Continental Shift

castle, somewhere near Nice, France

If you’re able to carry out pre-move visits to your new country, one of the things you should try and line up for your more permanent return is renting or buying a house.

Try to visit as many places as you can to get a good feel for areas and price ranges. To achieve this, you may need to use more than one real estate agent (don’t be surprised to find them showing you the same places at different asking prices; this is a common and not illegal practice in many countries). You should also talk to other expats, who may be able to recommend a good area of the chosen city or region. This, by the way, is how people from the same cultural group tend to end up clustering in a few areas.

If you can’t make a pre-move visit, the internet is now a powerful tool for searching online for houses to buy or rent; even Libya, not at the forefront of the digital revolution, has real estate websites where you can browse rental listings.

I won’t recommend real estate websites; obviously the best site is going to differ depending on what city, county, state, region etc you are moving to. Try to find a site which contains the listings of multiple agents rather than just one, that covers a wide area, that has lots of photos and information about the residence you are looking at, and has an easy way to contact the real estate agent.

Even if you don’t feel comfortable using this method to choose or sign up for a house without seeing it in person, it is a good way to get an idea of what will be available, how much you can expect to pay in various neighbourhoods, and how much time it may take you to select a place once in-country (until then, you may be in a hotel or other expensive temporary accommodation).

International Living, cited previously, strongly recommends that you rent at first, even if you are making a permanent move. This is wise advice, especially if you’re choosing a neighbourhood over the internet – it’s too easy to choose somewhere that seems great and then find out later that the house is falling apart or that your ideal or most convenient neighbourhood is down the road, in a completely different city, or in a darling seaside town on the other side of the country.

Also, not to be pessimistic, if it turns out you hate the country and just want to go home, at least ending a lease is easier than selling a house.

If you must buy rather than rent, buy a good house in a high-quality neighbourhood to maximise your return if you do end up selling a few months down the track (to move back to the home country or to move 15 km or 500m).

When selecting a home, whether renting or buying, use the same criteria that you would use in selecting a home anywhere – proximity to schools or workplaces, community feel, the condition and layout of the home, whether furnishings are included (useful for a short-term assignment where you don’t want to bring all your stuff with you or buy new stuff over there), local restaurants and other amenities, available of public transport and so on. See the tips for house hunting given below.

Whether you’ve rented or bought before the big move, over the internet, or in your first few weeks of arrival, be aware that you probably will not be able to move in straight away. Settlement and other legal necessities take time; sometimes the house will not even be finished yet – for example, in Libya, the owners of a new house do not have to pay tax on it until it is finished; therefore they build a grey shell and only finish it to living standards once it’s rented. You may also have to wait on your sea freight or for new furniture to be ordered and delivered (this is something else you can try and arrange during a pre-move visit).

Therefore, you should have some temporary accommodation lined up. This may be a hotel or hostel, a friend or family member, company-provided accommodation or other alternative. At the very least, you will most likely need some kind of address to provide to Customs/Passport Control of the country you are arriving in.

Even if you managed to get the home and associated furnishings lined up three months before the move and have had the real estate agent or a friendly expat monitoring progress in-country so that it will be ready the day of your arrival, you may still want to spend a few days in a hotel. This gives you time to recover from the flight and orient yourself, and for your air-freight to arrive (the logistics of this are discussed in Section 3). Do this well in advance if you will have pets with you as it may take extra searching to find a hotel that accepts pets.

Think carefully about what you want included in the lease or sale agreement. For example, if leasing a new home, you might want to specify that the phone line be connected when you move in. Of course, this may not actually achieve anything – we had that clause in our lease agreement, but once the owner received his two years’ rent in advance, there was nothing we could do about the fact that it took six months to get a working phone line (we ended up hooking into our neighbour’s line in the interim, with his permission).

Some general tips for house hunting, sourced from here, include:

• Consider the distance of the house from place of employment, school, shops, parks, and other amenities you might wish to use. Also consider its distance from less savoury things like noisy or polluted commercial/industrial centres, crime spots, airports, and major roads
• Make a list in advance of the features in the house and garden that you definitely must have, those you’d prefer to have, those you definitely don’t want and those you prefer not to have. It’ll save you a lot of time if you’re able to automatically cross houses off when you see they have a pool or don’t have enough bedrooms or whatever your strict criteria is
• Rather than relying on memory, try to make notes about each place that you see, especially if you’re seeing more than just a couple. Taking still photographs or video footage using digital technology can also be helpful, though written notes are still vital to make sense of the images or footage later
• Do as much research as you can about home sales/rental prices, neighbourhood statistics, market trends and so on
• Have your mortgage amount pre-approved (if applicable) and don’t be tempted to look at houses which are outside your budget. I mean it – don’t even look
• Look for vital flaws like rising damp and major cracks; a structural test by a licensed surveyor and a check by an electrician are always recommended to discover any hidden and expensive faults
• Wear comfortable shoes and clothes, especially if you going to be looking at lots of places in one day. Consider bringing water and snacks (if you’re lucky, your agent will do this for you – ours did!).

CASE STUDY
On our reconnaissance visit, much of our time was taken in looking for houses. My partner’s company arranged for us to go out with two different real estate companies, and we spent five days and looked at 18 houses (with some overlap between the two agents…). We took photos and made notes about each place we liked, specifying in particular any major downsides we had noticed.

The company recommended that we submit at least three choices, as the owners had a nasty habit of promising the house to one person, even to the point of signing lease agreements, and then offering it to others for more money. Unfortunately, after our marathon effort, we had only one choice – we were lucky, and got it without a problem (notwithstanding the phone line issue mentioned above).

The house was then inspected by health, safety and environment officers from my partner’s company, who checked the wiring (to see if it was earthed), security and lighting, and looked for any major safety issues such as the need for railings on stairs and balconies or safety handles in bathrooms. They made recommendations for changes, which were incorporated into the lease agreement.

When we returned a few months’ later, we inspected the now-completed house and gave final approval. This was the trigger for the full rent to be paid and the keys to be handed over (we could see the phone points, but had no way of checking that the line was actually connected until we had a phone to plug in; we were a little too trusting).

However, we could still not move in, as our furniture had not yet been delivered (we had ordered this during our reconnaissance visit so that it could be delivered as soon as the house was ready; as often occurs in Libya, this did not happen and we had to go re-order the furniture). Therefore we spent a couple of weeks in the company guesthouse.

ACTIVITY
Find real estate sites for the country you are moving to. Try to narrow down to a suburb or neighbourhood using the criteria that are most important to you. What kind of house or apartment can you get in that area, and is it in your price range?

If there are no on-line resources, use expat sources of information to find a real estate agent. Contact them and ask them to fax or email their listings.

Also try to organise your accommodation for the first weeks of your arrival.

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