A love that just grows stronger
The south of France may have sunshine, cuisine and culture as natural assets, but estate agents in the area say a surge this year in British interest is due to more mundane factors. Estate agency Knight Frank says inquiries so far this year are well above the 2011 level, spurred on by an average five per cent fall in French holiday home prices; coupled with the effect of a weakening euro, prices have dropped overall by about 10 per cent. Other agents say demand lately is up even more, as soggy Britons seek sun across the Channel. Most Britons choose one of three distinct regions in the south of the country. Easily accessed from Marseille airport, there is the lush hilly Luberon, with pretty medieval villages such as Gordes and the classic Provençal fields laden with lavender, vines and sunflowers. Here, British buyers are back after a dip in demand triggered by the poor exchange rate. This spot is favoured by low-key buyers “looking to immerse in French culture and adopt the local relaxed way of life”, says John Stephenson of Knight Frank. Wrecks to restore in this area disappeared when Britons arrived en masse after Peter Mayle’s 1989 book A Year in Provence, so a four-bedroom mas, or farmhouse, will cost anything from £600,000 upwards, while prices for large houses with a pool exceed £3million. Another British favourite, farther south and 25 minutes’ drive inland from Nice, is the gentle rolling landscape of St Paul de Vence. Here you find quiet villages, sometimes just a few homes or some isolated villas, most with country views but occasionally distant sea glimpses, too. Britons here are typically “fiftysomething parents who have paid off mortgages and school fees and want to live the dream”, says Tim Sanders. He has lived in the region for 35 years and works for estate agency John Taylor, which has offices throughout this part of France. A genuine 19th-century or pastiche modern, pastel coloured farmhouse – all roughly hewn stone, reclaimed old timber beams and 24in walls – costs from £750,000 to £3million. “Prices have never stormed upwards, but they’ve always gently risen,” he says. The final area of interest to British buyers, or at least those with deep pockets and a love of bling, is the beautiful Côte d’azur. Hot spots like Cannes, where the film festival is in full swing, Cap Ferrat, St Tropez, and Monaco are known to all but affordable to few. Estate agents point out homes: Bono’s villa here, the Rolling Stones’ old home there, Joan Collins’s pad nearby. You are never more than a jewelencrusted stone’s throw from a Russian oligarch. The occasional onebedroom flat in an inland area of Nice, the cheapest location along this coastline, can still be found for about £150,000 but most properties are many multiples of that. Most buyers of sizeable properties are predominantly the super-wealthy from France, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and China, as well as affluent Britons. “New apartments in Monaco are rare as there are so few plots,” says Bachir Messie, of the Michel Pastor Group, the developer behind the principality’s latest 19storey tower block, Monte Carlo View. Prices are as jawdropping as its panoramic vistas of the harbour and the streets where this weekend’s Grand Prix is taking place. The smallest flat, with two bedrooms, costs £5.1million; the largest, £46.5million for five bedrooms; all have hefty monthly service charges. As for a parking space – that will be an extra £145,000. But while you have to be wealthy to own a home in this part of France, not everyone is a billionaire. Denise and Mansel Griffiths, from Bristol, found a hilly plot near Cap Ferrat back in 1999 and built the four-bedroom second home that stands on it today. “We have four children and now seven grandchildren and they’ve loved it here as a holiday home,” says Denise, a radiographer. She and her husband, a retired surgeon, use it as a base for winter ski holidays – the Alps are little more than an hour away – and rent out the property for part of each summer. But now they intend to spend most of their time here. “We always planned the place as a permanent home and now we’re living here almost full time. There are plenty of Britons living close by, so we have lots of friends,” says Denise. Soon they may have more. A survey by foreign exchange company HIFX shows France is twice as popular as crisisladen Spain for Britons wanting to buy holiday homes, with the south of the country the most sought-after destination. France may have a new government, but one thing remains the same: its pull for the British is as strong as ever.