It may seem rather odd to someone who doesn't live in Paris but we are moving to the apartment upstairs. It is exactly the same layout but it is on the 4th floor and substantially brighter. We will have an extra hour of so of direct sunlight in our apartment every day and we won't need the lights on in the entrance in the middle of summer. We'll be able to see the colour of the sky from the living room instead of having to walk to the window in the dining room.
The slight downer about all of this is that we have to buy and install a new kitchen and paint three bedrooms - within the next 2.5 weeks. We are not too worried about the kitchen as we bought our current kitchen 5 years ago and had it installed in about 4 days.
Unfurnished Paris apartments are rented without kitchens. This may also seem rather odd but the lease term is a standard three years. The tenants upstairs have been in the building for 15 years and the other tenants on our floor have been here for 24 years. There has never been the same obsession with buying property in France as other countries largely because banks used to require about a 40% deposit and the conditions for renting in France are so agreeable for the tenant. Rent is indexed to a government index and can only be adjusted annually in accordance with this. You can only be evicted if the owner or his immediate family want to move back in. If the building is sold, then you as the tenant stay with the building. And if you don't pay your rent you can only be evicted in summer - never in winter and it is a mighty struggle for the landlord.
This is my current patch of sky which will become much BIGGER!
4 comments:
Hey, that's very exciting! And who would buy in Paris when the lease terms are so tenant-friendly! I don't understand about the kitchen - did the last tenant of the upstairs apartment take it with him when he left? Can you move your kitchen from downstairs to upstairs, or do you need to buy a new one?
The kitchen upstairs is being ripped out as it is v old. Unfortunately we can't take our kitchen as the water tank is in a different place so we bought a nearly the same kitchen. All of our applicances will go up.
Tis the season to be moving! We r finally moving out of serviced apt after 5 months - thank god! I owe u a phone call: it's v difficult to communicate when email is knocked out. Love the blog! Sue x
Why can't I get my comment up?!
Post a Comment