How DID we end up here? Surely not on purpose, but what is ‘on purpose’? As with all great tales, ours begins in an unlikely place: a college fair. How do these things correlate, you ask? Well, let me tell you.
In the Fall of 2017, we were ‘in the market’ for a higher education experience for our son and were visiting a college fair.
*Side note- it is cruel that we force 17 year old boys make decisions that will affect the REST OF THEIR lives when at that age their brain is a literal scrambled egg- but that is a different post.
While wandering through the labyrinth of schools, an Eiffel Tower caught my eye. We had just finished hearing from UC Boulder— about their brand new journalism program at 58k yearly— as well as University of Manchester— apparently situated incredibly close to the Manchester United stadium— so the Eiffel Tower seemed almost normal along with these two fantasies. The tower was part of the booth for The American University of Paris; located in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris and offering an American Liberal Arts education in France. Scooping up a brochure, I asked the obvious: do you teach in English or French? I mean, what the hell— even if THIS is 58k, at least he’d be in Paris and not Colorado…
Fast forward: nine applications and nine acceptances later, and suddenly my sweet son had a decision to make- see above. There was quite a lot of consternation about WHAT WILL I DO? Again, see above. After many conversations— and quite a lot of musing about what one really wants— a decision was made to try Paris for a year with the consensus that no one would look at your CV and discard it because you spent time in Paris as a young person. So off we went to secure visas, phones, bank accounts, and all the other things that go into relocating to another country in the Fall of 2018.
Fast forward again to Fall 2019: this adventure wasn’t going to be just a year. As we dug in for what appeared to be the long haul, we started to think about rentals— specifically, how much we were paying to rent someone else’s apartment for our kid while he studies. In other college towns, there is a robust real estate market of houses that are purchased while students attend school, that are then later rented to other students and their friends. Sometimes, those houses stay rentals, and sometimes they’re turned over to the next family looking to buy. We got to thinking that it couldn’t be that hard to do the same in France— right? (Well...) And so, our search began. I had some contacts from a previous life who connected me with a couple of expat consultants who weren’t in the real estate market, but knew of a fantastic real estate team. From there, we were connected to Paris Living, and between their expertise and our man on the ground being our eyes and ears, how hard will this really be?
Did I mention that this was Fall of 2019?
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