510 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Table of Contents for this Episode

Category: Provence

Discussed in this Episode

Valbonne
Cannes
Antibes
Sofia Antipolis
Mougins
French Riviera
Pont du Loup
Gorges du Loup
Gourdon
Chagall Museum
Matisse Museum
Nice
Monaco
Oceanographic Museum
Lerins Islands
Île Saint Marguerite
Île Saint Honorat
Picasso Museum
Saint Paul de Vence
Lerins Islands Sculpture Garden.

[00:00:00] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 510, cinq cent dix.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:30] Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Brian Tolleson about buying and renovating property in France with a side of moving a dog to France.

Brian shares his first hand experience of buying and renovating a home in the stunning French Riviera, offering unique and practical advice for those considering similar endeavors.

As always, this episode is full of insider tips, practical advice, personal stories. And as you listen, you’ll get a comprehensive view of what it’s like doing something like this, which I know a lot of you are dreaming about.

Podcast supporters

[00:01:09] Annie Sargent: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car, and I’m doing several of those in September so that’s really exciting.

You can browse all of that at my boutique, joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And remember, Patreon supporters get the podcast ad free as soon as it’s ready. Click on the link in the show notes to enjoy this Patreon reward for as little as $2 a month.

No Magazine segment

[00:01:47] Annie Sargent: There will not be a magazine part of the podcast today because I have been away in Paris all week for the Paralympics. When I’m back next week, I’ll tell you much more about it.

To join this wonderful community of Francophiles, go to patreon.com/joinus. And to support Elyse go to patreon.com/elysart.

Renovating a Home in France with Brian Tolleson

[00:02:21] Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Brian Tolleson, and welcome to Join Us in France.

[00:02:25] Brian Tolleson: Bonjour Annie. How are you?

[00:02:27] Annie Sargent: I’m great. Lovely to see you again. You were a bootcamp member, so we know each other in person and you were also on the recent episode about the bootcamp. So people have heard your voice before. So today we’re going to talk about buying and renovating property in France, which is something you are doing, or perhaps it looks like you’re done. About the visa process, about traveling with a dog, your Yorkie Terrier Junior. And we’ll talk about the place where your home is, Valbonne, which is kind of to situate a little bit, it’s 12 kilometers North of Cannes and 16 kilometers North-West, a tiny bit, of Antibes. So you know, in the French Riviera. A beautiful, beautiful place.

Also pretty close to Sofia Antipolis, Mougins, places like that, that we haven’t talked all that much about on the podcast. So that’s going to be fun as well.

How did the project start?

[00:03:26] Annie Sargent: So do tell, how did this project started for you, Brian?

[00:03:30] Brian Tolleson: So my husband and I have been coming to France for decades and decades and we sort of, I don’t think we realized it, but we’ve sort of been trying out different parts of France. You know, we’ve been in the Paris region, we’ve been in the North, we’ve been in the South quite a bit. And we really fell in love with the South of France and the sort of Mediterranean Vibe of the South.

And so we started looking here about 10 years ago. And then about three years ago, we sort of stumbled onto our village, to Valbonne. And it’s been a love affair ever since of the little town. And what’s great is being so close, as you said to Sofia Antipolis which is like the Silicon Valley of France. Which we’ve managed to build some business relationships and start to kind of rebuild our life in France. It’s going to take some time to sort of transition completely, but we’ve started and it’s just been wonderful.

[00:04:22] Annie Sargent: Right, so because you’re from the Atlanta area originally.

[00:04:26] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, that’s right. I’m a native Atlantan, but Ispent my career in Los Angeles and so the South of places justfeels like home to me, I think. And I see so many commonalities between Southern Europe and the American South. Some of the historical culture and also the challenges historically that the regions have faced and overcome and sort of being the new center of culture and life in both places.

[00:04:49] Annie Sargent: Right. Right. Okay.

Buying the Property

[00:04:51] Annie Sargent: So you fell in love with the place, you bought a place. Tell us about the buying. Well, to begin with, how long did it take you from purchase to completion?

[00:05:01] Brian Tolleson: So buying in France is very different from buying in the US. The process is just very different. And we sort of learned as we went, and I think made some mistakes along the way which we can talk about. But you know, I think from start to finish, it takes about four months from sort of like, ‘I love this place’, to ‘here’s your keys’. It’s about a four month process, or sometimes five months. It just depends. And I actually just bought my neighbor’s place to renovate, you know, we sort of got addicted to renovation here. And that process took about five months, but our first place only took about three months.

[00:05:34] Annie Sargent: That’s fast.

[00:05:36] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, pretty fast. But you know, what’s really interesting to know is there’s no such thing as like, buyer’s agents in France, really. I mean, it’s not the same at all. You basically deal with the seller’s agent when you make every part of the process, and there’s no central listing service exactly.

We found that housesandapartments.fr has most of the listings, but not all of the listings. And you kind of have to go agency by agency in the area

[00:06:02] Annie Sargent: Housesandapartments.fr not one I’m familiar with.

[00:06:06] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, it has a lot of this sort of aggregate of things.

It does a better job, but it’s definitely not everything. I would say they have about half the listings. And then the other half are just with each seller’s agent. And you have to go agency by agency.Looking in shop windows for ads is not the worst way to find property in France because it’s kind of the only thing to do. That was an interesting process to not haveyour own agent as a buyer.

[00:06:31] Annie Sargent: And then there’s no mortgages for Americans, really. I mean, it’s just not something that happens here. They don’t like giving mortgages to Americans, so most of it is cash, unless you’re moving here full time, and then there’s opportunities to, I think, once you have a job here to get a mortgage. Yeah, it’s hard enough for French people to get a mortgage, for people who are just coming in and don’t have a job, I can’t imagine. My husband is American, and we bought a house based on his mortgage, because Join Us was just starting and I wasn’t making very much money at the time.And it worked, but that’s because he had a full time income in France.

So it’s not that they don’t want to lend to Americans. It’s just that they want you to be in the French system fully.

[00:07:18] Brian Tolleson: Right. And so we were fortunate that we had some property that we had sold in the US, so we just sort of turned that profit into our place here. So we had the cash on hand, but I think, you know, that’s one of the challenges I think for people to think about is that.

And there’s also some tax things you have to think about when you look at the price of property. Anything over a certain threshold, and it changes every year, is subject to an additional tax for holding it.

And it’s sort of added to all your property. So if you have a house in the US and you have a house in France, they add those two numbers together, and that’s what you’re taxed on, so that’s something to think about. But also the process is really different. The offer for a buyer is actually not that serious.

I mean, it is serious in the sense that once you have a signed offer with a seller, they can’t sell it to anybody else. But you can kind of pull out any time before you get this second phase called ThePromesse.

[00:08:09] Annie Sargent: Promesse de Vente.

[00:08:11] Brian Tolleson: Promesse de Vente. And that’s basically your contract. But that takes like a month to get back. And to also go through all the process. And they inundate you with information about the house. I mean, you get everything. From the seismic activity in your region, to the history of termites in your neighborhood.

You get probably, I would say, 80 pages of information about your property. And that all happens as part of this Promesse. And then once you sign the Promesse, which is sort of like your official contract, then you have 10 days to basically be like, okay, if I don’t want this, after the Promesse is signed, I have 10 days to decide.

And actually, we pulled out of our first contract during that period because we discovered that we had a house now, a little house in the village.In the US you’d kind of call it a townhouse, but it was built in like 1650 or something.

[00:09:03] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Maison de Village

[00:09:05] Brian Tolleson: Maison de Village, absolutely.

But the first place we had was more of an apartment, it was sort of part of a maison de village. And the problem with it was there’s no syndicate. And that’s something to really, like Americans, we’re so used to having HOAs and boards and common ownership of things, but in France, that can be super informal.

[00:09:24] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:09:25] Brian Tolleson: Like, there’s nobody who decides who fixes the roof, you know.

[00:09:29] Annie Sargent: No.

[00:09:31] Brian Tolleson: Yeah.

And so we pulled out of that contract because we were like, there’s just no way that 3000 miles away, we can manage a roof that nobody owns.

But then after that,there’s also a process for the Mairie to go through where the mayor basically gets to review your property sale and decide if they want to buy it instead.

[00:09:48] Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.

[00:09:48] Brian Tolleson: Because they don’t have eminent domain the way we do in the US, so that’s how they do eminent domain. It’s like, we’ve agreed on a price, does the mayor want to pay that price or is he going to let the sale go through? And so that takes like another month generally for that process to happen.

[00:10:04] Annie Sargent: It may not be true everywhere you buy, though.

Yeah, I think the Maison Village is kind of a different kettle of fish.

Yeah.

[00:10:12] Brian Tolleson: And then, you go to the closing and the closing is actually fairly similar to the US. It’s pretty fast and smooth.

Although I will say, we made a mistake. So it’s very important, especially for Americans, anything banking related, I know you’ve talked about this before, a lot of people talk about this. Anything banking related for Americans is very, overly sensitive. And so, I had used a Wise account that I had in my name. Wise accounts are basically in single people’s names, you don’t have joint accounts. And so my husband and I had put funds in my Wise account to do the conversion for the rate, and then the funds basically came from my name and not our joint name.

Well, that became a huge problem for the closing, because then you have to prove that the funds came from joint assets if you’re buying it jointly.

[00:10:54] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:10:55] Brian Tolleson: So just be careful when you’re like sending money for your closing that something’s from a joint account if you’re buying in jointly. That was just like that.

So I had to basically go and show in, like, I had to document, here’s where the money came out of the joint account, went into my Wise account, came out of my Wise account. you know,

[00:11:10] Annie Sargent: An extra step.

In the US, I remember they wanted me as a French citizen to show that the money didn’t come from somebody else. The down payment money. So banks have rules that are a bit complicated at times, so yeah, there’s some hoops to jump through.

[00:11:26] Brian Tolleson: I mean, that was just one of those like 11th hour, you know, rushes to get documents together and all that. Yeah.

Due diligence

[00:11:33] Annie Sargent: Very good. Andyou know, one thing I would like to point out about you get a big stack of documents, 80 pages that with a lot of verifications.The efficiency of your heating system, of your water heater, of your windows, things like that. That doesn’t mean that they don’t try to hide things, okay?

So you do have to be really, really, do your due diligence. If you’re worried about, I don’t know, water leaks, about sewage, about things like that. Do some investigating before you buy because there are a lot of things that they will try to just push under the rug if they can. And with a foreign buyer, they might try to do that more than with a French buyer.

You know, because in our case, French American couple, everything happened in French. So as far as everything was concerned, it was all like French people, except that we had the American part that played a role as well.

[00:12:31] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, I will say finding a notaire that speaks English really well is important. Because the notaire is basically the closing attorney

[00:12:38] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:12:38] Brian Tolleson: And it’s very helpful for them to speak English very well. I feel like, certainly the one we worked with kind of looked out for our interests as well and made sure that, you know, we understood everything.

You’re even required to have a translator. I speak French a little, but definitely not for all the terminology and vocabulary of closing property. So they make you pay a translator, official translator to be at the closing.

[00:13:01] Annie Sargent: That’s a good idea. Just in case, just in case.

[00:13:03] Brian Tolleson: Yeah.

Renovating the Home

[00:13:04] Annie Sargent: All right. So then once you bought this place, you went on to renovating it.

[00:13:10] Brian Tolleson: Yes, yes yes, so some of the house had been done, I mean, they had done some renovations, they had done a good job. And in fact, we bought it from the person who had lived here, and they were also a contractor, so we were very lucky in that sense that we already knew someone and seen the quality of their work, and it was really good quality. Which I think isimportant. In a traditional French way, there was only one full shower room and multiple toilettes. But we decided we wanted another shower room on the top floor, becausethese village houses are basically, you know, vertical living. To be in the master bedroom on the top floor and have to go down three floors to shower was just

not ideal.

We bought a bunch of robes and we’re walking around the house in our robes. So, so we decided to put a shower room on the top floor. I think the process was excellent because we already knew a really good contractor. And that’s sort of my advice for anybody who’s doing renovations is. The contractor, just like in the US, is everything. But also, what I didn’t realize, and you realize when you go through the buying process, you have to have everything documented. So it’s not just like, ‘Oh, hey, let’s pay a guy to do something.’ Because when you go to sell the house, you have to have it all documented, and have these warranties provided for every project.

And these warranties, think they’re called the Guarantee Decennial.

[00:14:29] Annie Sargent: Décennale, yes.

[00:14:30] Brian Tolleson: They’re 10-year warranties for every bit of work, and you have to provide that for anything that you do to any potential buyer. It’s great to have because if they do some repair or make some renovation and it damages your house, they have an insurance policy that they pay for to do it.

[00:14:47] Annie Sargent: And that means you can’t hire your uncle to do things under the carpet, you have to get a licensed contractor to do things. Now, if you decide not to, which you can, then if you’re going to sell the house and there’s a problem, they might turn against the seller instead of against the contractor.

[00:15:07] Brian Tolleson: Right, everything is so well documented in France that, the exact description of your house is entered into the deed. And when you go to sell the house, if what you’re selling is different from what they knew about before, you have to be able to say like, ‘Oh yeah, that second shower room, here’s the 42 pages of guarantees that you need’.

To demonstrate that I actually legitimately added this and it’s guaranteed. But it was interesting because my contractor doesn’t really speak English. Google Translate and WhatsApp have been an amazing combination just to go back and forth. And my husband who speaks zero French is able to have many texts back and forth just translating as you go.

[00:15:50] Annie Sargent: Right. So the problem I ran into in Spain is that some contractors, they don’t want to type a message. They want to send you a voice memo. And I have this one guy, that’s what he does, he sent me these three, four minutes voice memos, and I’m not sure everything he said. So I use the transcription services to get that stuff transcripted and then I can hopefully make sense of the stuff that I missed. It can be difficult if you don’t speak the language, but there’s ways, I mean there are ways to get around that.

[00:16:26] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. I think we’re, you know, part of the reason we’re really shifting our focus to France for, it’s just like even for business, is that I really believe that real time translation is just moments away. I mean we’re really going to be able to have more and better real time translation conversations in the next two to three years.

That fast you think, huh?

Oh, for sure. The smaller AI models that they’re developing now, it’s just really. We’re years away, just not decades away.

[00:16:53] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Well, I made a very good living as a technical translator for about 20 years and then the rates plummeted becausethe AI stuff was just getting too good. And that was not the stuff that was available to the public. But now you can throw that stuff into ChatGPT and it will just do a really good job.

[00:17:16] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, it does a really good job.

[00:17:17] Annie Sargent: So yeah, no more money in translation, that’s for sure. All right. So overall for you, it was a good experience, good enough that you are moving on to renovating another place.

[00:17:28] Brian Tolleson: Yes, we’ve, I think gotten addicted to renovating places in France now, and we’re starting on our next adventure with the same contractor, fortunately.

[00:17:36] Annie Sargent: Right.

[00:17:36] Brian Tolleson: That we closed literally like four days ago on our neighbor’s place, so we’re going to start that process.

[00:17:43] Annie Sargent: Are they joined properties?

[00:17:44] Brian Tolleson: We’re still sort of figuring that out. You have to be really careful on these old stone houses that were built in the 1600s. It’s like tap, tap, tap, the whole wall falls down. So I think an engineer is going to have to come and see, like, ‘can you actually go through’.

Because I don’t want to knock down, like, half the village just with our projects.

[00:18:01] Annie Sargent: They do not want you to do that either.

[00:18:03] Brian Tolleson: No, they do not. They do not

[00:18:04] Annie Sargent: They do not.

That’s great.

[00:18:06] Brian Tolleson: You don’t want to be the American who knocked down the village.

[00:18:09] Annie Sargent: No, but this really happens. Like in the city center of Toulouse, the old houses like that, there has been some places that tumble down. And one of them in the recent past, they actually could tell this was happening because there were cracks appearing on the outside of the façade all of a sudden. And they evacuated several houses, that one and several houses around it.

And like two or three days later, it crumbled. So theyare now deciding what to do. They found new places for these people, et cetera. But it’s possible. Old village houses can fall down when they are not maintained properly overthe decades. And when people do shoddy work, like they open some door or windows and they don’t do the proper engineering calculations, because these stone houses weigh a lot. This is not like opening a window in a wood framed house.

[00:19:05] Brian Tolleson: And like the US, a lot of the old houses, you have to get approval from the Mairie to do any sort of change. We have to get approval even to change the colors of our shutters, because that gets approved by the Mairie.

[00:19:17] Annie Sargent: So, you have a good relationship with your mairie?

[00:19:20] Brian Tolleson: Yeah,enough where I, feel like I can pop down there and ask a question and, they actually all speak English, they’re very generous and kind. There’s a lot of expats in our region, in our village, so they’re used to being patient and friendly.

And also, that’s the thing about the South, and I saw that in Toulouse as well. People are just friendlier. They’re not stressed out and busy. I lived in New York City for a long time, so I understand why people in Paris are the way they are, because it’s just, you know, hectic and busy.

But in the south, everybodyis very friendly. Of course,the opposite of that is,you go into a shop to get your cheese and I’m going to talk for 20 minutes with each person, and you’re the third person in line, so you’re like, I’m here for an hour, okay.

[00:19:59] Annie Sargent: Yes. Yes.

[00:20:00] Brian Tolleson: I’m going to do the math. I know I’m here for an hour.

Food and Shopping

[00:20:01] Annie Sargent: It’s not efficient, most of the time, yes. I was in Paris, actually, even in Paris, I was writing my tour the Les Halles Food Tour, and I was in this Boucherie Charcuterie, and the guy I swear to God, he was like talking to this lady for like 10 minutes. And they were not talking about food.

They were talking about family things, whatever, whatever, even in the center of Paris, this happens.And I was about third or fourth person in line. Thankfully, he had no relationship with the people after this lady. So that went a lot faster. But, you know, if you have friends and family in line, you’re in trouble.

[00:20:40] Brian Tolleson: That’s sort of what I love about France, too.I’ve learned so much about cheese by being behind people in line and hearing about their cheese. The cheese guy will go into like, ‘this particular cow ate this flour, and it made this cheese’, and I was just like, wow, that’s amazing.

I try a cheese, I’d be like, ‘oh, I want to try that cheese, I heard that whole story’.

[00:20:57] Annie Sargent: In your notes, talking about not cheese, but other things to buy, you talk about Castorama and places like that. So of course, if you’re renovating or moving in somewhere new, you’re going to be going to these places. Leroy Merlin is another big one.

[00:21:12] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. Castorama, it was like my biggest discovery because you can never find the exact renovation store. It’s not exactly Home Depot or Lowe’s, but it’s pretty close.

[00:21:22] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:21:23] Brian Tolleson: There’s certain things they don’t have but then they haveall this other stuff that you can’t get there.

Trying to find a place to buy electronics.All the brand names are different, but Darty turned out to be sort of Best Buy for the US

[00:21:35] Annie Sargent: Yeah, so Darty, Boulanger are big in France. But if you go to Germany or Spain, they have MediaMarket, which is a German company that’s very much like Best Buy. You walk in there and you’re like, is this like Best Buy? It looks exactly the same. I wonder if it’s the same corporation.

It might be the same corporate.

Because it looks so similar. In France, we don’t have that. So Castorama is kind of middle of the road. Then you have Leroy Merlin, they have more stuff for decorating. if you want specific lights, door handles, things like that, you go to Leroy Merlin.

And then you have the places where it’s just construction, construction. In Spain, it’s Obramat in France, it’s the same company, but there’s another name for it in France. So you have some companies that do nothing but heavy construction things where you’ll get your beams and your you know. But contractors will know about these places. Mostly if you’re not doing your work yourself, you will just go to Leroy Merlin or Castorama.

Are they far from you?

Finding Contractors and Improving the home

[00:22:40] Brian Tolleson: No, there’s one in Antibes, which is 7 or 8 minutes away, so it’s not far. To your point about doing your projects yourself, like we’ve done some of our own projects. Our filter for doing a project is like, ‘Does thischange the description of our property on the deed, eventually?’ Because if it does, then you need to have all that paperwork and you need to hire somebody to do that work.

You can’t add a bathroom yourself, or you shouldn’t, because if you go to sell it, you’re going to be in trouble down the road.

Right. So, like, one example. If you’re going to change your windows, I would advise you to go through a professional contractor who changes windows. If you’re going to do drapes, of course you do that yourself, but it’s the same in the US isn’t it?No,you don’t have to document the changes the same way in the closing process. You do want to hire a good contractor because obviously you don’t want them to tear your house apart and not be insured, but it’s not the same level of legal responsibility.

[00:23:34] Annie Sargent: That’s true in the US nobody asks you who did the work.

[00:23:37] Brian Tolleson: No.

[00:23:38] Annie Sargent: Yeah, so long as the buyer thinks it’s good enough, then it’s good enough.

[00:23:43] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. And we actually found some subcontractors to do little projects from the closing documents because they’d attached their invoices and I was like, ‘Oh, they did a good job on that sink repair, so I call them.’

[00:23:53] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

How did you find this guy?? Like, did you, was it just somebody told you about him or?

[00:23:59] Brian Tolleson: No, he actually lived in my house.

[00:24:01] Annie Sargent: Oh.

[00:24:01] Brian Tolleson: So it was basically the contractor’s house. And he did a really good job because it was his house, I think too.

He did quality work.

[00:24:07] Annie Sargent: If you don’t have that situation, how would you go about finding contractors to do work?

You know, it’s hard to say. In a little village like ours, everybody knows everybody and everything, and so, my next door neighbor had done renovations too, and I’ve asked her for references and referrals for things. So,asking around.It’s about talking to people.

Because there are companies that try to put together these websites where you can ask for quotes and whatever. It’s a complete waste of time. Nobody will ever contact you from a form you filled out online. Don’t do it that way. Just talk to people around you.

You can even go to places, Casto, Leroy Merlin. Sometimes they have a board where the contractors can leave a business card, you want to look for that, you can ask your Mairie.

[00:24:58] Brian Tolleson: Real estate agents, there’s always great real estate agents. They tend to know good people that have done work because they’re interested in quality work, for selling your property later. Real estate agents have been very helpful too.

[00:25:10] Annie Sargent: Yeah, I think Americans have this idea that you can do everything online, and in France, that’s never how it works. Even if there are online resources,it’s about talking to people. That’s why I think this podcast is helpful because you hear people talking. They explain their process, and that’s how everything works in France. If you want good restaurants and things like that, talk to people. The online stuff for restaurants is getting better. But it’s still better to talk to people.

[00:25:40] Brian Tolleson: 100%. We get things like postcards dropped in our mailbox with like, Here’s a resource to find good contractors. And a friend of mine actually saw that and said, ‘Oh my gosh, never, ever, ever call this’

[00:25:52] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:25:53] Brian Tolleson: Just bad places that don’t do a good job.

[00:25:57] Annie Sargent: They are just trying to get your data, which they’re going to resell to everybody.These are not contractors. Contractors are not good at putting together a good website. That’s not what they do. It’s like restaurants, the best restaurants in France don’t even have a website.

[00:26:14] Brian Tolleson: Right.

[00:26:14] Annie Sargent: They don’t want to spend any time on that. On Google, they probably have their times completely wrong. Opening and closing times. Because that’s not what they do. To do this properly you have to be an online geek and most of us are not. Don’t rely on these resources.

It’s best to talk to people. So, Obramat in Spain is Bricomat in France. They usually do more heavy duty kind of things, not the pretty stuff. Bricoman, we also have Bricoman. And everywhere you go, you’ll find these little stores.

Some of them are pretty small. It’s very handy to not have to drive an hour to the big city. The biggest city to you is Cannes, right?

[00:26:54] Brian Tolleson: I do stuff in Cannes and Nice pretty equally. They’re both about the same distance, about 15 minutes.

[00:27:00] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Nice is also 15 minutes.

[00:27:03] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. 15, 20.

[00:27:06] Annie Sargent: Antibes is pretty close.

[00:27:07] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. Antibes is very close. It’s about 10, 15 minutes. All depends on traffic. This time of year in July, Antibes is probably 20, because of the beach traffic and all that.

[00:27:17] Annie Sargent: All the damn foreigners coming.

[00:27:19] Brian Tolleson: Yes, all the, all the beach goers. Yeah.

[00:27:23] Annie Sargent: Yes. Yes.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

[00:27:23] Annie Sargent: All right.

The Visa Process

[00:27:26] Annie Sargent: Let’s talk about the visa process, for this whole adventure because that’s a big deal.

[00:27:31] Brian Tolleson: Again, like the contractor, I think hiring a professional is like the key.You can do this stuff yourself, but I’m still in the process. So I’ve been doing this for maybe eight months now and I’m still waiting for my Carte de Sejour. But I am approved on my visa and all that.

I did the Entrepreneur visa. We are setting up a business here in France. Really consulting between Southern Europe and the American South called Connexion South. Connexion South. I couldn’t have done it without a professional visa consultant. We worked with Alison Grant Lunes, who I think you know, and I think you’ve been on her podcast or something.

I mentioned you to her and then I was going on the bootcamp, and she was like, oh, I know Annie.

[00:28:10] Annie Sargent: I need to invite her on Join Us as well, I haven’t gotten around to it, but I fully intend to, because she knows her stuff very well, doesn’t she?

[00:28:17] Brian Tolleson: She does. She is like a bureaucrat’s bureaucrat. She just knows all the detail on everything to the point that, when we went to turn in our first application packet, which was again, you know, 40 pages. She said, you’re going to walk into this place, they’re going to have no idea what you are going to give them.

That’s what always happens and you’re going to tell them, it’s okay, this is all correct. Take this, take this, take this. And she was absolutely right. I mean, they had no clue, none at all. I think they’re used to processingtourist visas for people who are not Americans, who aren’t in the Schengen region.

She was amazing all the way through. But there’s a big backup at the prefecture right now for the Cartes de Sejour, so I’m just waiting on their final thing, but we’ve been approved and all.

[00:29:03] Annie Sargent: So even somebody who does a very good job, a very thorough job, it’s not going to be super fast. This is something you need to understand. I’ve actually had someone contact me and say, ‘ Hey, what about this Lunes person? Is she legit? Because my friend hasn’t heard back, whatever’. I contacted her and I said, ‘Oh, this person is asking me. Like, I have nothing to do with this’, but and she said, ‘Oh yeah, it’s in process and this person is just really, really impatient. Just, just wants it done right now.’ Nothing gets done right now in France.

Relax. It will get done eventually, but not right now. So as long as you have somebody on your side who’s verygood at crossing their T’s and dotting their I’s, you’re good.

It’ll happen, but just be patient.

[00:29:53] Brian Tolleson: Yeah. Now if you’re going to do thelong term stay visa, which is just the one year visa basically for like retirees, that is a much faster process and I have a friend who got that within a month.

It was very fast because it’s only a year visa, so they treat it very differently than they do the 5 and the 10 year visas. So it goes very, very quickly.

[00:30:13] Annie Sargent: And also you’re young enough that you’re going to work. Obviously you’re not a retiree.

[00:30:19] Brian Tolleson: Right. Yeah, and the restriction on that is you can’t work. So technically, even if you were remote work for an American company, like you cannot do that in France with that visa. That tends to be, I think, a lot faster.But the other visa types, not so fast.

Yes.

Costs

[00:30:34] Annie Sargent: I didn’t ask you this, but I want to, before we move on to the dog thing. As far as costs are concerned, do you find the cost of buying a house, renovating a house, even the cost of getting your visa, do you find that reasonable or has any of that been surprisingly either cheap or expensive?

[00:30:53] Brian Tolleson: The prices are very similar in my region to the US. I mean, housing prices are very similar. It’s not like you’re going to get a super duper deal. It’s going to be about what you would pay in a, a good sized US city. Housing prices are very similar. Renovation costs are, I would think, a little more expensive?

Everything’s gotten more expensive, so it’s hard to say.

I wasn’t like, wow, that’s so cheap. I was like, ‘oh, you know, that’s reasonable’. We’ve renovated a bunch of houses, my husband and I, and it’s always more expensive than you ever think it’s going to be.

[00:31:24] Annie Sargent: Bring money. Lots of money.

[00:31:27] Brian Tolleson: I have that 20%, you know, set aside for that 20% extra that it’s going to cost at some point.

[00:31:33] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:31:33] Brian Tolleson: But, so that has been cheaper. The visa process, I feel like I’m getting good value, you know, with Allison. I don’t think it feels super inexpensive. I think she’s working very hard and her team is doing a lot of work for our process. That feels pretty reasonable.

So I’d say, I think it’s pretty on par. The thing that I find that is always surprisingly inexpensive in France is the food, like, the food is so good, and so delicious, and so fresh, and so amazing, and it’s always cheaper than I would ever expect.

In the US, I get like a tiny bag of food, and it’s shockingly expensive. And go here, and I’ve got bags and bags and bags, and it’s like produce sticking out of every corner, and baguettes sticking out, and that was so inexpensive.

[00:32:15] Annie Sargent: Yeah. We eat cheap, that’s true. We eat pretty cheap in France and even cheaper in Spain, although it’s catching up. It’s catching up. Prices have been moving up unfortunately, the last two or three years more than we’d like, but that’s just, that’s worldwide I think.

And the quality is just so different it is so much better. Our food system in the US has really had some challenges, I think, feeding that many people all the time. You go in the store and it’s not all packaging, it’s all unpackaged, for the most part, in some sections of the grocery store, there’s no lettuce bags. Well, you can find them.

[00:32:53] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, you can. But there’s a lot of lettuce that’s not in a bag. Right.

[00:32:57] Annie Sargent: Exactly. You will also find like five different kinds of lettuce that is not bagged and washed and all that, that you can do at home. It’s best if you do that, most people do that.

Travelling with a Dog

[00:33:06] Annie Sargent: All right. Let’s talk about traveling with your pooch.

[00:33:09] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, so Junior is with me. He’s with me whenever I come to France.

[00:33:13] Annie Sargent: Has he done the trip several times?

[00:33:15] Brian Tolleson: He’s done the trip several times and it’s always been a pretty good experience. He’s small, he’s like a tiny Yorkie, so he fits under the seat in front of me. The first time we brought him was kind of a nightmare process because when you have to do the US paperwork to get your dog in and out of the country, it’s horrible. I think I sent you the link for it. I think it’s called Feathers and Fur Express is the name of the consultants that we use. I highly recommend getting them to do the paperwork.

[00:33:43] Annie Sargent: That is excellent because people ask me this all the time and I never know who to recommend. So thank you. That’s going to be very helpful.

[00:33:50] Brian Tolleson: They were incredible. To the point that, so I was traveling on the day after Christmas with Junior like the first time he came. And on Christmas Eve, they were managing a situation where. So it all has to go through the USDA, which is the people who like inspect our meat. But the paperwork all has to go through them.

They sent me somebody in Florida’s dog’s paperwork. Because it all has to come to you in a FedEx box, so that then you can go to the airport and do this. They stepped in and they knew before it was happening. And this other person in Florida was not somebody that this consulting firm had worked with.

It was just some random person that they mixed up. But they were already on the problem and solving it. And got me the paperwork at 10 o’clock at night on Christmas Eve. They did above and beyond. I mean, they were fantastic. But then once you get your dog into France, it’s very easy.

You just have to make an appointment with a vet, like a local vet, and get what they call an EU pet passport. And there’s obviously a French name for it.

It’s literally a passport for your animal.

Your dog has to be chipped, or your cat has to be chipped in order for them to do the passport, because they don’t put the photo of the dog, they put the chip information on the passport.

[00:35:01] Annie Sargent: True, there’s no photo of the dog.

That’s true.

[00:35:03] Brian Tolleson: You have to then do your rabies vaccinations and things in France so that they can verify that you have the rabies vaccination current. We get one every three years and we always align it to be here to get it renewed. And then with that, once you have that passport, you can go back and forth to the US and France. That’s the only document you need. You don’t need additional US paperwork. But in the US, you need this special USDA thing the first time, because otherwise they won’t let the dog leave the country if you don’t have it.

[00:35:33] Annie Sargent: Which is so weird. Like, why would they care?

[00:35:36] Brian Tolleson: It’s a weird process.

[00:35:37] Annie Sargent: Yeah yeah, yeah.

[00:35:38] Brian Tolleson: And it’s very poorly managed, because if you didn’t have a consultant, you know. The poor people in Florida didn’t, and they were like, ‘oh my gosh, what are we going to do’, and actually, the people that we had hired to do it solved their problem for them too, they were so nice.

[00:35:49] Annie Sargent: That’s cool. So the first time is difficult, but after that fairly straightforward.

[00:35:53] Brian Tolleson: Piece of cake, yeah.

[00:35:54] Annie Sargent: And the dog’s used to it.

[00:35:56] Brian Tolleson: Oh yeah, he does fine, it’s a long flight. We have a direct flight to Nice from Atlanta, but it’s like eight hours, and so he has to wear a little diaper which he doesn’t love, but itsaves everybody from a mess.

[00:36:08] Annie Sargent: Yes.

Well let me tell you, I drive back and forth from France and Spain and my dog doesn’t love that either. Even though she has the whole back of the car and I have one of these solid things. She doesn’t just get the back seat. She has the back seat plus something that extend where the people’s feet would go. so she has a big area and she still hates it.

When she can tell I’m getting this stuff ready to go, she’s like moping and moping. I can see her rolling her eyes, but it’s got to be done.

[00:36:38] Brian Tolleson: Junior’s been left with my mom or somebody, but as soon as he hears the zippers on the suitcase, he’s like, okay, I’m going with you, right? Like, I’m coming. And I’m like, yes, you’re coming.

[00:36:48] Annie Sargent: So this is a lot more complicated with a bigger dog that has to be in the cargo of the plane. That I don’t recommend you do unless, I mean, if you’re moving permanently, that’s different. But putting a dog in a cargo, my dog would have to go in the cargo and I, I did that once with our standard poodle who was moving with us to France and she was crazy for a few days afterwards.

Like she was not being herself, her normal cheerful self, she was paranoid. She was, everything scared her.Yeah. It’s a very different experience when they’re cargo.Very good. Do not let a US vet write in your EU passport or it’ll be invalidated.

[00:37:30] Brian Tolleson: Oh yes, I sent that to you. That is I’ve gotten that advice many times, because sometimes you have to show your rabies vaccination to your US vet to just be like, ‘here’s the vaccination that he had’, so that they can update their records. Do not let them write in it, because as soon as they see any note from the US or any medicine from the US in it, they will just, it’s no longer valid, and you got to do the whole thing again.

[00:37:55] Annie Sargent: Wow, Okay.

The Valbonne Area

[00:37:56] Annie Sargent: Alright, so we didn’t get to your area very much and we’ve been talking a long time. But the Valbonne area the Cote D’azur, you love it, right?

[00:38:05] Brian Tolleson: I love it, it’s incredible.

[00:38:06] Annie Sargent: What are some things that you recommend most that people don’t miss?

[00:38:10] Brian Tolleson: I really love Antibes. I think Antibes is just a wonderful little magical town and the Picasso Museum there is really cool and interesting. There’s a documentary that Richard Grant did for the BBC, which is all about sort of, why the Cote D’Azure became popular. Really in the winter with the British and Russian aristocracy, and then how all of those amazing palaces and hotels that they built got left in the summer, basically vacant.

And so that’s where the Impressionist movement started. Was basically this artist community moving into these amazing digs when they were empty in the summer. And it really had been in the summer vacation too, so that, just that whole history of the Impressionists and their lives down here.

The Chagall Museum, the Matisse Museum in Nice are pretty spectacular. I also love a little town called Gourdon, which is up in the mountains. There’s Pont du Loup and Gorges du Loup, just cute little towns that are on this beautiful river.

[00:39:09] Annie Sargent: And Gourdon is part of that.

[00:39:11] Brian Tolleson: Yes, yes. And I actually sent a link, so I made a little map of my favorite things. I actually shared it with a bunch of folks on the bootcamp.

Just these are all my favorite little spots.

[00:39:21] Annie Sargent: It’ll be in your guest notes or in the show notes but honestly, it’s, it’s really good that you have this map that shows. Yeah. Wow. Really nice.

Really nice.

[00:39:33] Brian Tolleson: I also really, I like Monaco. I know that a lot of people are sort of like, ‘I don’t really get Monaco’. But I think a lot of people miss the old town in Monaco. It’s like a whole separate trip because it’s completely on the other side of Monte Carlo.

Couldn’t be further from the Casino, but just the gardens up there and the Oceanographic Museum, which Jacques Cousteau himself consulted on. It’s pretty spectacular. It’s not a famous old cathedral, but there’s the cathedral where Princess Grace is buried, and there’s a lot of cool stuff to see in old Monaco, which I think a lot of people miss when they go and like stand in front of the casino, which is basically, that’s like a mall, right? It’s like taking a day trip to a mall. But that is not interesting.

[00:40:14] Annie Sargent: But if you’re interested in old cars, there’s a lot of reasons to go to Monaco. There’s a lot. It’s mentioned the village of Mougins, which is very nice. Yeah. A lot of, it’s just French people love that place.

[00:40:27] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, that’s about five minutes for me and it’s just the cutest little village.

It’s not like a place where people live, like in my village in Belmont people actually live here. But Mougins is one of those sort of, it’s like Saint Paul de Vence. It’s really just mostly shops and restaurants.

[00:40:40] Annie Sargent: Yeah, restaurants. When I worked in Sofia Antipolis that’s where we went for restaurants in Mougins.

[00:40:45] Brian Tolleson: Yeah.

[00:40:46] Annie Sargent: Because they are very nice. There’s lots of different ones. So you get a different choice all the time.

Then you recommend some specific restaurants. So this is something I mentioned when I do a trip itineraries with people, Ile Saint Marguerite and Saint Honorat. Those are little islands that you can get to from the boat in Cannes.

[00:41:09] Brian Tolleson: I highly recommend it. So the Lerins Islands or the Îles de Lérins. When you’re in Cannes, you can see it off in the distance, these two islands. But to take a boat out there, and there’s ferries that go, I think, every hour. Or you can, for not, a crazy rate, rent a boat on like GetYourGuide.com or some, you know, site where you can find things like that. And there’s also a really cool underwater sculpture garden that this artist has created that basically made these face sculptures and then sank them in the bay between the two islands. And it’s just so cool to see.

[00:41:45] Annie Sargent: Can you snorkel to them?

[00:41:47] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, you snorkel. And they’ve got it roped off to boats so you don’t get run over. And then Saint Honorat is, there’s two different islands. Saint Marguerite, I think is a little more touristy and a little more like tourist shops and stuff, but Saint Honorat is still owned by the monastery that sits there. The monks that, and it’s like a silent order of monks.

It’s just a very special kind of magical little island in the Mediterranean of monks and monasteries.

[00:42:13] Annie Sargent: It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful place.That’s one where it’s great to go for the day and just spend the whole day, you know, because you can so that’s wonderful.

[00:42:23] Brian Tolleson: And Saint Marguerite is famous because it’s where they apparently held the man with the iron mask. That was where that prison was, and you can go and see that.

[00:42:31] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah.

Shoutout to Shirley Franklin

[00:42:33] Annie Sargent: So for the end of the episode, I need to do a shout out to Shirley Franklin, because you shocked me when you said to me at the end of the bootcamp that this bootcamper who came, a friend of yours is Shirley Franklin, and she was the mayor of Atlanta for what, 10 years?

[00:42:53] Brian Tolleson: Yeah, yeah, two terms, yep.

[00:42:55] Annie Sargent: I could tell that she was very good at introducing herself and very social, very confident, very smart but I had no inkling. I had no idea. She didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me. And at the end of the bootcamp, we had the mayor of Atlanta with us. Oh, I was like awestruck, you know,

[00:43:15] Brian Tolleson: She has this deep personal connection to Toulouse because her mentor, who was a guy named Maynard Jackson, who was the mayor of Atlanta in the 60s and 70s, who really started the Atlanta airport and made Atlanta what it is today. He also invented minority contracting compliance and how to make equitable investments using city dollars. He actually spent three years of his childhood in Toulouse because his mother was getting her doctorate in French. And at the time for an African American, it was challenging to get a university enrollment a for a PhD in French. And so she moved to Toulouse and got her PhD in French in Toulouse. So Toulouse and Atlanta are sister cities.

There’s a long history of connection there. So, yeah.

[00:44:05] Annie Sargent: So Shirly if you listen to this and if you ever come back to Toulouse, which I’m sure you will, please let me know because my brother and my sister in law actually work for the city of Toulouse I can, I think I could get the mayor’s ear.

[00:44:19] Brian Tolleson: Oh, good. Yeah. No,they would love that. They would love that. And in part of my new business, I’m making more of these connections between the American South and Southern Europe because I think, traditionally people have always thought that you had to be Paris or New York to do international business.

Like you had to have a skyscraper, but now everything’s digital. So we need to ask questions like, why is there not more business between Atlanta and Toulouse? We plan to make a lot of the sister city relationship there. Because I do see so many commonalities.

[00:44:45] Annie Sargent: Wonderful. All right. Thank you so, so much Brian. It’s been wonderful having you on the bootcamp, talking to you today. You are a wonderful human being. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And to people who want to do this, go right ahead, go right ahead, we’d love to have you.

[00:45:03] Brian Tolleson: Thank you for the bootcamp. It was a phenomenal experience. I loved so much of it. And I have so many new friends from the bootcamp. We actually had a Friends of Bootcamp Zoom yesterday with just a couple of us who hung out together.

[00:45:13] Annie Sargent: Excellent. I love to hear that. All right, Brian. Thank you.

[00:45:18] Brian Tolleson: Thank you, Annie.

[00:45:18] Annie Sargent: Good luck in all of these endeavors. Good luck to you.

[00:45:22] Brian Tolleson: Merci.

[00:45:22] Annie Sargent: Au revoir.

[00:45:23] Brian Tolleson: Au revoir.

Copyright

[00:45:32] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 510: A New Life in the South of France