FPN Editor's Blog

Winners & losers

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…