How Did We Find Our House

Week 7 in France 9/14-9/20/2025

Welcome to the 35th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog.

Our offer on the house in Chabanais was accepted and the paperwork is flowing.

The weather most of this week has been beautiful, cool in the morning and warms up nicely over the day. Evenings are super nice. A bit of rain over the weekend, but not horrible.

Things on the agenda this week:

• Gather Paperwork
• Bank accounts for Proof of funds
• Proof that funds are not a “money laundering” scheme

Why a Blog?

If this is your first visit to our blog, we will try to keep the story of our move to France interesting enough to bring you back each week. Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” moving from Venice, Florida and starting a new chapter of our life in the French countryside as retired expats.

As we shared our move plans with friends and family, we were asked questions about who, what, why, when and where, so we figured that there is enough interest to share the experience. So, we started this blog. Our plan is to publish a brief update on our life in France every Sunday. Hopefully we answer some of those questions and keep answering more as we work our way to our new life. We will also include thoughts on the lifestyle and culture of our new home.

After a little over a year of planning and fretting we moved to France on 1 August 2025.

The Week in General

As I mentioned above the weather has been very nice and the views from our location in Duras of the surrounding farms are exquisite. We are just a couple of blocks from the Chateau, so we are sitting high above the surrounding scenery.

We had another excellent dinner at Parvas Magna on Tuesday evening, and Rosie met another little girl. We are enjoying being able to take Rosie with us just about every place we go.

When we returned our first rental car I had forgotten to take the spare key. We got the address of the place where we were to send the key and got that done this week. Including a tracking number, the cost to mail the key was just under 4 euros.

Laundry cost a small fortune this week at the laundromat. It will be great to have a washer and dryer in our new place. We are pretty sure that a dryer will be easy to install, and a washer is already in place.

We started a list of things that we will need to buy for our new place. A dryer is high on the list. We will search local brocantes for furniture, dishes and silverware. We might be able to find some garden furniture there too. Brocantes are a thing here in France and are very popular places to buy good used stuff. There are at least 2 brocantes in the village here. There is also Facebook Marketplace in regional areas also.

We went to Marmande to check out some “Big Box Stores” to start to get a feel for furniture and appliance prices. Just like in the states there are stores in our price range and some as EB calls them “Sheshe”. Tres cher (very expensive).

We found a store called Hemisphere and we found just about everything that we have on our list except a coffee maker. Hopefully we can find a Hemisphere store near the new place when the time comes to furnish it.

I want to get a wood/pellet burner for ambiance and mostly to save on utilities to warm the house in the winter. This will have to be from a professional as we will need proper installation. The house is pretty much set up for one, so it is just a matter of getting one installed. I don’t know why the previous owners took it out. Something to find out. I think they had a wood burner which can be a little messy. The combination wood and pellet burner will leave the wood option open. They can be little pricier, but we will see.

On Saturday we splurged and went to a really cool outdoor concert at the Chateau. It was called Le Festival de l’Espoir (Festival of Hope) It was 20 euros each entry fee, 5 euros for dinner and 12 for wine. We stayed until 9:30 or so. We missed the fireworks, but we knew Rosie was probably pretty upset. This was one event that she could not attend. Rain was forecast but it held off until after the event. It was a charity event to raise money for kids.

They had all kinds of food trucks and long trestle tables set up so there was plenty of room to find a spot to sit and eat. In the picture below I tried to get a picture of the stage before the sun went down. Got the Chateau in the background and lots of people already crowded around the stage. After we finished our sausage and frites we grabbed a bottle of wine and walked over to get in the mix. It was all in French, but music is music. Great fun.

How Did We Find Our House?

I see on forums and face book groups the question all of the time. How do you find a house in France? EB was the driving force behind our search, and she spent countless hours searching the internet while we were still in Florida and while we have been in France.

We set a budget and that budget helped steer the search too. As in any country some regions have different general price points so given our budget and our expectations of our house hunt the choices of locations were narrowed. Paris and Nice and Strasbourg were out. LOL

Big cities were never seriously on our radar anyway. We were more interested in the countryside. Although I must say we like the amenities that the bigger cities offer. Things like great public transportation, museums and cultural stuff and restaurants too, and easy access to health care. That said there are amenities in the smaller towns and villages that are not too far off the mark. A simple compromise. If we get the itch, we can drive or take the high-speed train or even fly to the big cities for a long weekend. We are already thinking about places that we might plan a trip of a few days or a week to explore. We will go to Lyon for a couple of days in October to meet Leif and Lisa at their Viking cruise stop there. Maybe Bordeaux in November if Cindy and Don are up for it when they are here.

To be honest luck played a part in the house search too. It was a little serendipity that got us looking in the Confolens area. I’m sure that I mentioned that during EB’s online searching she found an Airbnb in Saint Germain de Confolens for our second 3 months stay. It turned out that the Airbnb host (Teddy) is also an agent for the Leggett Immobilier company (A big Real Estate company in France). It followed that we would work with her to search in the area. More online searching and communications with Teddy and EB had a long list of places to visit and view. So instead of waiting until we move to Saint Germain de Confolens for 3 months EB asked if we could book the Airbnb for a couple of days ahead of time. Teddy and her husband David were kind enough to allow us to reserve it for the 2 nights and Teddy blocked out the 2 days to spend with us. Lucky for us that she did.

Elizabeth and I were on the same page regarding what we were hoping to find in a property so when we found it, we knew it was a good one. There are some compromises of course. That sort of thing never got in our way though.

So how did we find our new house? A little luck and a lot of work researching and openness to compromise made it happen. I think this is the way of a lot of people’s house hunts.

I’m laughing now. You will remember that I made a spread sheet with a rating system so we could keep track of the houses and the house search. We definitely didn’t need a fancy spreadsheet. We kept the list of wants and needs in mind as we checked out each house. That is all that we needed.

Now as we go through the process, we will keep you informed of the progress and hurdles along the way. Luckily, we are not the first US expats that have done this. The skids are pretty well greased already.

A Little Bit About Chabanais

Chabanais is a commune in the Charente Department in Southwestern France and is considered a large village. So, our house is considered a village house. The village has an open-air market every Thursday. The rail station building is there but not open. I guess you get your train ticket online and just wait on the side for the train.

In case you are wondering the coordinates at Chabanais are approximately 45.88 degrees north and .72 degrees east. This puts it pretty far north of Venice, Florida. Average temperatures are a tad bit lower than Venice Florida too. Average high temps range from 46 degrees F in January to 77 in July and August. Lows range from 36 in January to 59 in July. I guess we will have to buy some winter clothes.

The location is just over halfway between the equator and the north pole and just north of the parallel that cuts through Toronto, Canada. The population is 1561 and it is 486 feet above sea level.

The Vienne River passes through the town, and the town is about 42 km (25 miles) west of Limoges, 50 km (30 miles), north of Angouleme, 77 km (46 miles) north of Périgueux and 84 km (50 miles) southeast of Poitiers. We need to do a lot of exploring in the village to get to know where the best shopping and pubs and restaurants are. Being right on the river poses some flooding risk, but the place that we are interested in is outside of the flood risk area.

History

The history of Chabanais starts in the Bronze Age (around 3000 BC) and continued into Roman times, but the name doesn’t appear in texts until the 12th century.

It was occupied by the English during the 100 Years War (1337-1453) and in the 16th century it was under the control of the Huguenots. This was during the Wars of Religion.

It was very peaceful during the 19th century up until the First World War. It suffered its worst of times during World War II. sixty percent of the town was burned down during the occupation by the Germans. The Resistance operated in the area causing havoc among the German forces and defended the bridges across the Vienne River in Chabanais. The bridges were damaged, but the German forces ultimately prevailed then retreated. The retreat was precipitated by the explosion of carbon dioxide bottles stored in the home of a lemonade seller that had been set on fire by the invading German forces. The explosion was so intense that the Germans thought it was mortar fire and the arrival of a large column of Allied reinforcements. After the battle the inhabitants returned to find the town was liberated but destroyed. It rose from the ruins after 1945, We believe that the house we plan on purchasing was built after the war, probably around 1947.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Home Purchasing

We have a lot to learn about the home purchasing process. Suffice it to say, in France it is different from the states, but not in a bad way. After we signed a commitment, we got a “Risk” diagnosis. This is a very interesting report. The report for this house includes over 80 pages. Some of it is boiler plate and details about the investigator’s qualifications and the specific rules and regulations related to the investigation.

The report is very detailed and rigorous. It includes termite inspection of course, asbestos inspection, electrical safety, insulation and a study of the energy loss through wall, roof and floors, radon gas measurement, heating efficiency, ventilation efficiency, window and door construction and efficiency, earthquake risk along with a map, flooding risk along with a map of the flood prone areas, renewable energy inventory and other stuff. Each window and door is analyzed to evaluate the construction materials and energy efficiency. The report lists any deficiency and estimates of cost of remediation. The report is totally in the French language too. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but in France any house that is for sale or rent is subject to the energy analysis. The house is then graded from “A” to “G”, where “A” is the best. Typically, a grade of “D” is considered OK. That said the government is driving energy conservation and housing energy usage will need to be improved before 2030. Currently the house that we are buying is graded a high “D”. On our list are a number of things that can be done to improve the energy grade. It is not cheap, but all doable and will make the house more comfortable as well as more valuable.

There is a separate grade for CO2 emissions analysis. This house has a grade of “D” for this criterion. We would have to address this too.

In France the legal aspects of home purchases are managed by a Notaire. As I understand it the Notaire is essentially a lawyer. We will meet with the Notaire for our project next week in Ruffec and learn more. We are fortunate to be working with an English speaking Notaire.

Inheritance Laws

French Inheritance laws date back to Napolean. I think that I mentioned this before. When the husband dies the property goes to the eldest son. There is a law that allows for the wife to inherit the property, but it needs to be invoked as part of the purchase contract. We have a will in the US that defines everything; however, we don’t know if it works for France. One work around may be for Elizabeth to be the sole owner of the house, and we create a new French will to define inheritance in the unlikely event that Elizabeth dies before me. We will learn more next week.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• Drive to Ruffec to meet the Notaire to discuss the inheritance issue and sign some more papers and get a detailed explanation of the diagnostic report. According to Maps this should be about a 2.5-hour drive. Me driving it will probably be 3 hours.
• Zoom call with Sean to discuss money transfers for the house purchase.
• “Teams” meeting with SmartMoney regarding currency exchange.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

Weather forecast for next week is cloudy without much chance of rain with highs in the upper 60s for the highs and low 50s for lows and a little more sunshine midweek.

A bientot (see you soon)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com