print prices also looked very impressive. Way beyond our agreed budget.
He whispered ‘I thought you said houses in this region were supposed to be cheap’.
‘Shh, she’s coming back.’
She brushed a tendril of hair off her perspiring forehead and apologised for the delay. ‘Sorry about that. It gets pretty hectic in here, as you can see.’ She waved her hand airily around the office, where a harassed assistant was also answering phones ten to the dozen. ‘Now then, what exactly is your budget range?’ She obviously liked getting straight away down to the nitty-gritty.
‘Well, actually, we were rather hoping to find something in the hundred to two hundred thousand euros mark…’
‘Oh,’ followed by a short intake of breath, as she sat down at her desk and began rummaging in the stacks of folders lying haphazardly on her old wooden desk. ‘Well, we do have a range here somewhere. Let me see…..Ah yes, here it is. What I suggest is that you take this folder and go through it slowly over there…,’ pointing to a desk in a dark corner away from the more prestigious house photos we saw earlier.
Obediently, we did as we were told, skulking with some embarrassment over to the obviously lower-priced area of the office. We sat down heavily as the agent’s phone began jangling incessantly once again. We could hear her voice, suddenly transformed ‘Bonjour Monsieur Feret. Ça va? Ooh la la, vous avez choisi la maison grande à 800,000 euros? Bon, très bon!’
I could hear my other half’s teeth gnashing in snarling frustration.
‘Don’t worry,’ I whispered back. ‘I’m sure we’ll find something in here to suit us,’ glancing hopefully at the folder in front of us. I mean they must want to sell these or they wouldn’t have included them in their repertoire, would they?’
I could see a glazed look come into his eyes. We had less than a fortnight to find our house or we were heading for homelessness. The clock on our flat rental back home was counting down, and then we would be out on the streets. No. I was determined that it wouldn’t come to that. Surely one of these houses would suit us?
The agent put down the phone, stood up and hurried over to us.
‘Well, how are you two getting on? Found anything you like?’
I pointed out all the ones that were hovering around the one fifty thousand mark, or rather one fifty thousand euros. She smiled and said ‘Good. I’ll just get the car and we’ll go and take a look.’
We were flummoxed. We hadn’t realised that she herself would take us round every one of them right this minute. I hid my surprise, gathered my large bag and creaking husband and followed her smartly out of the shop and over the greasy cobbles to her car.
Overhead a few drops of fine rain had just started to fall, making our way even more slippery.
‘Probably the only rain all day,’ grumbled him indoors.
‘Stop being like Victor Meldrew,’ I hissed, as we rushed after her disappearing figure as she sharply turned a corner into another tiny alleyway. Looking up, it seemed as though the residents on either side could kiss or shake hands with each other, if they had a mind, so close were their leaning turret windows. Amazing.
‘Here we are,’ she called, as we carefully picked our way after her, trying to avoid the dog mess everywhere.
‘Damn, too late,’ said he, struggling to scrape his shoes on the crépi walls either side.
‘Don’t do that!’ Oh God, why are husbands like children sometimes?
And so began the journey from hell. The agent drove like a lunatic around the winding country roads, obviously keen to keep to her tight time schedule, with me feeling the onset of my usual nausea. I took several deep breaths and opened a window, only to let in a gust of cold, misty air making everyone inside cough. I closed it again and suffered in silence.
‘Ah, here we are,’ the agent said brightly.
We looked out. Was this the first property that looked so impressive in the photo? What had seemed like a place with lots of space turned out to be jammed in the middle of a courtyard. We knew as soon as we saw it that it wasn’t for us, but we dutifully walked around it. She soon saw, though, from our unspoken body language that it was time to move on to property two. This had plenty of space but was so ramshackle that it would take hundreds of thousands of pounds of renovation to bring up to standard. Our faces fell and we started to panic. And so the property tour continued, from one disaster after another, with the best one unfortunately having a stone tomb in the grounds at the front, complete with large cross and rosary beads to the fore. We couldn’t live with a dead body lying in our front garden and couldn’t face being reminded of our own mortality everytime we looked out each morning.
Eventually, after hours of looking, we returned dejectedly to the agency. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ I confided to the agent.
........To be continued next Sunday