Housing Problems

Renting a house in France is harder than we thought. Initially, the problems were related to not having a French bank account. However, you can't open a French bank account unless you have a permanent French address. That Catch-22 was solved last week, by getting a letter from the rental agency to show to the bank to get them to bend their rules. But we have to return to the bank with proper documentation of an address - a utility bill in our name would do the job.

Recently, we learned that we didn't get the house that we thought we would. Because we are being paid by companies in Canada, instead of France, we look dodgy to the insurance company. The reason an insurance company is involved is that they would cover the rent if we took off in the middle of the night. The owner could waive this insurance clause, but won't.

So now we are looking again, having wasted a bunch of time thinking it was all settled. We want to look in the same area because the kids have already started school, but there doesn't seem to be a lot on the market right now.