---
created_at: '2016-03-26T20:57:52.000Z'
title: A 120-Year Lease on Life Outlasts Apartment Heir (1995)
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/29/world/a-120-year-lease-on-life-outlasts-apartment-heir.html
author: tshtf
points: 53
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 47
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1459025872
_tags:
- story
- author_tshtf
- story_11367422
objectID: '11367422'

---
**PARIS, Dec. 28—** Andre-Francois Raffray thought he had a great deal
30 years ago: He would pay a 90-year-old woman 2,500 francs (about $500)
a month until she died, then move into her grand apartment in a town
Vincent van Gogh once roamed.

But this Christmas, Mr. Raffray died at age 77, having laid out the
equivalent of more than $184,000 for an apartment he never got to live
in.

On the same day, Jeanne Calment, now listed in the Guinness Book of
Records as the world's oldest person at 120, dined on foie gras, duck
thighs, cheese and chocolate cake at her nursing home near the
sought-after apartment in Arles, northwest of Marseilles in the south of
France.

She need not worry about losing income. Although the amount Mr. Raffray
already paid is more than twice the apartment's current market value,
his widow is obligated to keep sending that monthly check. If Mrs.
Calment outlives her, too, then the Raffray children and grandchildren
will have to pay.

"In life, one sometimes makes bad deals," Mrs. Calment said on her
birthday last Feb. 21.

The apartment is currently unoccupied, according to local media.

Buying apartments "en viager," or "for life," is common in France. The
elderly owner gets to enjoy a monthly income from the buyer, who gambles
on getting a real estate bargain -- provided the owner dies in due time.

Upon the owner's death, the buyer inherits the apartment, regardless of
how much was paid.

Mrs. Calment, who has lived through the administrations of 17 French
presidents, has proven the nightmare of all those who buy real estate
"en viager."

Mrs. Calment, physically active all her life, rode a bicycle until she
was 100, and until 1985 occupied the several large rooms of her
apartment on the second floor of a classic old Provencal building in the
center of Arles, where Mr. Raffray was her notary public. She moved that
year into a nursing home, which is now named after her.

She has outlived her husband, her daughter and her grandson, who died in
a car crash, and has no direct descendants.

Mrs. Calment seemed to offer some consolation to the Raffrays when asked
on her last birthday for her vision of the future, she replied: "Very
brief."

Born in Arles in 1875, Mrs. Calment recalls working in her father's shop
at age 14 and selling colored pencils and canvases to Van Gogh, the
Dutch impressionist who depicted Arles in several of his vibrant
paintings.

On Oct. 18, the Guinness Book of Records listed her as the world's
oldest person able to authenticate her age with official records, mostly
civil and religious documents.

Photo: Thirty years ago, Andre-Francois Raffray, bottom, agreed to pay
Jeanne Calment 2,500 francs a month to get her apartment when she died;
she was 90 then. She has not died yet, but this week he did. (Associated
Press)
