Tag Archives: estate agent

Tuesday 6th August 2013 – I PROMISE YOU …

… that this shall be the last time that I’ll mention parking.

So here’s a photo of two different vehicles well-advanced in front of the rear limit for parking, and this time a car parked here in the foreground and overhanging the pedestrian crossing.

What more can I say …“haven’t you said enough?” – ed

Meanwhile in other news, the first of the furniture has gone from the apartment. Nothing large or bulky though, but nevertheless it’s a start. I’m now €20 richer than I was before, so “spend, spend spend!”, hey?

But this blasted agent immobilier is thoroughly getting on my wick. She’s uncovered another problem now – that the monthly service fees are so astronomical that no-one will buy the apartment (and so she will lose her commission of course).

“I know they are” I told her. “Marianne was on a very limited income and so when the boiler was repaired in 2009 and the lift was overhauled in 2011 she didn’t have the money to pay her share”.

“Consequently the gerance of the building arranged two loans for her (and for other people too) for their shares and the monthly repayments are included in the service fees”.

“And if you remember “I continued “I mentioned this to the people who came this weekend and I told them expressly that these loans would be paid off at the sale and so they will have no implication for any new purchaser”.

“Well I spoke to your notaire and they know nothing about it” she wailed, and that angered me, her not believing a single word that I told her and her clients

“That’s hardly surprising” I retorted, “seeing as how my notaire is on holiday. You probably were put through to the teaboy.”
And on and on and on she wailed until I lost patience and told her to f*** off.

5 minutes later I had someone from the notaire on the telephone. “Will you tell that blasted Madame Blum to stop flaming well ringing us up every 5 sodding minutes about your flaming apartment. It’s getting on our blasted nerves”.

Yes, this stupid woman is the cause of more problems here than she solves.

Everything is a crisis for her, every reaction is a panic. She’s frightening away more customers than she’s recruiting, thanks to her attitude, and also with her business practices, about which I shall have much more to say at a later date.

But doing business with her is a nightmare. She is making problems out of nothing at all.

And apart from that, when I had the time (which as you can see, wasn’t as much as I would have liked) I did the two radio programmes for the Radio Anglais rock shows on Radio Tartasse.

I have to do two because I’m away at the end of September (I hope, unless there’s another crisis) so I’m recording two months’ worth at the end of August.

Tomorrow I’ll start to attack the rest of the programmes.

If the blasted agent immobilier lets me. What a shambles.

-8

Saturday 3rd August 2013 – THIS PARKING THING …

… is getting out of hand.

As you can see, we’ve changed the car in the foreground (and several times too) but there’s still a good 6 feet or so of wasted space behind it.

As for the car in the background, that’s not moved now for over a week I reckon, still losing half a car’s length of space.

But apart from that I was up at the usual time, breakfasted, and then started sorting out the books.

And I reckoned that my ship had come in when I spotted a copy of “Si on Parlait des Miracles?” and, upon opening the flyleaf, the author had signed it with a dedication to Marianne.

So hot-footing it to an on-line second-hand book shop, I was going to make my fortune.

However, there are about 50 of these copies for sale there, and erery flaming blasted last one of them is signed with a perishing dedication.

I’m surprised that the author didn’t catch writers’ cramp.

Ahh well.

So on with the motley and as I was preparing to go out and do some shopping came a ring on the bell.

The agent immobilier was back with one of the people from yesterday and all of his family – including a young kid of about 5 so Strawberry Moose was once more in his elephant.

Once they had all piddled off I went to the shops but I didn’t stay long, especially as I had forgotten my coolbox. And the rest of the day has been one of relaxing – I even made myself a coulis of kiwi and soja milk.

So tomorrow is Sunday and it’s a day of rest. I’ll go for a walk and say hello to Marianne, I reckon.

-6

Wednesday 31st July 2013 – TODAY’S SUBJECT IS …

… parking

And how Belgian drivers don’t have a clue. If you look very carefully at the two cars in this photograph, you’ll see that the nearer one has under-run the parking line by a good 4 feet, encroaching upon all of the vehicles further down the street.

Consequently, when the vehicles in front of him change during the course of the day, someone will find himself 4 feet short of a parking space, in a street that already has quite a bit of pressure on parking.

As for the car in the distance, he’s encroaching by half a car’s length and you can see already that there’s a space in front of him that no car could ever hope to fill. The words “stupid” and “selfish” spring immediately to mind.

The outcome of this is inevitable and I didn’t have to wait too long.

Some other motorist in a hurry to go to the boulangerie or the newspaper shop across the road can’t find a parking place handy and so takes a risk by parking behind the other car, encroaching upon the zebra crossing.

And here’s a nice photograph of the driver having a “frank exchange of views” with the Council employee who has just given him a €15 fixed penalty ticket.

Yes, Belgians just don’t “get it”, do they?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after a disturbed night’s sleep during which I had a bad attack of cramp and also had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse a couple of times, I struggled out of bed this morning and wasn’t feeling much like it for a while.

However, I eventually came round and then attacked this web page that I have been promising myself. And here it is, in all its glory and all nicely finished off.

All I need to do now is instead of advertising each individual item of furniture etc, I just advertise the web page.

The prices are really all “best guess” because I don’t have much of a clue. If anyone has any suggestions, don’t hesitate to make them.

However, there’s no urgency. This place won’t be sold in a week. Despite telling the Agent Immobilier yesterday that he can ring me next week for visits (when this place ought to be tidied), his oppo rang me today insisting on bringing someone round on Friday.

So after I gave her a piece of my mind … “do you have that much to spare?” – ed … the conversation went something like this …
Estate agent “is it okay to bring someone round on Friday afternoon then?”
Our hero “yes, I’ll be here”
EA “what time?”
OH “whenever’s convenient. I’m not going anywhere”
EA “is 4pm okay then?”
OH “yes, fine”
EA “or what about 5pm then?”
OH “whatever suits you best”
EA “well, how about 4:45 then?”

Well, quite! No wonder that they are struggling.

The place will be a tip because I won’t have finished, but whoever will be coming will just have to make the best of it.

-3

Tuesday 30th July 2013 – I’M HAVING A …

… bad day today!

And I missed some of it too because at about 15:30 I went and crashed out for 90 minutes. That’s just how it was.

Mind you, I was up long before the alarm and I don’t remember much of my dream except that there were two people in it who were green, something similar to Fantômas in the series of Louis de Funès films.

After breakfast I made piles of space in the living room and in the big bedroom and photographed almost everything that there is to sell.

My plan is to make a web page of articles for sale and then advertise it on places like Craigslist and so on, and have a kind of open day or two.

But here’s no rush because the Estate Agent called me again today. His pool of clients has now whittled itself down to zero and so he wants to restart the visits. Consequently we had a brief discussion.

Three times he’s “sold” this apartment “subject to the availability of finance” and three times the “availability of finance” has not been forthcoming. High time he presented some serious clients.

Apart from that, a lunchtime and at tea time (and the second portion of my potato pie was even better) I’ve been watchin the John Wayne film The Undefeated – and watching it open-mouthed.

Although this was the film that directly followed True Grit , it has to be one of the worst main feature John Wayne films that I have ever seen.

It’s a rambling, shambolic 100 minutes of tiny little sub-plots with just the vaguest hint of story stringing them along. It’s as if someone has taken a TV series of 26×50-minute episodes and made a collage out of the highlights.

His character in the film, by the way, is called “John Thomas” – probably because the film is all c*ck.

In other news, the BBC tells us today that “for years the Arab world’s dictators kept radical Islamic groups in check but the uprisings of 2011 gave them freedom to operate more openly”.

Anyone who has been following this load of rubbish for any length of time will be only too well aware that I’ve been saying since the Iraqi invasion over 10 years ago that the west will end up regretting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his like.

Truth travels slowly but it’s finally reached the BBC.

Trouble with me is that I’m 10 years ahead of my time.

-5

Wednesday 29th May 2013 – When was the last time that you saw …

… one of these? I couldn’t work out what it was at first. Either a Gogomobil or a Frisky was what was going through my head at first, but it is in fact an Autobianchi, a microcar from Italy and so rare that I haven’t even seen one in Italy. But here it was, sitting by the side of the road in the Chaussee de Charleroi in Brussels.

Anyway, after my lost day yesterday where I spent some of it in bed and the rest of it wishing that I was back in bed, I went out and about. And wasn’t that a waste of time?

Firstly to the Maison Communale for a copy of Marianne’s death certificate, and after much ado about nothing I eventually found the correct person. €8:50 they wanted – per copy – and after picking myself up off the floor and asking for two copies, I was told that I couldn’t have them as Marianne and I weren’t married. A notaire needs to apply, so it seems.

Not to be out-done, I went to the undertaker’s. Now I don’t know what he spends his extortionate fees on, but it’s not on his premises, I’ll tell you that. Art-deco 1920s is my guess and it hasn’t been cleaned since then. The kind of place where, if you give the curtains a good shake, a couple of bats would come flying out.

It seems that I’ve paid (well, I haven’t, but I’ve been booked down to pay for) 3 copies of the death certificate. So the secretary asked me “haven’t you had them yet?”, which elicited the obvious response of “why else would I be here if I had?”. anyway, she rang up the commune to enquire and she was told, and I heard it clearly from where I was sitting “but you never asked for them”. So someone else trying to stick me for dosh on false pretences. Anyway, after a lengthy discussion and “frank exchange of views”, I can go to pick them up tomorrow.

From there I went to have lunch and had the estate agents on the phone. They are extremely worried that I’m trying to deal them out of their commission and are thus keeping close tabs on me. But two can play at that game as well – I was not really in the mood for conciliation today.

After lunch I went for a good walk and found a CD sale. I’m €46 lighter but my CD collection is now considerably heavier and it’s all good stuff too. High time I took more care of myself and my well-being. As long as I can still hear the music I’m okay.

But apart from getting myself soaking wet, that was that. Highlight was, of course, the music. And also the Autobianchi.

-2

Thursday 9th June 2011 – DESPITE THE EXCITEMENT …

… of the last few days, it became even more exciting that that today.

We started off the day with a phone call from The One That Got Away. It appeared that her boss was not in a position to see me and so could I come on Friday?

That led to a hectic change of plans and a jaunt down to Machynlleth in Wales to find out why Dulas had not replied to my request for a quotation. I’m certainly boxing the compass, and my stay is far from over.

And basically the answer to why I’ve had no reply is that the sales staff couldn’t be bothered to do so.

The saleswoman who would ordinarily deal with me is away in Germany at a conference, and when that happens, the whole organisation grinds to a halt.

I was told that she has her phone switched off – such a gift of foresight by the warehouse manager being probably the most astonishing part of our discussion. If he can see as far as Germany from where he was sitting then he’s clearly in the wrong job.

And if he is possessed of the facilities of such long sight, it is clearly there to compensate him for his lack of near-sighted vision because he could not see anything within the warehouse that he manages, in order to identify the products that he has in stock.

Never mind painting by numbers – he does warehouse-managing by numbers, so it seems. What about that for stock control?

He also does a pretty good job at prevarication and obfuscation but of course I’ve been here before (and I have, too) and seen his type before. I’ve also dealt with his type before and I don’t think that he will forget my visit to his office in a hurry.

Nevertheless, the upshot of this is that I still don’t have my product.

And what stuck in my mind more than anything about this visit is that despite all of my effort to drive to Machynlleth on a fruitless expedition caused by the “couldn’t care less” attitude of Dulas towards potential customers whose pockets are bulging with the folding stuff ready to spend at the first opportunity – a round trip of 304 kilometres, don’t forget – the manager did not even have the common courtesy or decency to offer me a cup of coffee.

CAT – the Centre for Alternative Technology – up the road, is equally as useless when it comes to recommending another supplier. For an organisation whose job it is to promote the use and development of Renewable Energy, they came up with nothing at all.

It really is astonishing but what with the estate agents the other day not being bothered to sell product to a client and with Dulas today not being bothered to sell a product to a client either, is it really any wonder that the UK is going down the pan?

Here we have a client with a fair bit of cash in his pocket (houses aren’t cheap, and neither are solar panels) and it’s too much trouble for British companies to deal with them.

I spent the afternoon in Barmouth on the seafront and that was pleasant as well – it was a gorgeous day.

And then as my way back home took me past Nina’s, I called in for a long chat. After all, it is years since I saw her.

She and Marion are in the throes of modernisation and we all ended up having quite a discussion about solar energy. It seems that I’m now co-opted onto the modernisation panel and a solar water and solar photovoltaic project will follow in early course.

Always assuming that I can find an eager supplier willing to divest me of some money.

And the photos?

I took quite a few today but when I came to download them, the memory card was bare. What has happened there?

Friday 3rd June 2011 – TODAY WAS SOMETHING …

… like a bad start

A blasted tractor wanted to get into the field across the entrance to which I was parked. First time for 50 years I reckoned, judging by the looks of the gate and the track down there, and it had to be today of course

And so I removed myself to another spec and set about tidying up Caliburn.

However I was interrupted by a phone call, and what a pleasant surprise this was.

Back 100 years ago when I had my taxis there was a girl who used to work for me on Saturdays answering the phone and so on to earn some pocket money. She used to draw the images for me for the humorous remarks that I made.

After I sold up, we kept in touch for a short while but then we lost touch with each other. Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … these Social Networks have a lot to answer for and she has tracked me down.

She’s now working as the Financial Controller for a Renewable Energy Company in Newcastle-under-Lyme and she reckons that it might be a profitable encounter for all of us if we (me, she and her boss) were to meet up sometime for a chat.

Apart from that, it would be so nice to meet her again after all these years, and I am really looking forward to that of course.

I could do with a few profitable encounters, the way things are right now. It’s been a long time since I had any … "last night?" – ed … and so we are all going for coffee next Thursday afternoon

I’ve also been house-hunting for Percy Penguin this afternoon and it’s just like Belgium here
“Didn’t you see anything suitable in our window?”
“Well, if I saw anything interesting in your window there wouldn’t be any point at all in you working here, would there?

And with an attitude like that you may as well p155 off home because you won’t be in business for long”.

It seems that even with a substantial amount of cash at stake, there are still far too many people who cant be asked to stop talking and stop drinking coffee to deal with any customers.

No wonder the UK is going broke.

-1

Monday 14th March 2011 – After all that happened yesterday …

… I was out like a light until 07:30.

My swollen face has gone down quite a bit today which is just as well as I had to go out shopping for more supplies.

But almost everything is done, a good deal of the furniture and so on is downstairs ready for loading, and the Cortina is now on the trailer. That was exciting, moving that, and I’ll tell you more about it at a later date when all of the fuss has died down.

The good news though is that it may well be that with the Estate Agent coming tomorrow and valuing the place, and then finishing off and tidying up, we might even be away by tomorrow night if we are lucky. That would be exciting if it happens. Otherwise it will be Wednesday when we set sail for home.

And not before time either. The hotel plan has fallen through because with everything that we’ve been doing, the place is clean and tidy enough and we can simply retreat out of the apartment dragging the vacuum cleaner behind us. That will save us a good day or two anyway and I can’t say that I’m sorry.

Friday 11th March 2011 – I’m going to be having an early night this evening.

And I’m not the only one either. Terry and Liz are quite exhausted too, and I’m not surprised as we’ve been working really hard again.

I emptied out my bedroom and then Terry and I tidied the garage downstairs so that we could move all of the stuff down there. We also loaded Caliburn with some stuff for the dechetterie, whenever it will be that we will go there. But that’s not going to be for a few days yet as most of the furniture that remains will be going with it.

I came back upstairs and put the second coat of paint on the door frame and the first coat of paint on the wall of the back terrace while Terry finished the walls in the hall. During all of this, Liz was cleaning the bedroom.

While Terry redid the walls in the hall, Liz and I set about the bedroom. What with Liz on the paintbrush and me on the roller we had two coats on the ceiling and one on the wall in no time flat. We even took the radiator off (that’s all of the radiators that have been off now) to do behind it.

We then went out onto the front terrace and scrubbed down the guard rails and the new tiles, and that is looking quite pretty now. And while I went off to buy more paint (we are getting through that rather quickly) Terry and Liz finished off cleaning and waxing the floor in the living room.

No wonder we are all exhausted.

So the plan now is –

tomorrow the second coats of paint on the back terrace wall and in the bedroom, and cleaning and waxing the floor in the hall.
Monday will be doing everything else that we have forgotten.
Tuesday morning will be emptying the apartment of absolutely everything and me going to the dechetterie. But I have to be back at 11:00 as that is when the estate agent is coming.
Once he has gone we will be taking up residence in a hotel for two nights and using Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday to clean the place from top to bottom, and then loading up the two vans.
Thursday morning will see the Cortina on the trailer and then it’s off back home. I’ve decided to take the Cortina regardless and come back for the Minerva. It’s easier to do it that way round.

But back home on Thursday?

Can I remember the way?

Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – I’ve had another one of these days …

… where I haven’t done very much. Life seems to be conspiring against me right now.

I was awake long before the alarm went off – in fact I had to crawl out of bed to go for a Gipsy’s but it was far too cold to stay up so I went back to bed until the alarm went off. At least, that was the plan but for some reason or another it was 10:04 when I came to my senses (such as they are).

I didn’t have time to have my breakfast either for while the kettle was boiling the phone rang. It was the Mairie ringing up – could the woman doing the census come round and take my details? So she and her minder came round (they’ve clearly heard all about me) and took down my particulars. It was a good job I had put clean ones on. But the French census is a lark – they just want to know your age, place of birth, profession, education standard and your employment as well as something about the conditions in which you live. Vastly different from the UK where they want to know more about you than you know about yourself.

After that, someone from the Conversation Group rang up with a chagrin d’amour. I suppose that I should be pleased that people feel comfortable in confiding their problems to me. It’s a pleasant change from being totally ingored – the usual state of affairs.

I managed an hour or two on the wall but it was then time to go off to Montaigut to look at these two houses. One is supposed to be livable in a certain fashion but the other one is merely four walls and a roof. We had a good poke around and as you might expect the “livable” one didn’t live up to expectations – damp penetration being one of the major problems. And from the corner of the roof that was supposed to have been fixed. But we had a good chat afterwards and some serious discussions took place, with the result that for better or for worse we placed an offer on the properties – suitably balanced to cover the cost of re-redoing the roof (I made sure that the estate agent was aware of the defect) and putting right the damage. The way we see it, the more time we spend discussing the situation the longer it’s going to take us to make a start. And all the time with inflation at 3% and bank interest at just 0.5% the longer you wait the more the real value of your savings melts away before your eyes. The quicker we can find something suitable and start to invest our labour into it the better.

After that, it was 17:00 when I came home and I didn’t feel like starting work again just for an hour – which was just as well as Claude came round for a chat and he was here for over an hour. I’m going to have to put in a good day tomorrow.

-7

Wednesday 27th January 2010 – I haven’t done much today.

I crawled out of bed this morning on time for a change and after a quick breakfast I piddled off to St Eloy to meet Liz and Terry for stage 2 of our househunting. First estate agent was on the phone all the time we were there and so we went to the second. Three people inside the office, two chatting to each other and the third on the phone.
“Ohh, she’ll see you. She won’t be a minute” said one of the chatting colleagues, indicating the one who was on the phone. So we waited and waited and waited while she carried on talking on the phone and the others carried on chatting to each other. 10 minutes of this and we piddled off elsewhere. Yes, don’t sell your property with ORPI of St Eloy – total waste of time and treat the customers with contempt.

At the third the estate agent selected three properties for us to have a look at and we wandered off to look at them. One was out of the question – although you can make 7 or 8 apartments in it, it’s expensive and needs a lot of money throwing at it. And there’s no way you could just do up one or two for starters – it all has to be done together. The other two are distinct possibilities and one particularly has fired our collective imaginations.

But why oh why is it that estate agents over here are so disorganised. When we looked around Pionsat the other day the estate agent forgot the keys and had to run back to the office to find them and here today the estate agent had “issues” with the keys. No sense of organisation, let alone “customer service”.

This afternoon I did even less. I’ve had a whole run of bad nights where I’ve had problems sleeping and it caught up with me this afternoon and I crashed out. But it’s no surprise. Minus 273 degrees C, or zero on the Kelvin scale, is when all molecular activity ceases. And while it hasn’t got that low yet it’s …. gulp …. minus 9 outside and my molecular activity has ceased. And I shan’t be doing much tomorrow if it doesn’t warm up any.

-9

Thursday 21st January 2010 – I’ve finished the verticals for the studded wall…

… between the bedroom and the rest of the first floor. And you can get some kind of idea how the bathroom is going to look.

The end three verticals are going to be for the bathroom bit, and the gap between the third and the fourth (ie the first from the left) will be the door into the bedroom. From the third vertical across to the vertical by the shower base – that will be the door into the bathroom and the shower base will be between there and the wall. You can just about make out the sink – that will be on the diagonal in the angle in the bathroom and there will be another sink in the angle in the bedroom. The toilet is in the far corner underneath the window.

This afternoon Terry Liz and I went to see some houses. We’d heard of three cottages for sale at €27,000 for the three in a village near St Maurice and it was worth a look. Money in the bank is fetching nothing right now and three cottages in a small village have the potential to be three income-generating holiday homes. We don’t mind the hard work in repairing them and so on and realistically for the price we weren’t expecting much, but these three were right at the limit of what was achievable. Furthermore there was no land to go with them – not an inch – and there was no view. They really were right in the middle of a village.

The estate agent took advantage of our presence to show us a few more houses and there is one of them that has got us talking, but we’re going a-hunting over the next few days to see what else we can turn up. It’s all about income generation at the moment and cash in the bank with almost-negative interest rates and inflation at 3% isn’t working right now.

-6

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality