Once you have an appointment for the CDV, you might expect to see a draft copy of the legal contract to review well in advance to give you a chance to read through it. Sometimes that happens, often it will only get sent out just before the appointment, sometimes it won’t get sent out in advance at all. My buyers were not happy with this, despite explanations in advance that this was normal for France. Notaires in France are vital to the process, representatives of the French state, and you can not make them work to your schedule or how you would prefer they work. Also, they all work totally differently to each other. The draft contract might contain errors - I have seen names spelt incorrectly even. It is a real living document that gets updated during the course of the meeting.

This first signing was supposed to happen before my extended summer family vacation. It did not. All of the independent reports about the property including the full diagnostics had been sent to the buyers after the first viewing and before they made an offer. When they made the offer, I checked with them that they had read and understood them. I always get everything in writing to confirm everything is understood before presenting an offer. It transpired though that this wasn’t true, and only now were they translating the reports and reading them. The translation apps can work really well, or they can give someone the totally wrong idea about what the report actually says depending on how you use them. No prizes for guessing that my buyers had brought up multiple issues in the reports. Those reports literally said that those aspects were not issues. Further explanations were given, another delay to the signing date. As things had become increasingly tricky, we left the family vacation early to drive back to be at the signing in person to try and deal with any further issues.

On the road back a voice note appears on my WhatsApp. No missed call. But it is from the buyers. At the nearest motorway services I listen to a voicenote that simply says:

“We’re pulling out, please tell the sellers that we’re sorry but we’ve just really got a lot going on at the moment.”

Fuck. Real estate agents in France generally get nowhere near the headline commission that you see. Most are “independent” but actually tied to an agency that takes the majority of the commission. In this case of the €50k commission the actual take home was going to be around €14k, but still a big deal for most agents in France.

There follows a difficult call with the sellers to explain, and no answer from the buyers when I call. The sellers decide to list with a second competitor agency.

The next contact I have from these buyers is about 6 weeks later. It’s a WhatsApp on a Sunday evening,

“Is the property still for sale?”

“Yes”

“We can’t stop thinking about it. We’d still like to buy it.”

I speak with the buyers and sellers and the deal is back on. A week later the buyers want to renegotiate the price. Unbelievable, but I speak with the sellers. I have to agree to cut my fee to get the deal re-agreed. Everyone involved in the deal is a millionaire except me.

The date for the CDV signing gets into the notaire’s diary very quickly as all the work had already been done. I get the notaire’s office early, the sellers are already there and we have a joke about how we weren’t expecting this after what happened before. As we are walking into the meeting a shake hands with the notaire. As we shake hands the notaire says,

“I’ve just had an email from the buyers, the deal is off.”

I kind of chuckle but don’t get the joke. It’s not a joke. I check email, and there is indeed an email from the buyers timed 1 minute before the start of the meeting saying that the wife is not feeling very well and they need to pull of of the deed but they’re sorry.

Remember that this is the deal that doesn’t die?!

Two weeks later, on another Sunday night and see another WhatsApp. It’s almost the same message as the previous time so I go back through the messages to double check that I’m somehow not re-reading the previous message. I’m not. The following week there are some very tense calls but it seems like the deal is back on.

There is one new sticking point this time. Despite prior conversations with me, and confirming their understanding on various issues in writing they have realised that there is no structural survey available. This is standard in France. If as a buyer you want one, you need to organise, pay for and get the seller’s approval for the access to the property. They wanted the survey to happen between the CDV and the final signing, with a clause in the CDV to allow them to pull out without losing their deposit if they were not happy with the results of the survey. In effect, if it were possible to include a clause like this it would totally negate the deposit as it would just allow a buyer to find any small thing in the report to allow them to pull out without financial penalty.

It is possible for clauses to be inserted into the CDV for events that have not yet happened. For instance, it can be for a French mortgage where if the bank decides against it at the last minute the buyer can pull out without penalty. Also, sometimes an offer is negotiated that means a seller has to get some work carried out before the final signing. The notaire checks that this has been completed, and if not will hold back part of the purchase price until it is.

I’ve had lots of buyers initially say that they want a structural survey, but it is quite expensive, and I’ve never actually had anyone follow through with paying for it. The same happened here. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask to get one carried out, but you would need to do it much earlier in the process. I had gone through the diagnostic reports with the buyers before their offer and explained what they covered, and that this was all of the reports.

The CDV did eventually get signed with just the notaire in the room on his own. I waited impatiently for the confirmation and signed copy from the notaire, but it arrived. Now there was just the 10 day cooling off period to get through I hoped.

The day of the final signing, Acte de Vente (ADV) arrived, and I had organised a time for the final walk-through with the buyerts before the final signing in the afternoon. I get there early, it is just as well. The electronic gates to the driveway do not work. The sellers have cancelled the electricity contract. If you’re selling a property in France please don’t do this! Eventually the electricity is back on, and the gates open. The sellers arrive, or one of them does. The husband gets out of his car and his first words to me are,

“I don’t suppose there’s anyway we can get out of this without losing our deposit is there?”

“No.”

I have never had another deal like this. Ultimately the sellers were very happy, and the buyers did get what they really wanted, which was the right property to start their new business from.

If you’re thinking about making an offer, make sure that you have read and understood all of the reports that the agent has given you about the property. It’s one of my five questions that you should be able to answer before making an offer: