Green-Acres, or are they. (EN)

Now for a series of past romances. Houses that were a coup-de-coeur, but that we did not or could not acquire. But first a bit about Green-Acres.

www.green-acres.com is a really nice website if you are looking for a house abroad. Type in your budget, desired amount of land, possibly a region, and use the advanced search for more criteria. An omission is that you cannot combine a keyword and a budget, so you cannot search for "watermill" with a certain budget only. I tried to contact them about that, to no avail.

Store your search as an email alert, and you'll be occupied with your new hobby for a while each day, or each week.

Anyway, if you have found an interesting advert, it gets, ehh.. interesting. The pages offer "Contact the seller", where you can enter your personalia, and a message asking for information. The site is in English, but probably the estate agent behind the advert is not. Best send messages in both English and French. Google Translate is your friend, but beware that you need to check very well what it makes of your intentions. Always make copious use of "monsieur" ou "madame", and end letters gracefully with a "bien cordialement", or something similar. Being civilized in writing helps. How things are in real life may be another matter...

Don't be disappointed if you do not get a reply. In my experience you are lucky if a quarter of your inquiries actually get a response. There are a few reasons for that. One reason is that a house in France may be for sale at the same time by a number of estate agents, while in The Netherlands you have a contract with just one estate agent. So, in France estate agents are each other's competitors, and they all fear that their colleague will sell the house, and earn the fee. Or, that you will locate the actual owner, and buy the house off of him, and not pay any fee. One of the consequences is that adverts never tell you the exact location of a property. Worse, sometimes they will lie away 25 kilometers or more.

If you are in another country, and want to know if a house is suitable for you, and want to know the ins and outs before visiting you are in for an interesting ride. Do find the exact location of a house, not only do they lie about location, but a "havre de paix" and "cadre verdoyant" or even "bucolique" may have an open mine, Route National, a sewage processing plant, or a motocross within smelling and hearing distance. Google Maps, Google Earth (application for Mac, Windows, iOS) and Bing Maps are useful, and each have their own merit.

At the same time, French estate agents seem not to like prospective customers that are far away. It may be that they are foreign, or even worse: Dutch. And those types always want to know the location of a house, you know. And they ask all kinds of questions. Very tiresome. It can also be their experience is that more local sells better. Which is understandable, too.

Some people, on a certain forum, tell you that you first need to become French with the French. Convince them you are good for their family home. And then, perhaps, they will let go of their ancient heritage, and probably at a better price than you would have expected. Maybe that is true sometimes. But in love, war, and selling houses everything seems to be allowed. So beware. In the end it is a quite mundane business transaction where a pile of stones exchanges hands for a lot of money. And where a lot of money is involved morals shift. Be suspicious. Be very suspicious. And don't drink too much pastis with the owner. He might be better at it.

Here are a few tips for locating a property:

• See if you can find the house on holiday rental sites. Many houses are rented out to make them pay for themselves a bit. And location and directions are a lot less secret on rental sites, and they usually have a lot more photos.
  
• Google Maps is very good for quick searches. Switch between map and aerial view to find the house. Street View is brilliant to see if it really is the house you are after, and to see the environment. Sometimes the Street View images taken a year or more ago already have the "A Vendre" sign, which is a clue to you the house has been for sale a while already.
  
• Google Earth (PRO) is good if you know that a property is x km from another place and y km from another place. Draw circles on the map, and you have a smaller area to investigate.
  
• Once you have located your property use Bing maps for a better aerial view, using the "birds eye view", and select the "detailed look". The aerial photos there a much better than Google's. Bing Maps is useless for searching.
• The aerial photos of the various map sites are NOT updated very regularly. Beware that in the mean time that open mine, that route national, or that sewage plant may have been constructed, or a hi-speed rail connection planned near or over your prospective habitation. 
  
• Often adverts will tell you a property is x minutes from a certain motorway. Assume each km is a minute, and you have a distance. If they say it is located between A and B, have Google Maps calculate a route, and see if you can locate a plausible location.
  
• If the advert has a photo of the house with a satellite dish: that always faces south.
  
• Look at the colour and texture of the roof, and the shape of the house, then fly across the area with Google Maps in "earth" mode, or with Google Earth.
  
• Mills and houses near rivers: see if you can locate a river in the area. Google Maps shows rivers in blue on the map, unfortunately in "earth" mode the rivers aren't clear, but if you switch to and fro you will find them.
  
• If estate agents do not respond: copy a bit of the advert text that has some defining criteria, and simply look it up with Google.

  "Located just a short drive from vibrant Montpellier and the Mediterranean Sea, this authentic Templar watermill will take you back in time.."

  You will find the same advert text, but with different estate agents. They all use the same text you know.
  
• In general: English estate agents are a lot more forthcoming with information than French ones.
  
• You can always ask the estate agent if you signing a "bon de visite" will help them tell you the location of a house. It is a statement that the estate agent has shown you the house, and a reassurement that if you buy the house he will receive the fee. 
  
• Write in French, don't assume the estate agent is or has someone who can speak another language, unless they tell you they do.
  
• Do not go and visit just with the info from the advert. 
  
• Be absolutely sure a house is still available, websites have many properties still listed that were already sold a year ago.
  
• Do look a bit above your actual budget: sometimes a house that you love is above your budget for a long while, and you won't see it. Then it sometimes has a price drop so it could fit your budget. If that happens you need to act faster, as it will get attention form a lot more prospective buyers, and might get sold quickly. Which is, after all, exactly the intention of price drops.

Following this entry will be a series of romances past, that were never to be. Coup-de-coeurs that died before flowering, some still haunting passionate dreams...