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Category: Blog Karen

Can I crate up my pet llamas
and take them home? 🦙

At BLISS, very few questions surprise us.

We have helped buyers and vendors find a thousand answers to questions such as this and many more.

YOU are what makes the difference between “just doing our job” and being passionate about what we do.

Let us be your property angels. 👼

Bliss – by your side.
As long as you need us.

Stories From Gascony

Every one’s experience of Gascony is different.

Here is mine.

First it was Paris. Not Gascony at all. I came from the North- West of England with its rich valleys and thatched cottages. Timbered houses and cosy pub fires. As a child there were sheep and cows in the fields wherever I looked. I loved to cycle down country lanes picking blackberries, or (always a strange child) to visit the church graveyards and imagine stories from the names engraved on mossy stones.

When I was 21, I wanted to travel. The last thing I wanted was more countryside. I had a fairly well developed romantic vision of Paris, which involved (in no particular order) onion- soup, a creaky garrett in Montmartre under the eaves of a rickety house on the Place du Tertre, with a view of the Sacre Coeur and squeaky parquet floors. I would be penning stories on the terraces of Parisian Cafés of course. And experiencing Love with a capital L.

Over the next sixteen years, I experienced all of those things. The garrett in Montmartre turned into a suburban house with two children. I learned how to make my own onion-soup and Love with a capital L proved a bit of a challenge. Separated with two children I no longer wanted to weave my way past the house where I had once lived, or see the same sights. I was alone emotionally but wanted more than anything a new and happy home for my two children.

What was needed, I decided, was a total change of scene. An Adventure.

One day, sitting at my computer desk in my red-brick house by the river in La Frette sur Seine, I fell, just like Alice in Wonderland, into an internet wormhole, stumbling randomly upon an article about Gascony and the Gers. (How was that even pronounced?)

One month later, I was visiting houses with two slick English agents. The first surprise, having spoken only French for so many years, was to hear so many English voices in the market places or shops. Even the estate agents. It was strange. Was I in the Home Counties? – or was this really rural France as promised by Gerard Depardieu in “Le Bonheur est dans le Pré”?

Little did I anticipate the foreshadowing “English estate agents in the Gers” would be in my future life.

Recklessly, I visited only two properties. One was dire beyond words, the other, everything I imagined a country house in Gascony should be. I made an offer and flew back to Paris in a panic to sell my house in La Frette.

The owner of the “traditional maison de maitre on one hectare of land”  was a writer of children’s novels. He had reconditioned a French fire-engine in order to transport his two beloved donkeys to the woods. The hectare of woodland that was sold with the house. This was clearly a part of the world that could encompass such follies. Having grown up with Winnie-the -Pooh, and the Hundred-Acre- Wood, the idea of having one’s own woodland was probably more seductive to me than the idea of the house itself.

Three months later we arrived.

The first experiences of Gascony are always unforgettable especially when coming from the city.

I did not find Eyore the donkey or Winnie the Pooh in the woods but a large barrel of water in which a coypu had drowned. It floated without any hairs on its body. A monstrous bloated specimen that belonged in a jar in the natural history museum. I ran to the house in horror. I was used to picking croutons from potage à l’onion, not coypu from water barrels!

After Paris, Lectoure felt like a make-believe village in a fairytale. My dad and I gorged on bags of fresh cheese and vegetables from the market. We slept like sloths after learning the hard way that the sweet tasting Floc is not to be drunk like wine, and that Pousse Rapiere can stick the blade of its sword into-the softest part of your meninges and twist its knife with vengeance if consumed immoderately.

As I wandered around my garden I discovered at regular intervals the remains of al fresco meals from summers past, buried beneath long blades of grass. There was a fondu-set, which harboured a frog. The remains of a camp-fire here and another one there. Dishes for snails, re-inhabited by live snails and daisies. My previous owners must have eaten outside on every starlit night imaginable and wandered under the mellow influence of local wines, back to the house without any care for the washing-up. It is a mystery how there were any plates left inside.

One day, my father and I decided that no matter how hard we had cleaned and scrubbed, or left the windows open, there was A SMELL in the kitchen.

I returned from the market to discover my father, sweat pouring down his face, on a hot August day, with a sledgehammer in one hand and a 1664 beer in the other. The paltry kitchen units lay on the floor like firewood.

“LOOK!” he proclaimed with pride “JUST LOOK!”

Under the kitchen units lay several large rats in a state of decomposition. I was starting to realise that rural house renovations Gascony are not for the squeamish.

A love of free-standing units was born that day. Ones that you can sweep your broom under with ease.

Once the new kitchen was built, a new window fitted, the Gascon Piggy- bank was ominously silent when shaken.

It was time to look for employment. In retrospect, this is something I should clearly have considered before the first visit, yet somehow, wandering through Lectoure market in the baking heat, everything had felt so easy.

Wherever I looked people around me seemed as happy, jovial and carefree as the succulent olives floating in brine on the market stands, or the sweet fleshed peaches bursting from the trees.

But now, as the first leaves from the old chestnut-tree began to fall, and a crisp morning chill crept through the rotten window-frames, the promise of autumn and then winter was in the air.

There must be something an English woman of limited means could do in the Gers to survive?

But what?

To be Continued.

Dear Ukraine

How to talk of dream houses
or building lives,
when bombs are destroying yours?
How to imagine a world for our children,
when refugees crowd station platforms,
clutching cuddly toys, cats, dogs?

How to talk of humanity
When a child travels 750 km alone? –
a number in biro scribbled on his hand, faded.
His home, a childhood, erased;
Fresh-faced young boys left behind,
Dancers, drummers, doctors,
learning how to kill.

Let our children play in sunflowers
beneath a canopy of blue.

Let barbarous old men
bicker in bunkers over borders
between themselves.

Turn up John Lennon
across the boundaries;
Imagine a new way.

Karen Pegg – Bliss Immobilier

Writing in Gascony

Who: A Chapter Away
What: Residential Novel Writing Courses
Where: Miradoux

Your Life Before?

By the river, in an old four bedroomed house in red brick, on La Seine, in Paris. It had a cobbled court yard to the front behind a big old porch gate, and an orchard at the back from where I could see the long boats heading down the river. Back then La Frette-sur-Seine was the dodgy side of Paris, out in the 95th district – now it’s bijou and expensive. It had a similar reputation to somewhere like Brixton in the 80’s – even my mortgage lender asked me if I was mad. It was a fun house by the church. I found a diary from the Great War in the loft, written by the previous owner, who had survived four years of battle. For a writer, it was an interesting story. He should have died like the rest of his unit, hit by shells, but was home for three days’ compassionate leave, in my house on the river, for his mother’s funeral. One day I’d like to write his story – it’s all there, day by day, with maps and pictures he drew by hand.

Amanda Hodgkinson & Dave Barbarossa – Tutors 2016

Why choose Miradoux for the literary retreats?

I love the big old eighteenth century house with its mix of Oriental, English and French antiques. It is the sort of house I would read about in Agatha Christies novels as a child, back home in a dormer bungalow where there was nowhere to hide. It is the sort of house I only imagined existed between the pages of a book. There is a drawing room, a salon, a library room, and secret passages down to the cellar. It’s the sort of house, if any, where Colonel Mustard is likely to be murdered by a blunt object. There’s a faint air of the Oxford don’s room in the tutorial room, but no doubt that we are in Gascony, as the sun beats in form the South facing windows, overlooking the mountains beyond. I felt this to be the perfect place for our writers to escape from the world and experience A Chapter Away.

Why the passion for Literary Retreats? Why not just write at home, alone?

I spent a week in retreat, in Lancaster. It was the first time in my life I’d been ‘locked away’ with other writers and the first time I realised that it was possible to take the art of writing seriously, both as a craft and a profession. Lancaster Uni had experimented with the idea of a week-long retreat for writers, and had tested the water a few years earlier in Bordeaux. The notion of escape, combined with sunshine, and scenery of outstanding beauty was both an appealing and inspirational idea. Gascony seemed the obvious choice. The experience of stepping back in time, sitting beneath the olive tree with a glass of wine, and concentrating solely on the written word for five full days, accompanied not just with other aspiring writers, but best-selling authors who had turned the dream into a reality, was too tempting. I’d heard so often that manuscripts sit at the bottom of the slush pile for weeks, and that novels were returned without even having been opened. I imagined students being able to pitch their work to an agent in person and to received feedback in person. The first time I received feedback on my own work six writers were swimming together in the pool with the literary agent. A surreal experience. I don’t think he thought he’d get out alive!

Have you written about Gascony?

Yes, a play Cinq à Sept. I set the play in the 50’s and the main character is a salesman from Lectoure, who has to make his way to Paris for his new job, though he is from rural Gascony. It is the retelling of a lot of the old stories I heard here from locals. I’m intrigued that for a long time after the war, there weren’t any road signs in Gascony, as they were taken down to confuse the Germans. This was a tight-knit community and everyone knows everyone’s life. Outsiders were rare, until the first Brits started to descend on the area to live in the 50’s and 60’s. This is a period of Gascon history which interests me a lot. The mayor of Fleurance, Messegue, who worked with plants to heal, who is said to have treated Elizabeth II and was responsible for the fact that the tour de France set off from Fleurance. It was a time when Gascony was almost on the international map, but not quite. An interesting period. Today so many pockets of Gascony remain locked in time. Houses which look like stage sets from the 50’s, or 60’s or 70’s. The Gascons don’t seem to have been influenced like the Brits for example, by the mania of house renovations, and it is so often an experience of stepping into another place and time. If I’d had a time machine, it would have been the perfect time to travel back and find a lovely house! Stone houses weren’t the fashion then, and farmers were knocking them down and burying them in holes on their land, preferring to build modern new houses to demonstrate their wealth. I would love to have experienced Gascony back then, though I’m sure much of it is still the same.

A typical day in Gascony? An ideal day?

Every day is different but I always try to go to the market in Lectoure on Friday mornings. It’s a busy street, lined with stalls, delicious cheeses, vegetables, fish and charcuterie. I catch up with friends there for lunch in one of the tea-rooms. It’s also a good place to see everyone, whether a meeting is planned or not. It’s quite difficult to get from the top of the street to the bottom as every couple of steps someone stops to say hello.

An ideal day: Sundays, coffee and a couple of hours writing in one of my favourite cafés, or at home. Dinner with friends. Tonight we’re meeting our best friends: Stephanie is from Paris, and Petr from Prague and we’re having traditional English cottage pie with Gascon duck!

Connect with A Chapter Away

Into the woods

There is a stretch of road when you exit the motorway between Miradoux and Lectoure, where the night air is heavy with owls. White ghostly and majestic they swoop over the ploughed fields or cross the road to patches of woodland on the other side, dipping in the headlights, the tips of their wings  brushing the windscreen with perilous disregard. Or so it was that first night.

These were the first creatures to replace the Paris sparrows. The first memory of our arrival one night as we wound through the countryside to our new home in the early hours of the morning.

At the house there were other memories – all of which would form the tissue of our new Gascon adventure.

In the last of those burnished summer days came a swarm of yellow-tailed hornets batting at the door and windows to be let in. A hundred zotting butting kamikazes – a veil to the old door once red now scorched palest pink. We fled from the door to the fields, calling a local hornet-master, who would trace the nest back to a hollow tree trunk uprooted in a storm in a field at the back.

“Never be so foolish as to presume that a hornet will leave you in peace like a bee.” His ominous words “these creatures are pure evil. The first thing they will do when attacked is to turn on their children – or yours!”

There were woods to each side of the track and one night returning home late we startled a family of boar – mother, father and babies loafing on the driveway on an evening stroll. We stopped the car and they came to sniff the fender, bumping snouts against the warm metal. I wanted to get out and stroke them – until warned how dangerous this would have been.

If you buy an old house in the woods and your cats are too well fed to care, the field mice will come. The children were eating a makeshift supper from tins, when the first one scuttled across the oven and up the sticky handle to steal a bean. The kitchen surfaces were soon littered with trails of black droppings and so the doors and the holes in the walls needed stopping up. Beneath the kick-back board which ran along the bottom of the kitchen-units Dad found a new surprise : a family of rats as petrified as the new home-owners! The inexplicable odour that hung in the old kitchen suddenly explained.

The old water-barrel contained a new horror – the hairless bloated water-rat that floated on the surface. A new revelation : creatures loose their fur when drowned!

The bath-tub sat on the upper landing – the most logical place the old farmer had found to place it. Above it was tall window overlooking the sunflower fields and from which there came a daily swarm of new creatures : Shield-bugs. Green in their youth, turning stale brown with age; their vengeance when menaced, the release of a pungent and cloying odour which filled the air. One bug found itself sucked up into the hairdryer fan, the inimitable scent which hung from my fringe a new twist on my usual Jacques Dessange coiffure.

The shield-bugs (or “stinky-bugs”) fell with a ping on the parquet floors, pedalling the air with their legs to try to right themselves. We made soapy baths for the children and they fell into the water or were crushed beneath our feet so in those first few days as we exhaled Parisian air from our lungs, our early memories were those of the intrepid adventurer.

ハヤブサの飛翔

Gascony was “real” life – I was back in the woods – like Little Red Riding hood. Here nature was not the creature I had known in a picture book. Or the gentle version of it sold in flower-shops in the city. The woods of our new home were filled with tweeting, hooting and scuttling, along with the occasional terror.

And with the screams and yelps of our new discoveries – with the toughening up from creatures of city life to the country dwellers we would become – hung notes of unforgettable beauty. The solemn peregrine falcon on the telegraph wire. The russet red deer startled in the early morning mist, ears twitching, frozen a moment before gambolling off across the fields.

“Run rabbit, run rabbit – run run run” – the hares and rabbits and the badger. Our night-time friends.

Into the woods we go – from the river Seine where we lived before, to the dark woods of Gascony.

Next stop – Lectoure.

Time to come out of the woods and meet the world.

Karen Pegg – November 2019

In a world of visuals, photographs are perhaps the singularly most important factor in selling a property. An image has a more direct and positive impact than the spoken or written word.

The growing popularity of social-media sites such as Instagram reinforces time and again the importance of the image. Before a buyer will read a text they will look at a photograph of your property.

Internet surfers are ruthless. They may take less than a second of their time when seeing an image of your home in deciding whether to click on the link – or scroll on by.

When seeing the first image of your property – and this at the speed of light – the buyer will have already asked themselves the following questions:

  • Does the house look attractive?
  • Does it look light and spacious?
  • Is the architecture pleasing ?
  • Does the house look dark and depressing?
  • Does it look in good condition?
  • Would I want to live there ?…

And perhaps most importantly of all :
Does the asking-price appear to correlate with the property I am seeing on the photograph?

It is amazing how many properties – often at considerably high asking-prices – are presented to the market with poor photographs.

Your property may be eliminated from a pre-selection quite simply because the first image is a poor one.

Your house may well be worth the 500 000 euros you are asking – but does the photograph stand its ground when compared to all the other pictures of houses in that price-bracket?

The trophy shot

This is a term coined on the other side of The Atlantic in American property sales.

The trophy-shot is your leading number one image. The first image a buyer will see.

This photograph should show your property at its absolute best. No ifs – no buts.

  • If possible the skies should be blue – or in winter clear of cloud.
  • Wherever possible, the house should have neat and tidy gardens free of tools or incumbrance.
  • Lawns should be mown.
  • Pathways clear and free of leaves.
  • Tiles around the pool should be jet-washed and clean (not black and tired)
  • The pool should be open, shining and blue.

Even if you are not considering marketing your property immediately it is always a good idea to have your photos taken in good weather.

Photographs with Christmas trees on them or snow will send out a clear message in August that the house has been lingering on the market for far too long.

Photographs should look timeless and wherever possible should be renewed with the change of seasons.

Do not hesitate to ask your BLISS agent to come back when your roses are in bloom to improve on pictures taken in the winter.

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The interior
Preparations for photographs, visits and films.

Think Zen !

Buyers shy away from cluttered interiors, untidy or unclean properties. The subliminal message given is one which says : “this property is not loved – hence there will be issues with it – perhaps serious ones.”

The following advice is clearly not always relevant. You may be marketing a ruin or a property in need of full renovation. However for the majority of lived-in homes we market, here are our recommendations:

De-cluttered areas look more spacious and appealing. Start to pack. Throw away items which will not be moving home with you. Seize the opportunity to begin your move. Give The Universe a helpful nudge – and set the wheels of change in motion. Be ready to move – and more often than not – your buyer will come knocking.

Stagnant waters do not move fast. Imagine this period as one of change – a fresh and flowing river. Be minimalist! Start the process with a good clear-out.

  • Windows should be sparkling clean to let in the natural light of day.
  • Cushions should be positioned on sofas. Throws neatly arranged.
  • Beds should be properly made up with sheets, covers and a duvet cover.
  • Bare mattresses should not be on show.
  • Garden equipment – bikes, chairs, furniture, should not be piled up on internal shots.
  • Work-surfaces should be clean and uncluttered
  • Kitchen equipment should be tidied away where possible
  • Washing-up liquid, sponges, cloths, brushes, should be removed from sinks.
  • Bathrooms should be free of tooth-brushes, shampoo bottles, shower gels.
  • If any bathroom towels are left on show these should be neatly folded and decorative
  • Dressing-gowns and clothes behind doors should be put away
  • Medications should be removed from bathrooms and bedside tables
  • Bed-side tables should be emptied of everything except a lamp.
  • Washing-baskets full of dirty washing or piles of ironing should be removed.
  • Ironing-boards should be put away.
  • Wood-burning stoves and inserts look better with clean glass fronts.
  • Dog baskets should be removed.
  • Cat- litter trays should not be on show.
  • Dead plants and flowers should be removed from inside and outside.
  • Old toys and junk should be removed from lofts and outbuildings so the buyer can envisage the space available.

As a general rule of thumb, a buyer needs to project onto a blank canvas.

If your property is too cluttered or personalised – with family photos on each and every wall and surface – it may be difficult for the buyer to mentally project their own vision of their family into the space available.

If you do not need to see an object (other than for decorative purposes) please put it away.

NB – All preparations to the property must be made before the photo session and the appointment with your BLISS agent.

Lastly – For that extra touch of fairy dust –

Freshly cut flowers in vases look wonderful on photo-day.

Have fun with your photo/film session – imagine you are being featured in a luxury magazine.

Why not set the table for afternoon-tea? Make a lovely cake and set out your best china.

On a sunny day – set up the terrace area with deck-chairs, cushions, pots of flowers – perhaps an inviting bottle of wine and crystal glasses on the table.

Buyers respond best to visual clues and when each room has a clearly defined purpose.

The dining-room may recently have been transformed into an impromptu office with piles of papers or children’s toys. Put these away.

  • The sitting-room should look a welcoming place to relax.
  • The dining-room should encourage thoughts of happy family meals.
  • The study should be a zen place to sit and concentrate
  • The kitchen a clean and sparkling place to prepare food
  • Bedrooms should look the perfect place to rest – with beds made up with freshly smelling linen.
  • Towels should look clean and fresh and be folded.
  • Bathrooms should look clean and fresh – sanitized.

 

Preparations for visits

The following tips are always much appreciated by buyers :

Air your property thoroughly before viewings.

Open windows in bedrooms ( to remove « beddy » smells).

Kitchens should be aired to remove the smell of your last meal and bathrooms should be aired and condensation free.

Much as you love your four-legged friends please ensure that your house does not have a lingering smell of « dog » or an acrid smell of cat urine in the litter-tray.

Things buyers love !

Yes it is a cliché but it works. The smell of freshly baked bread or freshly brewed coffee is far more appealing than the scent of wet dog hair.

In winter a crackling log-fire helps set the mood. Buyers have often spent the day covering long distances in the freezing-cold and stepping into a warm and clean room, with the dancing flames of a log fire will set your buyer in the right frame of mind.

If it is dark and gloomy outside be a beacon of light – put on the low lights and lamps. Plug in the « fairy » lights. The warm glow of the interior will draw your buyer in.

On cold winter days – or roasting hot summer days – a drink is often much appreciated.

If a buyer has travelled several hours to see your property, and spent an hour admiring the gardens in the baking heat or the bitter cold, a glass of iced-water left on a tray or hot coffee on the hob- works wonders.

 

Peace & quiet!

The greatest gift you can give your buyer on their first visit.

Be friendly – but discreet!

Studies have proven that the more time a buyer spends inter-acting with the vendor – or chatting about non-related subjects – the less likely it is that the buyer will remember the details of the property when questioned after the visit.

Why? Quite simply because the buyer is so conscious of wanting to please, or be polite – or is so « aware » of being inside the intimate space belonging to the vendor – that statistically the buyer will spend longer looking at the vendor’s face than the house itself.

Valuable viewing time is wasted by « wanting to be polite ».

Buyers will know within the first few minutes of viewing a property if they wish to purchase it – or not. Some may even want to leave immediately but feel they must put up a whole charade and pretence « so as not to hurt the feelings of the vendor ».

Do you really want to waste three hours showing clients your property and explaining how your integrated watering system functions if sadly they have already decided not to buy?

It is not by engaging in long conversations about the weather and the rugby or by being « nice » that the buyer is any more likely to part with several hundred thousand euros of their hard-earned cash.

During their first viewing a buyer tries to visualise herself and her family in your home.

Time and space in which to project are vital. This is a psychological process. For some buyers it is almost a « spiritual » moment as they try to sense if they can be happy here.

Some clients ask to sit down and take a quiet moment to reflect. The agent knows not to talk too much unless questions are specifically asked.

Buyers need to « sense » a property and to « feel » the energy.

It is very difficult to do so when concentrating on a conversation with the vendor or having to make small-talk or being dragged off to look at another room when they have not quite finished in the first. Remember: what is important to you in your property may not be important at all to your buyer.

Time and again buyers return to the agency saying they were not able to « concentrate » on a viewing because the vendor was « too present ». Some ask to go back but request the vendor goes out.

From a practical point of view a buyer is more likely to ask pertinent questions or have a good « in depth » look at a property when left alone with the agent.

The decision to buy or to make an offer is more likely to be taken if the vendor is absent.

The best tips for a first visit – are to go out for a walk. Leave some cold drinks or coffee and vacate the property. Go to the shops or the cinema. Take out all leaping and bounding four-legged creatures. Not everyone likes dogs. Some buyers are afraid of them. Ripped stockings on arrival or scratched legs in the summer from Winston the Wolfhound are not likely to get your viewing off to the best start. Neither are young children haring around. The property should be a quiet and tranquil space in which to relax- without stubbing your toe on a Lego brick!

The time to meet and chat with the buyer and to explain all the minutiae of how the pool and boiler works will come at the time of an offer or a second or third viewing when the decision to make an offer or to purchase has been made.

 

Trust your agent.

The best person to sell your property is most likely someone other than yourself – however hard this may be to accept. (This is said with the deepest respect and many years of experience).

Your agent will have spent time in the car or the agency getting to know their buyer and will already know which elements of the property to concentate on.

Unwittingly – by trying to help – or to promote a sale – a vendor may appear desperate or pushy.

By the time of sale – there will be plenty of opportunity to clink glasses of bubbly by the pool and get to know your buyer.

You might even be allowed to show the future owners of your property the integrated sound-system of which you are so proud.

But not too fast ….. 🙂

Be patient.