Jazzman, I’m sure you’re aware that you’re going to have to use those “devalued (US) dollars” to buy your retirement home in France!
I believe you about the thick walls in houses built in France 100+ years ago. I believe you about the “quaint” villages surrounding or adjacent to these homes. I SAW the tiny home (3rd listing w/spiral staircase or ladder inside) in the middle of a forest.” I KNOW they are the “real deal.”
Yes, original Tudors or Victorians (with turrets) in CA would be over 85 yrs old and framed in wood. However, they may very well have a Mills Act contract in place, making their taxes very low. We have a few of them right here in Chula Vista which are just as big or bigger than listing #1 (in France).
There are even a few 75+ yo rock houses of over 2000 sf in Pasadena (one of your desired cities)!
I liked the first and second listings very much. I just don’t think they were all that big or equipped for the prices they were asking. However, listing #1 was “big enough” and had very rustic woodwork, which I liked.
You compared these listings in France to SoCal. I did not use any SoCal comparisons to your listings in France. I used central/northern Cal locations. THOSE are the locations in Cali which have properties comparable to listing #l in the same price range. There are others but I was trying to stay near those “coveted coastal areas” where you were shopping in CA. Your last post, however, reveals the type of property you REALLY wanted all along.
Perhaps when you first set out on your “CA shopping expedition,” you were unaware of the style of home you really wanted so you scoured a lot of locales in which you didn’t like the architecture, ambiance, “feel,” construction mat’ls … whatever. I don’t know. And if you DID know exactly what you wanted, then why would you have bothered standing in line (yawn) for shorts, distress sales and new construction when you could have just sought after properties with orchards, turrets, latticework gazebos with mature bougainvillea, rolling grassy lawns, stonework, archways, etc?
Yes, all “real” right here in Cali.
Do you realize that there are many RE brokers in CA who specialize in finding clients just this type of property anywhere in the state? With a <=$1M price range, I'm confident that you could have landed a property (prob w/lgr house and lot than France) that you would have been very happy with, but for a little needed work you could have done as time permitted. Especially during the time frame you were heavily shopping in.
I now see that your problem, in my perspective, was that you were shopping in locales that either didn’t have the type of properties you really wanted or they DID but they were out of your price range. Uhh, hello . . .? Jazzman, are you out there?? I’m unclear if your agent told you this but you can’t just waltz into Palo Alto, SB, LJ, Coronado or Marin Co and expect to snap up one of these types of properties for a cool $1M. Not unless it’s currently uninhabitable and you have a bulldozer at the ready. And you can’t compare those CA coastal locales’ property values to your inland France listings. They are apples and oranges.
Not to belabor the issue any further, but the way I now see you situation, you had your sights set on a more valuable property in CA (w/poss room for appreciation) than you now do in France, which brings me to my next question, “Do residential properties in France appreciate in value?”
In my “comparison” post, I was attempting to compare the physical characteristics of France v CA properties and leave the “culture” out of it. Because your listings, however “charming,” are NOT coastal and NOT situated near job centers. If you now want to retire in France because of the “culture,” that has nothing to do with RE. You can rent there and enjoy the culture.
I don’t know if the quality of life for a retiree would be better in France or in the France-comparison (CA) areas I just posted. But, for you, they would have been much closer to family members. I don’t know very much about French culture. Maybe someday I’ll visit :=]
