In order to find an apartment in Paris, we cast the net widely. We asked Paris-based friends for suggestions. We posted messages on various bulletin boards (physical and virtual). We scoured the internet. We looked in the Times.
My contacts at NYU in France mentioned an agency called Cosy Home. I exchanged a bunch of emails with various staff members there. We learned of a couple of ex-pat websites and got a few leads, including a potential apartment exchange with a French law professor who has an appointment at Cardozo (in Manhattan). We found quite a few "for rent by owner" postings on SabbaticalHomes.com and other on-line bulletin boards, but we just weren't finding the right thing. Many of these sites and agencies list lots of studios and one-bedroom apartments, but are not geared for a couple with a child. Apartments with two or more bedrooms are simply hard to come by.
Then we found a web-based apartment agency with several attractive options. To protect their anonymity, let's call them HouseFrance. At least one that we liked slipped through our fingers while we debated if it was worth the rent. [I should note here that the Paris market for furnished apartments is pretty similar to the Manhattan market: there's expensive but decent, and then there's cheap and crappy.] Bill came to the conclusion that we'd need to start calling the agency to get what we wanted, so I started using 10 10 987, a cheap way to call overseas from the US (39 cents to connect, then 3 cents a minute after that). I wound up speaking mainly to an affable voice connected to a person named Frank (not his real name). He was anxious to help out, and a couple of times we looked at the website together.
We negotiated about one place that looked good on the web, and found that Frank was able to get us a break on the monthly rent posted on the site since we wanted a place for 9 months. That apartment turned out to have some problems, however: for one, it would require that we walk through Meredith's bedroom to get to the staircase that led to what would be our bedroom. Several other 2-bedroom apartments had similar challenges -- lofts or other lay-outs that were inconvenient or dangerous or both for a family with a small child.
Although the rent was higher than we were hoping to spend, there was one place that seemed about right -- two bedrooms with a living room, dining room, kitchen, and two baths, on the ground floor of a building in the 9th arrondissement. We were determined not to be on a high floor of a walk-up, not only to spare Meredith's legs, but also knowing that we'd likely end up carrying her up some of the time. Frank contacted the owner. She was willing to come down on the rent by 75 euros a month. We decided to go for it.
Lots of money crossed the Atlantic -- a month's rent in the agency fee, then a big security deposit for the landlady. She called a couple of times to make sure the money was coming, since the overseas wire took several days to process. All seemed well. We were excited.
So, we arrived here and the apartment turns out to be a duplex that requires passing through Meredith's room not only to access our bedroom, but also to get to either of the bathrooms! We expressed our concerns to the landlady, who I have already mentioned is a gem, but we knew we were going to have to speak with Frank about this.
We called him the next day (from NYU -- as we had no operating phones to our name at this point). He didn't have much to say, although he did acknowledge that he had known the apartment was a duplex. I said that was the least of our worries, that the staircase was a danger to Meredith and that the layout was absolutely not what we had asked for or expected. We requested a reduction or refund of our agency fee. Long silence on the phone. He said he'd need to speak with his boss. We called again the following day (Thursday). He said he'd been in touch with the landlady about the non-functioning phone. No mention of a conversation with the boss. No progress of any kind.
So on Friday, with Meredith happily ensconced in school (there's a blog about that, fyi), we decided to drop in on the folks at HouseFrance. The street address, listed on their website, is on the Champs Elysees, a rather fashionable area of the city. We got to the address but could find neither hide nor hair of the agency, but we did find the building concierge, who told us to follow the rather insufferable-looking, chain-smoking young woman assigned to the task of mail delivery. Mailbag in one hand, cigarette in the other, she was surprisingly gracious as she led us to an unmarked office, where she announced to the receptionist that we were inquiring about HouseFrance. Then they both disappeared down a hallway for several minutes, leaving us to wonder what in the world was going on. The receptionist came back and handed us a post-it note with another address for us, not in the immediate vicinity.
We got back on the subway and headed for our new destination. Perhaps our fatigue had a positive effect on the staff, who knows. In any case, we got to meet Frank in person. Turns out, HouseFrance is a one-room operation on the garden level of a big building.
Frank's desk was about two armchairs' distance from his boss's desk, leaving me to wonder how long it really would have taken them to talk things over.
Frank actually took responsibility for the errors and came pretty close to apologizing for them. However, the boss, a young, wiry guy (we'll call him Lukas) sporting an F-train t-shirt, was somewhat less sympathetic and visibly irritated by the notion that "muh-neh" (that's money in English with a French accent) could solve our problems. No, we countered, it wouldn't, but it would go a long way to our feeling understood and appropriately compensated for our pain and suffering (so to speak). Meantime, Frank was on the phone trying to get us another apartment. This solution ("There MUST be a solution", said Lukas, several times) did not sound too agreeable to us, but we decided to at least be open to it.
Their proposal: they had an apartment in another part of the city that would be available in early November (that means, in two months from our arrival). We should immediately transfer Meredith to the nursery school in that quartier, so that she'd be settled there before our change of apartments. We of course were not going anywhere without seeing the apartment in advance, among other things. If we went for this plan, they'd be willing to give us back half of our agency fee.
And what if this wasn't feasible? What if, for example, Meredith could not be enrolled in that school (again, I refer you to the school enrollment caper for more on that front)? Well, they relented, if you must stay where you are in the end, then we'll refund your fee in total. Now this, THIS, was more than I for one had ever dreamed possible.
In all good faith, I took down the address of the apartment along with a neighborhood map that Frank printed out for us (and I highly recommend mappy.com for all your urban street map needs). And I went directly from the HouseFrance offices to the mairie of this other neighborhood, wended my way through several wedding parties (the French all have both civil and religious ceremonies, I think, and Friday afternoon is a common time for them), and found the bureau des écoles. With the small amount of information I had on me, the woman in the office thought there would be a place for Meredith, but we'd have to hurry.
On Monday, I called Frank and told him that I'd been fairly well received in the new quartier, but that we'd have to see the apartment before I took any other action. He said the owner of this apartment lived in England and was hard to reach, and that they would need to speak before he could contact the tenant to arrange a viewing. And then we didn't hear from him again. At all.
Not that we didn't try to contact him. Bill and I both left multiple messages, but to no avail. And so, nearly two weeks later, we finally got a hold of him on the phone. Frank claimed he had been waiting for me about something related to the school enrollment, but that was clearly an attempt to shift blame. Then he wanted a copy of the receipt for the gate we installed to keep Meredith from climbing the stairs. Bill started to really lose it then -- how many new delay tactics could they impose? I spoke to Frank in French for a while, explaining that the gate had nothing to do with the agreement we made about the refund. He put us on hold a couple of times, then asked me, quite abruptly, if we could come back to the office the following morning. "Why?" I asked. "To get your refund," he replied. Well, okay then!
I will admit to feeling very anxious and nervous beforehand, but the meeting went very smoothly. For one, Frank was alone in the office -- no boss or colleagues to eavesdrop on our conversation. He had the check ready for us, in an envelope, with only one request -- that we not deposit the check until Monday (we received it on a Friday). Fine, no problem there. And then it was done. We shook Frank's hand, wished him a good weekend, took the muh-neh, and ran.
P.S. The check cleared.
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