How It Began: My Journey to Make My Dreams a Reality

Six years after selling my townhouse in Maryland and spending half of my proceeds traveling around the world, I was eager to settle down and grow roots. A stray without a place to live, I put it up to the Universe.  Bend, Oregon chose me. It was determined: I was going to my forever home. A place with mountains, rivers, lakes, and a quaint downtown. The whole town was five miles in diameter; it was my US utopia. I was excited to move to this small town. I arrived February 4th, 2020. 

Six weeks later the world shut down. As occurred everywhere, suddenly everyone could work remotely. It seemed like the entire population of California moved to Bend along with masses from Texas and Arizona, and a sprinkling of people from the other surrounding states. Within two years the population increased by 50% without the housing or infrastructure to support it. The wealthy Californians were bidding $50,000 over asking prices for homes and the housing market doubled, then tripled! Houses were selling within minutes of being put up for sale. My dreams of homeownership were dashed, and I was angry.

I searched for a house in Oregon for two years. Not just Bend but other areas as well. Although I loved Portland I couldn’t live in a rainforest. Sunshine, and the lack of it, has a direct effect on my mood and I need sunshine year-round. Southern Oregon was a prospect but the best-earning jobs down there didn’t pay more than $18/hour. No bank would give me a loan while I earned a poverty-level wage. With each passing month that I made someone else rich with my over-inflated $2,400 rent payment, I was getting more and more frustrated at my lack of options. Even a fixer-upper, if you could find it, cost half a million dollars. I refused to give in to the greed of others. So I expanded my search. 

I decided to see where I could afford a house. I put in a dollar amount of $250,000, which would not only have an affordable mortgage, but it’s really what most houses are actually worth, despite their perceived value. My search requirements in the US were pretty limiting: nothing East of Colorado, no HOA, and a livable, single-level, single-family house with a yard. I wanted a garden! I wanted to grow vegetables and flowers. I also wanted to be near mountains, rivers, and lakes. Something somewhat cosmopolitan and to live within walking/biking distance of a supermarket and other amenities. Basically, I was looking for another Bend. Hence, there wasn’t anything in those parameters that was, in my opinion, habitable. So I expanded my search again. 

There are a lot of countries in the world where foreigners are not allowed to own property and, to be honest, while Chile is my favorite country, it’s not cheap and I don’t speak Spanish. With that in mind, it was basically Europe. And I needed my house to be my income because, at this age, I’d never be proficient enough in a language to work in an office. My need for sunshine ruled out anything in the UK and Northern Europe. I spent enough time in Portugal to know that I don’t want to live there. I dropped my price to $175,000, with an eye out for something much less expensive. That pretty much left Spain, Italy, and France. Thus my requirements changed. There aren’t a lot of single-level, single-family homes in Europe that are within walking distance of a town. So I required something with a bedroom on the main floor. That’s also a stretch. Most homes have the bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen and living room on the main floor. I was also open to a row house, but I still wanted a garden. So many houses I saw inspired me. This one had lots of land and could turn it into camping. That one had a beautiful home and land and would be a beautiful site for weddings. At this point they were just ideas. I didn’t think it’d really be possible.

The fantasy turned into a real possibility when I learned the exchange rate was almost 1:1. A far cry from the 20% loss I would have taken on my money in years past. Through a process of elimination, the search narrowed to France. Then I learned that the mortgage interest rate in France was 3%! Less than half of what it was in the US! I began the search in earnest. I found a 200sm, four bedroom, two bathroom house in a small town, that looked like it had great potential to be a bed and breakfast, or, as they say in France, Une Chambre d’Hote. 

I’d made a French friend in Ireland in 2019. She lives in Bretagne and I knew that she and her husband had since retired. So I sent her an email asking, if I sent her money for gas and a hotel, would she please go to see the property and assess the town and give me her honest opinion on both. She responded that, in fact, they were in Toulouse visiting her father-in-law, and were leaving tomorrow. Riberac was on the way and they’d be happy to meet the realtor and tour the house. I took this as a very good sign from the Universe. 

A couple days later we were able to talk on WhatsApp. It needed new electric, which would be 12,000-15,000 euros, and lots of paint. But there weren’t any bad smells of mold or smoke and although “It’s a sad little street but the house has beaucoup de charm!” I made an offer considerably less than the asking price, requesting the bedroom furniture be included, and it was accepted. I signed a letter of intent on January 17th, 2023. At 54 years old I was about to make two of my lifelong dreams, living in France and owning a bed and breakfast, a reality. I couldn’t have been more excited!