A Real Home

9 November 08

For the first time in my life, I’m a home owner, and it’s not even in my home country. The Wion’s bought a house in a relatively quiet community on the outskirts of Strasbourg. It’s not perfect and certainly not the last, but it’s solid, well-kept by the previous, original owner and we have a list of projects growing that should be fun to tackle and write about.

Finding the house has been a long ordeal, and picking this particular area is largely a compromise influenced by multiple factors, including work locations, relativity to my wife’s parents, and the fact I do not yet have a car in France. Without a doubt, all the credit and hard work goes to my wife, who was literally obsessed for the past two years with finding a home. She did the endless work of looking, calling, dealing with banks and insurance companies, reminding me of my uselessness…you name it. She had to do this, though, being fluent in the language and more savvy of the French system (which is a bit complex). All I could do was be a voice of support and consideration of the many houses we visited. I can honestly say the house we bought is the best of all we looked at, all things considering. My wife rocks.

A Seller’s Divorce is a Buyer’s Gain

We scouted about 15 homes in our quest. That’s probably a lot more homes than most potential buyers look at. Nearly all of them were on the market because of divorce. No joke. We would always ask the question why the house was on sale, either to the real estate agent or to the sellers directly, and divorce was the answer most of the time. Sellers under these conditions always made it clear the asking price was negotiable and they would expect you to make an offer against what they were asking. Most of the homes didn’t appeal to us or were too incompatible with our constraints. In these cases, we never bothered haggling.

The home we did buy was also available due to divorce, but in this case sellers were initially inflexible on their asking price. We had to badger around and fain disinterest for several months (literally), even risk losing the house to other buyers as we earnestly looked at other homes. However, time passed, the house remained available, and the sellers cracked under the desire to separate and move on with things. They called us and accepted our offer which was 45,000€ less than what they originally wanted. Not earth-shattering, but certainly savings nonetheless.

Inevitable Downsides

There’s no such thing as the perfect house when you are buying one and/or have a limited budget (as opposed to building on a big plot of land with a Paul Allen account). Inevitably there’s things you need to change and/or improve to suit your sensibilities and comfort, and even then your likely to face constraints of some kind that prevents you from doing what you ideally might do. Being it’s my first home, I’m not complaining too much, but there’s a couple things that will take some getting used to.

The first stickler for me is that our neighbors are practically spitting distance on all sides. This is not unique to our place, however, because indeed our neighbors could say the same thing, and their neighbors and so forth right out to the edge of the corn fields. In fact, this close proximity seems typical in the Bas-Rhin region; you can find it just about everywhere. As a home owner, you can only hope your neighbors are decent folk, and so far our neighbors all seem to be. Our house is also on the end of a private cul-de-sac so that enhances the neighborly factor a bit.

Another development trend in this region is to make houses with steep roof angles. I really hate this because houses with steep roofs loose significant habitable, head-safe space inside. This was a real point of contention for me during the house hunting because you just can’t get away from it around here; communities look like Alpine ski lodges in architecture. I had a talk with an acquaintance about this. He told me the trend is historical and indeed originally a functional design against the heavy snow storms that used to hit this part of France. He agreed there seems no point for continuing the trend because climate change has impacted snowfall here to the point where residents are lucky to see snow at all in a given winter. I’ve been here 4 years now and I’ve only seen a couple days worth of snow at the longest stretch; nothing that would cave a roof in, that’s for sure, mostly a lot of slush. Anyway, our house is no different and it’s the one thing that will always nag me to sell and move, or bring in an architect for some major reframing and extension.

Buying Means Home Improvement

With any new home, I imagine, comes the desire to improve it, and we have some projects lined up for when time and money allows. Our projects already range from to do immediately to if the planets align just right.

Projects likely to be realized include stripping wallpaper and painting the entire house (in progress), remodeling the kitchen and baths, finishing the unfinished basement rooms (laundry, office, shop) (in progress), retiling the terrace (in progress), replacing the above-ground swimming pool (which came with the house) with a pergola or other garden abode for quiet retreats and bar-b-ques, some landscaping, and other outdoor aims that are a bit more difficult to put simply.

A much, much bigger project, which is not yet certain to happen, is to replace the roof; getting rid of the steep slopes so all living space benefits with full-height ceilings. I even want to take this up to the attic level, which would effectively give us a third floor on the house and enough space for two more large rooms and an expanded stairwell. I’ve seen other houses in the area undertaking similar alterations, so it must be possible with the right permit.

Alas, winter approaches fast and the economy suffers. We’ll start with the smallest projects that provide the most benefit for day-to-day living and go from there.