From Reporter Issue 102

Thinking of buying a new home? Don’t just rely on what your friendly real estate agent says. Get a bit of digging done, advises Phil Heinlein. 

It was a few years ago but what happened to my friends Steve and Lainie has a lesson for all of us. They bought a house just outside Antibes. What the real estate guy told them was all true. The place was in good shape. Nice garden. Good garage. Close to basic shopping. But what he didn’t say — and maybe didn’t know — was that Steve and Lainie were to acquire, in the familiar phrase, the neighbours from hell.

On one side, no problem. On the other, though, there was a family you wouldn’t want to know. French, as a matter of fact. Husband ran a small haulage firm. Big guy, no smile. His wife was equally uninviting — and, it turned out, on drugs. Three boys — 11, 13 and 18. Yobs. And two dogs, large and unfriendly. The biggest problem was noise, especially evenings and weekends. Loud music. Motorbike. Barking. Shouting. When Steve — whose French is good — called to complain he was sworn at by the father, jeered at by the oldest boy, snarled at by both dogs. Anyway, things got worse. Rubbish was thrown over the wall. Steve’s car was scratched. Shouted insults were a routine. They stuck it out for two years. And then sold and moved inland.

And the lesson in this tale? It pays to find out a bit about your future neighbours before you go ahead with your purchase of a new home. So how? Well, for a few hundred euros — a fraction of the price of the property — you can get a private investigator (see détective in yellow pages) to do a neighbour audit for you and so make sure you get no nasty surprises. He’ll stake out the place two or three times and watch what gets on. And he’ll talk to people — in a way you probably couldn’t (that’s what he’s trained for) — about the folks next door. While he’s about it he’ll also look at other things you might like to know — levels of crime, for example and here there can be some surprises. One man I know who was looking at a property in Valbonne discovered, by accident in his case, that a house up the road had been burgled seven times! He didn’t move in. Of course, you might say, as you pass your delightful neighbours and their polite kids and friendly dog, that all this stuff about hiring a PI is crazy. Somehow, I don’t think Steve and Lainie would agree.

© Phil Heinlein 

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form