We created Manor & Maker to reflect the two sides of our adventure. Many splendid properties are now finding full-time occupancy which is magical for all the surrounding villages.", says Gales. We are lucky to have a very buoyant market at the moment. "It is wonderful to contribute to the adventure of finding 'the' château that overseas clients are looking for, and to see them settling in full-time, bringing these historic places back to life again.
With the help of our realtor, Susanne Gales of Leggett Immobilier, we navigated the French property purchase, and the rapidly changing French château market. It took a year of research, navigating the pandemic, multiple châteaux visits and an anxiety-inducing visa application, but as soon as we set eyes on her facade and tower, I knew that this was ‘The One’. It’s been six months since we received the keys to the Château de Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Instead, owning a château is a way of life, and that like many buyers, we care less about the return on our investment, and more about the emotional journey of restoring an old property and the dream of living in one. Any buyer knows that owning a château will not make you rich. They often lure you in with their beauty but forget to mention that the roof needs expensive specialists to repair, and have legacy infrastructure or other terrifying problems to the tune of several hundred thousand euros, not to mention extreme running costs.īuying a French château should not generally be seen as a way to make money. However, we were also aware that ‘affordable’ châteaux come with their own unique problems. We wanted to live life with a creative focus, not with the webcam focus of another Zoom call.įor the price of a four-bedroom home in central Ontario, we could buy a fifteen hectare estate with a ten-bedroom château in the idyllic Dordogne countryside. The contrast was stark between the hustle and work culture I was immersed in, and the slower pace of life offered in rural France, where the culture focusses on people over money, and art seems to be built into the fabric of daily life. We visited France many times before the pandemic, and talked for a decade about possibly moving to Europe. The company I worked for kindly investigated whether working remotely from France was an option in the new way of working, but without an already-established company presence, the cost implications of the employee protections which are part of French culture rendered the remote-work option not viable. The corporate environment is undergoing some over-due reckonings, but change takes time, and I found, like many others, that I was out of patience to await the necessary changes. Like many who are part of the Great Resignation, the societal changes that started and continue during the pandemic resulted in a desire for change in our lives. We launched our company and YouTube channel, Manor & Maker. My partner and I left small town Ontario, and took a chance on living creatively in a sixteenth-century château in rural Dordogne, France. In April 2021, I resigned my post as a mid-level executive managing an HR Technology portfolio for a large Waterloo, Ontario-based company.
0 kommentar(er)
