Well that’s what everyone is saying and I agree! But how do you go about it when sterling is albeit parity with the euro? Well the smart money is saving money by buying a property as the market is picking up and showing signs of recovery and the nice French banks have the most attractive interest rates I’ve seen in a good few years, the banks are also lending again and this means that if you wanted to buy your French property cash you should think about taking out a mortgage and waiting for sterling to recover which should be just after the general election. Another interesting thing is that the French banks seem to be getting more commercial and are offering a wider range of mortgage products including re-mortgaging and equity release on your current French property for any number of reasons. For any more information on mortgage products or equity release just drop me an email and see if we can help you.

What should you be doing right now if you want to buy property in France? Are prices rising, falling or stabilising? Or should we just stick our finger up and try and decide which way the winds blowing. Having looked at the market long and hard and scratched my head a lot I think I have concluded that serious buyers can strike serious deals with serious buyers. Prices have reduced in most cases and now the adjustment in prices seems very much more realistic and the serious sellers are being more than reasonable. Do you wait a bit more? do you take the gamble on sterling rising against the Euro or do you waste your chance and curse your luck the moment the Pound reaches parity with the euro and any advantage you had has just been negated!!
I had a client back in August whi had sold up in England and was renting, waiting for the dream house to come along, cash in the bank and in no immediate rush who would blame them. I called them when a new suitable house became available and he informed me that his money had been frozen as it was invested in an Icelandic bank and they could not withdraw there life savings. If this wasn’t bad enough the calculation on the exchange rate fell from approx 1.34 to 1.20 reducing his purchasing power by a further 28000.00 euros. Interestingly a large amount of hits on the website are coming from the United States and with the Dollar back to a very good exchange rate it seems the Americans are going to be investing and realising their dreams of owning a house in Europe, it couldn’t be a better time for them to buy property.