Sometimes these posts will be full of useful stuff about living in France, working here, French wine, anything really. Other times it’ll just be something I feel like saying. Hey, it’s my blog after all 
A typical French view?
Today’s words of wisdom (or waffle) are the later. Why did I choose to live in France?
Well for a start, I quite like the place. My wife and I have been visitors for more than fifteen years so it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. In the end though, it was French houses that were the deciding factor.
We’re originally from the UK and like a lot of people dreamed of taking an old building or barn and putting our own stamp on it. Trouble is in England most of those places are bought by property developers and turned into “executive homes”. Result, to expensive.
We could afford France though. French property is not the bargain it was twenty or even ten years ago, but you still get more for your money than you do in the UK. What’s more the French prefer to buy new than renovate – which leaves all these lovely old farmhouses and manors for us ex-pats!
I’ll get into the whole “buying a house in France and renovating” thing in another post, but suffice it to say here we are, house bought and paid for. No mortgage, living debt free. Boy does that take the pressure off! If you’re living the life of stress that we used to then you have my sympathy.
The house is a bit of a wreck actually – big but in need of complete re-wring, plumbing, new floors in some places, a list too long to put here. We’ve done a fair bit but there’s a long way to go and the financial crisis didn’t do us too many favours because the exchange rate between UK sterling and the Euro (and the dollar and the Euro for that matter) has been awful – and most of my work is for those two countries.
Never mind, these things happen, and whilst work progresses somewhat more slowly than we hoped “la vie en France” is still very pleasant. I would definitely recommend it!
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