Our Personal Experience: We Sold Our House. Now What?
So if you haven’t noticed already, our house we renovated in the hypercenter of Biarritz has been on the market for the last few months. We decided to put it up for sale for the following reasons; 1)Alex’s motocross hobby requires a garage and we are currently spending money to rent one every month, 2)Having settled in, Alex would really like to have an Australian Shepard and that will require a small yard so that I can work from home in peace, and 3)With ageing parents, we would like to find a place with a bedroom on the main floor for easy access for Ma and Pa.
This decision was very difficult to make because we really enjoy our life in the city center of Biarritz and the ease of running to the ocean anytime we want. We also have friends nearby, love our neighborhood routines and we got lucky with some great neighbors. However, with the new 100% electric Citröen Ami, my ability to become more independent has given us a bigger radius to think about when it comes to places to live, thus giving us the opportunity of finding an affordable home with a small garden and garage.
What was it like to put our dream home on the market when we worked so hard to make it ours? Scary. Exciting. Like jumping off a cliff not knowing where you are going to land next. As a psychotherapist, the anxious feelings immediately made me jump into action to cope. We went to work researching houses for sale 3x per day while we waited for someone to make an offer on our house.
The thing is, the market is so hot in Biarritz right now that what was for sale months ago that we were interested in are no longer available today. There are not so many houses on the market right now and most of them have been on the market for a decent amount of time. The COVID19 pandemic has changed the market here and we are both reaping the rewards of a seller’s market, but also feeling the pain as buyers.
In total, we had about 15 visits to our home before we got to our buyers. I’ll be honest, the uncertainty of where we will go after selling our home made me stressed to show the home repetitively. In the end, staying calm and allowing the process to unfold worked and we received an offer in January. After some negotiation, we agreed on a final price which would include us leaving all appliances and some furniture in the home and us not having to be out of the house until late May or early June. We got all the home guarantees from the artisans (plumber, electrician, dry wall workers) off to the notaries for the sale dossier and we were on our way. This week we will sign the “compromis de vente,” and the buyers will have 10 days to back out of the deal.
We have a visit to a home we are interested in tomorrow and have some other visits lined up at the end of the week. All in all, we are hoping to find something that we are excited about and that will start the next chapter of our lives in Pays Basque. I’ll post updates to follow along the way.
