Carpe Diem, Seize the day… in France!

2014: A healthy year for the French property industry

The property industry has known rough days over the last seven years; the International financial and economic crises have damaged the worldwide property market. The year 2014 is currently foreseen as an opportune year within the property industry, especially for the French market if we compare the latter with the British one.

For those who are looking forward to investing in France, today is the perfect time to purchase a property as the price index in France has slowed down during the last 5 years while the one of Britain is increasing.

Indeed, as we can see in The Economist[1] France has known a continuous house-price indexstagnation since 2011 while at the same time it has continuously climbedin Great Britain!

Of course, the current market is not the one that used be in the early 90s but since 1997, the year when the price index has always continuously increased in France until 2011, the house-price index has not known until this year a continuous immobilism for a period of time as long as it is today (three years in the row). On the other hand, on the British market the price index hasn’t stop climbing since the mid-90s, except between 2007 and 2009.

Considering the year 1975 as a benchmark based to an index at 100, the last French house-price was below 1,000 (993.8) while theBritishone was twice bigger with an index above 2,000 (2,042.3), the highest house-price index in its history.

Seizing the opportunity

Clearly, the market is currently knowing a change; not seizing the opportunities when they stand in front of us is something that we may regret, especially if we are interested in purchasing a property in France.

France is around twice bigger than Great Britain, finding a nice property on a big land with several acres in the nice countryside such as in Limousin, Auvergne or Bourgogne would not beat the same price than in Britain. Many rural propertiescan be purchased with less than €100.000 (£83.000); furthermore as the current Euriborrate is around 0.2% these days and with a rate exchange at 1.2, obtaining a mortgage in France in order to invest securely in a property is an interesting option that has to be considered.

Today, signs such as those of the ECB rate and the house-price index are encouraging for anyone who wishes to purchase a property in France and eventually invest safely in a French mortgage; 2014 is definitely the year toride the waveof opportunities!