Carte de Sejour
We needed to apply for our "Cartes des sejours"which would give us the official pieces of identity to remain in France without reapplying for visas for 4 years. In order to stay in France longer than 90 days (this is the time that you are given on your visa in your passport via the French consulate back in the US) you need to go to the prefecture in your area. For Biarritz, the prefecture is in Bayonne. You also need to come prepared with an arsenal of documents! Birth certificates, marriage certificates, all of the business information that afforded you the visa from the French consulate, your work contract, passports and copies of them, proof of your company having paid the tax to "import" you, etc. To find out exactly what you need, go to your prefecture's website and research 'carte de sejour' to find which stack of documents fits your needs.
Our experience was pretty good. It's a bit like waiting in line at the DMV where you take a ticket and chill in a chair, all the while special dings and beeps are happening with people popping up out of their chairs accordingly. When our ding came, it had a BINGO feeling, except I knew we would be winning our official status! The lady at the window was nice and we spoke all in French to her (so if you don't speak a bit of French, you might want to have someone come with you who does). We got all our boxes ticked and we were told that we would receive our notices in the post in a few weeks.
About a month went by and we finally received the envelopes in the mail, only to open them up and find out that we would need to go back to the prefecture to receive our cards in person and of course-----pay up! So, Alex went to the local tabac (where you purchase the stamps you pay for government business with) and we went the next day. We hurried there, took our ticket, our ding came and so did our next challenge. Everything was cool until the lady asked us for the stamps, but when she saw that the tabac gave us 545 euros of stamps mostly in 10 euros and 1 euros, she flipped. "WHO DID THIS?! WHICH TABAC?!" That was about all I could understand. We ended up having to go across the street and trade in our small stamps for bigger stamps at another tabac to appease the carte de sejour gods.
So, back we went.....ticket, chair, DING. We signed for them, we laughed off the stamps with the lady (kind of) and collected our CDS gold! Mission accomplished. Since Alex had completed his MBA in France (EDHEC in Nice), we only need to be residents of France for 2 years before we can apply for citizenship.....but that's a long term hurdle we don't have to think about right now : ) .
Carte Vital
Now that Alex had a French job, we could be covered under France's national healthcare and social security---so we needed to apply for a "carte vital" asap. We took our paperwork arsenal yet again (this time with copies of our cds) and were determined this would be an open and shut case. [SIREN] wrong! The CPAM center we went to in Bayonne was super nice and the people working there were a bit younger than the prefecture and super efficient. We saw someone within 15 minutes and unfortunately, were asked for something that was not on our list of papers to bring-----apostilles on our birth certificates and marriage certificate. What the heck is a flipping 'apostille?' I kept pointing at the seal on our documents saying "Look, they are official copies, there is no need for extra paperwork," but this didn't go anywhere.
They gave us a paper and said to contact our consulate in Bordeaux, so I thought, "Cool this will only take a week or so.' [SIREN] wrong again! Turns out, the consulate no longer processes apostilles and we had to not only reorder our birth certificates and marriage certificate from each of our states, but get them sent to the secretary of state for each to have the apostille attached. This would mean that I would have to get my Dad go to the Orange County register of deeds office to obtain my birth certificate and then mail that to the secretary of state with an envelope for them to then send to me in France (in the state of CA, only you or your biological parents can request a copy of your birth certificate and online they wanted proof of something I couldn't give).
For Alex, this process was a little more simplified. I could request a copy of his birth certificate and our marriage certificate online to be shipped to my mother in law, who would then send those to the NC secretary of state with an envelope to send to us in France. I know....ugh. But....after 2-3 weeks, we had our glorified apostilles in hand and back to the CPAM office we went. One look at our papers this time and the guy looked right at us and said, "Wow, good job," in plain English and told us to expect it to be awhile. And so........we wait and I will update you on that when it happens.
Buying a Home
Then there was the challenge of finding a place to live. As you might come to find in any beach community, rent is not cheap. The majority of the places we would find to rent cost more than a mortgage and there were always so many fees and conditions with each rental agency (immoblier). We started researching the prices in the area and what it would take to buy a home. We knew we wanted to live in the center of town (walking distance to the beach, grocery, doctors, etc) so we kept our eyes out for a house we could afford and that had potential to fix up and perhaps sell at a later time.
Now, we had lived in every type of apartment or townhome in France from 26m2 to 100m2 and we felt like if we could just find a clean and modern 1 bedroom place, it would be fine. When we told Alex's parents about what we wanted to do, they told us that they would hope it would have 2 bedrooms so that they could come and visit from time to time and offered to help out if we could find a good deal on a little bit bigger of a place.
I had a friend whom Alex and I had rented from when we first came to Biarritz and she was very knowledgable in the local real estate. I decided to have lunch with her and pick her brain about what we should be looking for and what she thought about our goal. She supported us completely and told me what to look out for----something that we could afford monthly payments on, that was perhaps a fixer upper, a townhome (maison de ville/ maison mitoyene) and that was priced below or around 3,000 euros/m2. She even was able to recommend her notaire and artisan (renovations project manager). Little did I know, but I had stumbled upon this exact thing and didn't even know it. I sent her the link as soon as I got home and she told me to make an appointment to go see it no later than tomorrow.
So we did exactly as she said, as sick as we were with colds that day and ended up making a full price offer based on the fact that there was already an offer on the house and in France, if you make an offer the other party then has the choice to make a higher offer than you or pay the full amount which would seal the deal. We decided to not gamble over 15,000 euros and pay the full amount knowing that the process would be long enough (3 months) before we would get our keys. We were excited and hopeful.
After a few days, we were told our offer had been accepted. We then had to put money in escrow as a deposit in case we backed out at any point. We went to our bank and requested a mortgage. And so began the 3 and a half month rollercoaster of obtaining credit. Apparently, we just happened to be purchasing a home at the height of purchasing activity in Biarritz. There were so many loans being taken out that the bank was short staffed and made some errors that cost us precious time and money (as we were renting an airbnb studio until we could close on the home). There was also a ton of paperwork that needed to be provided; much of what was required from the prefecture, plus snapshots of our American bank accounts, copies of our pay stubs for the last 3 months, etc. We managed to hurry up and gather all of these things within a day or two, but unfortunately the bank wasn't in too much of a rush.
In short, the bank made errors on our 'demande de credit' but didn't notify us and sent us these papers again after telling us the next papers to arrive in the post would be the actual offer. So, we got to sign the demand again and as we thought it was the 'offer' waited for 11 days before signing and sending to them. In between all this lack communication and confusion, we would often have to prompt the bank into taking the next step and this is how we discovered the error. It wasn't until we scheduled the notaire appointment and the bank called to tell us they had cancelled it, did we find out we would have to not only wait for them to send the actual offer, but wait a painstaking 11 more days after to send it to Paris before going to the notaire.
So, the expected move in date of November 18 turned into December 11th. We attended the notaire appointment with our immoblier (real estate agent) and after 2 hours, we had our papers (but no keys yet). The real estate agent had to collect the keys from the other agent who had shown the home and we were able to get them after going by her office that evening. Finally, we were done and then it came time to move in and start with the sledgehammers.........
