A Tale of Two Closings

Part I

We’ve told you a lot about our dream of a French apartment, but we have yet to discuss how we plan to fund it. After meeting with a financial advisor a year ago, we decided that the smartest path was to sell the apartment in Austin that I was living in when I met Roberto. I have hung onto it since our engagement in 2016, using it as a rental property, which is a very good business in Austin. It is a cute two bedroom/two bath in a 1950s building in Tarrytown, a very central, old Austin neighborhood. 

We didn’t expect to find a place we loved so quickly in Montpellier this winter, but we felt confident we could make it all work. My tenant in Austin had moved out of my apartment on December 1st. We’d been told a closing in France took up to six months, and with the Austin real estate frenzy, of course we could sell our apartment and close in less than six months.

Well, hold on to your chapeaux.

When we returned from France in mid-December, an Austin realtor gently explained that the hot, hot, hot housing market of Austin was now just warm, warm, warm due to rising interest rates. A year ago we could have expected a bidding war and 5-10% above asking. Now we needed to list for less, and there was a good chance we would get 5% below asking. Sigh. Real estate, like comedy, is all about timing.

Additionally, December and January are considered dead months in the real estate business. March is considered peak time, but we couldn’t wait that long. I used the first half of January to repaint the apartment walls a crisp clean white, to fix the scratches on the wood floor, and to reassemble the fabulous Elfa closet system my tenant had inexplicably taken apart.  

After years of AirBnB and renting, I also had a handful of furniture in the place, plus houseware and linens. Roberto, the realtor, and I had a lot of back and forth about whether I should get rid of it before showing it or supplement it with other staging furniture. We ultimately went with the staging, deciding it made the place look much bigger. Of course this added another expense, but I was ultimately very happy with how good the place looked.

We listed on January 20th. Despite the slowing economy, we still felt confident we could make enough money to fund the Montpellier apartment AND that we would be able to send the money to France before our closing date (how soon could that closing date be if they hadn’t even given us one yet, right? RIGHT?)

In spite of the positive feedback on the listing from other agents about the apartment and the price, we got no offers over the first two weekends, and I started to get nervous. At the end of the third week, our agent texted and said we had an offer! But there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his message. When we saw the written offer we understood why. It was 12% below asking. Ugh. It was such a low offer, we didn’t counter. Roberto said, "We’ll be bidding against ourselves."

Our second offer from a new person was 6% below asking, but he wanted $10,000 back in expenses at the closing, so uh, basically 7% below asking? Both people were lowballing us, but once we had two people interested, our agent was able to add some pressure. The first person returned with an offer much closer to our asking price (3% below) and we said YES. What a relief! 

Then they got their inspection. 

The potential buyer decided that because the HVAC and heater were "old" we should give them $6k to replace them, despite the fact that they work just fine. They wanted $7k to replace a "warped tile beneath the bathroom window," and Roberto piped in that he could redo an entire bathroom with the highest quality stone slabs for $7k. They wanted nearly $5k to replace a window pane. And so on and so forth to the tune of $11,300 off the total of the apartment.

I ended up offering only $1000 off the asking price, and the buyer agreed. Roberto thought even $1000 was too much, but at this point, we needed to get things rolling.

We’d finally been given the closing date for the apartment in Montpellier: April 17. (We booked our flight to France for April 15. Yay!) The money for that closing had to be in the notaire’s bank account, in euros, eight days prior to closing. If they meant eight business days, that meant by April 5th.

When I sent the wire transfer for the deposit in February it took around 10 days to clear. The Austin closing was set for March 23rd. Je flippe ma race (I am freaking out).

Around this time we were informed by our French agent that we couldn’t close on the Montpellier apartment unless we had proof of home insurance. Okay. I’m on it. I go to the websites of several home insurance companies. All of them need proof of a French bank account. Well, dammit. I’ve been trying to open a French back account for the past two months. But they require proof of a French address. You see my conundrum here?

As proof of a French address, I had tried uploading our sales contract for the apartment. Not only were we denied a bank account, our application was deleted! I am not going to bore you with the details of what was involved with that application, but I can say it was long, involved, and required our life stories. I was furious at the idea of starting over.

I made an early morning call to HSBC France and got hold of a real live French person. He explained that I simply needed to handwrite a note stating why we needed the French bank account, take a picture of that note, and then upload it into my application paperwork. The French are big into handwritten notes (I find this sort of sweet and plan to start using my own wax seal. It will definitely have a dog on it.)

I couldn’t believe after the bank application fiasco that a handwritten note was the big fix. I restarted the application, added the handwritten note, and was notified on March 20th my account was open and ready for a money transfer. Success!

We are currently in the process of trying to switch over the current owner’s home insurance policy into our name. We’ll keep you posted on this fascinating topic that could make or break us come closing day, April 17.

In the next newsletter you will hear whether we reach closing number one in time for closing number two, how my Austin apartment turned into an Ikea, and whether the slight smell of gas will destroy everything.

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time),

Carolyn & Roberto

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