Why Nice? Buying a home, sight unseen?

Why buy a home in France? Why Nice specifically? Would you believe we put an offer on a home, which was accepted, and we had never set foot in the city of Nice??? I often think back to this time and wonder if we were absolutely nuts! What I think drove our decision was a love for all things French and the French way of life. We had been to Paris many times, and in fact had put in an initial inquiry on an apartment there in 2014 which didn’t come to fruition. At that time we chose instead to buy a mountain cabin here in AZ which has been a wonderful escape from the desert for our family. But there was always that feeling that France was calling. Each international trip seemed like an opportunity to “swing through Paris”. While we wanted to see new European destinations, we also felt like we needed to say “hi” to our old friend, the City of Light. 

Enter a global pandemic…we were sure happy to have our mountain cabin to vacation, one that didn’t need an airplane to get to. A trip to take the kids to Paris for their first European foray in July 2020 was put on indefinite hold. In fall of 2022 we decided to try again, now with older kids who might enjoy it a bit more. Our London/Paris itinerary was a hit and left the kids asking when we would go back again. Ever since 2010 I had followed newsletters by American Adrian Leeds who runs a company in France, The Adrian Leeds Grouphttps://adrianleeds.com. Her group helps Americans purchase property in France, and she has been featured as the realtor in House Hunters International on many many episodes. It was in fact her apartment which we had made an initial inquiry about back then. Her company has a branch in Paris and a branch in Nice, and she has been writing about both cities as she commutes back and forth between the two. Having read Adrian’s posts through the years, the point seemed clear that many Parisians journey to the French Riviera to vacation, with it’s hub of Nice being the center of the action. 

Brian and I felt that maybe there was something magical to the sunny beaches and relaxed lifestyle of the South of France, but we had yet to visit. We started looking on the internet for listings and found a handful scattered throughout Nice and other smaller towns with price points that seemed much more affordable than what Paris apartments were going for. Sometimes with sea views! But there’s no MLS in France, so finding an apartment seemed a daunting task. We decided to make an appointment over the internet to consult with Adrian, and there was a 3 week wait for the next available time slot. We were impatient Americans, haha, so this wait was difficult! We felt convinced that we needed a place on the Riviera, and the sooner the better.

Getting our schedules aligned with a time difference of 8 or 9 hours (depending on the season) was hard but we made it work. Connecting with Adrian again after many years was lovely, and she made a compelling argument that Nice is really the best place in the Riviera for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons- Nice is the hub of transport for the whole area and has an excellent public transportation line with it’s newer tram system. No car is necessary in Nice, and everything is fairly walkable as well. While the other cute sea towns have some great price points, they are also more remote and have less in the way of amenities, as well as much smaller Anglophone communities. So having a car might be more important, and there would potentially be less support in the way of making English-speaking friends down the road. Adrian wanted to know, what was our purpose for a home there? Was it for ourselves or was it to use as a rental property? Was it a little bit of both? Was it a permanent move for the whole family? We established that we want a European base to use for a few weeks a year while we are in our working and raising a family stage-of-life. And then once we retire, hopefully at a younger age than typical, we can come to stay for months at a time, using the home as a base to then take smaller side trips all around Europe. Since we love the sunshine and the sea, Nice seemed like it will be a place we want to return to no matter the season of the year. 

Towards the end of our conversation, we decided Nice was the spot we wanted to be. Adrian set us up for a video appointment with her Nice agent Ella Dyer and the apartment search was underway. Ella would send us videos and photos when she would go view a property. Some were listings we had seen on the internet, some were word-of-mouth listings that Ella had discovered. Many internet listings are already under contract and not yet removed, so the process was a little boggy compared to the way things are bought and sold in the US. We have purchased many investment properties in the States so while we considered ourselves real-estate savvy here, we hadn’t the first clue how the process worked in France. But Ella was excellent at helping us navigate the ups and downs of the process.

By mid-December, we found a flat in the heart of Old Nice (Vieux Nice) which Ella thought would be awesome with a bit of work. She was able to grab Laura Poirier, a “décoratrice” (designer) who Adrian’s group often worked with, to take a look at the apartment and give an opinion on whether it was a worth a renovation at the price point being asked. Laura’s answer was a resounding “yes”…but with the caveat that it was going to take a lot of work and a lot of patience (and a high ticket price) in the process of making it beautiful. She felt that it was oozing with charm. Our decision was now clear, we were going to make an offer on this apartment! After about a week of back and forth on price and details, the offer was accepted right before the Christmas holiday! Merry Christmas to us! The first available time for us to get there to do some business and actually see the place was late January, so the flight was booked and soon we would be heading to Nice for the first time.