Others follow?
Nice to see The Telegraph echoeing my message of yesterday. Here's a section from one of their reports today:
'This time last year Mr and Mrs Johnstone finally found a house they liked. It cost €180,000 (£164,000) – right on budget. What they didn't do was snap it up. Being cautious types, they resolved to think about it a bit longer – right up to the point where the credit crisis reduced their €180,000 to €130,000. Bad move. But they are far from the only clients who ended up kicking themselves over their leisurely approach to buying into the French dream. The Johnstone story, however, has a happy ending. With French property prices going down roughly hand in hand with the pound, their chosen house is now reduced to €130,000 – back on budget! What's more, the sellers, who will be repatriating the proceeds of the sale, will end up with the same number of pounds as they would have before they cut the price by €50,000.' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyinfrance/mirandaingram/5125311/Property-in-France-Je-suis-une-estate-agent.html
Now if the newspapers, that generally speaking seem to prefer a horror story to one with a 'happy ending', are reporting on it, it must be true and not just a fantasy of mine to encourage people to buy French property!
Those bargains won't be there for ever though...
It’s a somewhat strange situation, but while some owners of French property are feeling the squeeze in today’s gloomy economic climate and are putting their homes up for sale, now is the perfect time for other people to buy a place in France - and not just to take advantage of the discounted prices of many properties on the market now, but also as a safe place to invest their savings.
For a while many vendors were reluctant to reduce their sale prices, hoping they’d return to the giddy heights of past years, but almost all are being realistic now and understand that to attract interest in their properties, they must price them to sell. It’s a buyer’s market in France – great for buyers, not so good for sellers. But all is not doom and gloom for vendors either. For example, if you’re selling in order to return to the UK, and you sell in euros, when you convert those euros to pounds, you should be quids in, hopefully negating any reductions you had to make to the sale price.
For buyers, the exchange rate isn’t favourable. But when you take into account the huge reductions being made on some properties, this should easily wipe out exchange rate problems. Many properties are now for sale at prices you couldn’t have hoped for a couple of years ago – so why aren’t you out there snapping up a bargain? I know many people are feeling the pinch, but equally there are plenty of people out there with savings that have stopped working for them, so why not invest in property instead? Provided that property is in a tried and tested, stable market such as France, you’re almost guaranteed a return on your investment (although the days of getting rich quick from property are in the past, for now anyway, and is that a bad thing?). It's got to be a better option than the banks and the stock market right now.
It all goes to show that in every economic situation, there are winners and losers. And even if you’re at the losing end of the scale at the moment, few people are actually losing money on their French property, and for those who are, there are ways to ensure any losses are minimal.
It was good to see The Times taking a positive approach to overseas property this month too, highlighting some of the great property bargains available abroad, including in France (http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/overseas/article6036293.ece). Some examples quoted include a stone cottage in the Dordogne or an apartment in a Provencal village, both priced at around £88k. So if you’re looking for somewhere to put those savings…