Each week Sharon Scott of local estate agency 2 Valleys Properties shares a really useful, interesting and helpful guide to ex-pat life in the mountains. You’ll find the full back collection of Sharon’s blogs on our website, and on Sharon’s Facebook page.
This Week – The Property Market
I thought this week I would share with you a summary of last years house sale figures in the Haute Savoie from Le Messager website. It is a good measure of how buoyant the economy is and how many people are flocking to the area to buy, which is great news for everyone with a business here whatever it is.
Generally there wasn’t a great fall in the price of property in the Haute Savoie last year, however this could be effected in the near future by the countries overall economic instability.
Property prices in the whole of the Rhone Alpes region is different from the rest of the country: the drop in prices of older properties in 2013 was only -0,5% compared to -1,7% nationally. The price of land went done -0,7% nationally where as in the Haute Savoie prices actually went up by 5,2%!
The age of young buyers (under 30 years old) in the Haute Savoie also went up by 2% to 17%. The average price of an older apartment is around 168 700€ up 3% on the year before and for a new apartment this price is now 226 200€ up 2%.
In the mountains, it is interesting to note that in other areas who are indirectly in competition with us for all those lovely tourists, prices in Val d’Isère and Samoëns are stable with prices per square metre at 6 550€ and 3720€ respectively, with prices in Méribel going down to 6 380€. In La Plagne, La Clusaz and here in Morzine prices have gone up by 11%!
Local buyers in the Haute Savoie and Savoie have gone up by 3% to 60 and 70%, the Mont Blanc and Aravis areas showing the highest figures of local buyers. In the Tarentaise, French buyers have gone down to 14% compared to 26% in 2012.
The best proof that Morzine really is finally getting on the map is that the percentage of foreign buyers in the Maurienne has gone down by 3%, but has gone up in the Portes du Soleil by 13%, with 21% of the buyers coming from Britain, up a whopping 8% from 2012.
Also in the Leman area prices have also gone up by 3% compared to the Geneva area which has seen prices go down by 4%, although prices in the Geneva area stay higher than around the lake.
Summing up, I would say that this is a great time to invest, if you have been thinking about buying and have been hesitating I would say buying now rather than later would be a good move if this trend continues as it may well mean that a lot of local buyers (including the ex pats) will be priced out of the market. With a buoyant market, ironically there tend to be less properties for sale, as the best ones get snapped up. If you are looking to buy for the first time and are looking for a family home, do not rule out the outlying villages where prices can be a third or even half the price of Morzine.
