I suppose it’s about time we discussed the £ in free fall against the € and how it is affecting us and the renovation.
On November 5th 2006 we signed our Comprime De Vant and all told including fees we paid €101,000 and we got our mortgage from Credit Agricole at £1 = €1.43. At this rate in GBP the price was £68,707.
Fast forward a year and the world is a very different place :
The £1 is now buying just €1.04 or in some places €0.96c this means we are having to replan EVERYTHING.
The mortgage on the property is around €700 and this time last year this meant a monthly payment of £489 (+ £21 bank transfer fee). When we done the budgeting my plan was worked on out the £ loosing 10% to around €1.31 to £1 but never did i think it would be this bad.
Payments
I’ll publish a more detailed list when i check with the bank but a quick comparison says
2007 – €700 @ 1.43 = £476 (£+21 bank transfer fee) = £496
2009 – €700 @ 1.03 = £679 (+£25 bank transfer fee) = £704
Extra payment per month £208
This extra while we can afford it is impacting on the renovation as this year alone we will lose the best part of £2500 from the budget which we had planned to use.
Going forward
As with everything in life we need to just face the challenge and move on. To this end we are going to have to scale back the speed of the renovation. This being the case it’s opened up an interesting opportunity for us, that we are going to embrace and that’s convert the livable area we have now into somewhat of a holiday cottage while we get the money together and the £ recovers.
The plans we have for the longer term aren’t going to change we are just going to come to point where we are happy to stay in the house for weeks at a time comfortably but knowing that we’ll be ripping down the plaster boarding and ripping out the cheap bathroom we’ve put in sooner to later to start on the “grand plan”.
On the flip side they’ll be more to blog about..
Talking of up sides
When we purchased the house we literally beat another couple to signing the Comprime De Vant by a matter of minutes. This wasn’t a conscious decision on our part we just didn’t know another agent was on there way to see the owner with an offer. But as we were there cheque in hand and able to sign there and then so we got it..
So the up side, i can always contact the couple who lost out and offer to sell the house to them at the same price of €101,000 at todays rate that would equate to £98,058 a sneaky profit of £29,351.
That said I must admit the thought of selling has never crossed our minds, we’ll just keep on working here and adjust out plans to suit. We are in no rush to move to France and I’m looking to bank as many £’s as i can and then we’ll move it over when the £ starts to recover.
After all when you have this why would you sell up ?
What about you guys ? What are you doing ? Let us know by mailing us please..
