RAGE

Ugh.
I had a sudden surge of anger and feet-stamping-pouting sulkiness earlier. I thought I would channel it into a blog post, rather than channeling it into chewing my nails or eating waffles (mmm...waffles...).

About one year ago we decided it might be time to buy our own place. We looked at our budget (modest) and our wishlist (extravagant) and started a search for something sensible. We looked at compromises on location, and compromises on space. We found a lovely appartment, large, bright, great area and good price. We bought it in optimism and planned how glorious it would be.
And then we met the neighbours on the second floor.
We signed the "compromis d'achat" for the place in July 2009. At that point, future buyers of Belgian property beware, we were beholden to complete the sale. As soon as an offer is accepted, the contract is binding and there are only a few ways out should you change your mind.
In between the compromis d'achat and the "acte authentique" (when the sale is completed), the notary of the buyer does some investigating into things like the planning laws, the property title etc..., before the keys are handed over and the new owner can take possession.
Come August 2009, the seller contacted me to say the upstairs neighbour, Mr A, had plans to repair his floor, which happens to be the ceiling of our back room (kitchen at time of buying). Mr A wanted to discuss the plan with us, and we agreed with the seller that the costs of the repair would be shared between him and Mr A. So far so good.
I met Mr A, a man in his late 40s from the Middle East, on the 15th of August. He seemed friendly, though his French was really not very good. He seemed to understand my horror at seeing that the chimney breast above our hot water heater had been taken out, and didn't seem to have trouble understanding "DO NOT DESTROY ANYTHING ELSE" as he intended to remove all the chimney breasts on his floor!
He explained to me, in broken French, that he planned to construct a balcony out of the back of his flat, above our bedroom, and planned to put in the structure while replacing the floor and ceiling: "petit, 60-80cm, pas grand".
We pondered this balcony idea that evening. I sent Mr A an email asking him for more details. Any plans? Any discussion with the seller of our floor? I got no answer.
Oh wait, no, I did, I got my first phone-call from Ms B, Mr A's "adviser". She burbled on at length about the balcony and other matters. However no plans or designs appeared.
We discussed the idea in person about a week later, but still no plans...no design...and no planning permission "we'll get it later on, we're preparing our application". We moved too slowly at this point. Had we known what we were dealing with our reaction would have been swifter, and we'd have nipped it in the bud. Ah, hindsight...
Buildings divided into separately owned flats are managed by a co-ownership association (Association des copropriétaires), and represented by a manager called the Syndic. Our little house of 4 appartments had only been sold off to individual owners in December 2008, and ideally the new owners should have set up the association and sydic there and then. For various reasons, they didn't. Like us, our neighbours were unsuspecting as to how things would turn out...
At the point we discussed the balcony with Ms B and Mr A, we were still under "compromis" - we were not yet 100% owners of our property. We focused our attentions in the wrong direction, assuming that at some point in the past few months the owners had held a meeting, had a discussion concerning plans for renovation of each appartment, nominated a syndic...because that is how it is done. Never assume!
Another week further on, in late August, we were the proud owners of a new bedroom ceiling...and of a wonderful view of three iron beams sticking out 1 metre deep above our bedroom window. This was Mr A's "petit" balcony...its structure alone revealing what we would have above us - a 1,20m deep and 4m wide structure obscuring light and views of the sky from an appartment we didn't even fully own yet.
Oh we were slow, we didn't expect them to move that fast. We thought we'd see some architects drawings, thought Mr A might show us his quotes, his builders' plans. Didn't expect them to start building without even introducing their planning permission request. Didn't imagine they would have installed 3 tons worth of metal structure into the very fabric of a house jointly owned by 4 parties without anyone's consent. But they did.
In alarm, we contacted our ground floor neighbour, the syndic according to our documents. In alarm, he contacted the planning department, who took...their....time...
We also contacted a lawyer, to get us out of the sale.
As you can tell...that didn't exactly work out.