Mixed messages is today’s understatement. Are there really “green shoots” of progress in the UK, is the Swedish experiment about to fail horribly, has China misled the world about the true number of Covid deaths? Will confinement last another three weeks, three months, or until 2021? Will pent-up demand reinvigorate business, and property transactions, as soon as we can all go back to work? Or some, or none, of the above?
Who knows? Sheer terror was Oscar Wilde’s basis for optimism but we are far from terrified, strongly believing that upper end French property will definitely survive the pandemic. Of course, in the short term, buyers, and sellers, are in wait-and-see mode. This is the norm, especially in the South of France and Provence, when there is a crisis. Few sellers are financially distressed. No buyers are forced into a discretionary purchase. Stasis will be the default position as we have seen many times in the past.
The markets where our expertise lies never exactly boom in any case. Residential property is not a particularly liquid commodity at the best of times and villas selling at millions of euros never fly off the shelves. Properties are marketed at generous – not to say delusional – guide prices and it’s not unusual even for good ones to languish on the market for a year or more. There is usually a healthy supply and demand situation at sensible prices and transactional volumes are quite acceptable, with real values remaining steady.
In times like these transactional volumes will dial down until there is clarity on virus restriction exit strategies, potential buyers maintain their interest and plan their tactics, banks want to lend, and sellers will sell when they finally come to terms with the real value of what they have for sale. Just as importantly the sun continues to shine, the grapes will be harvested in the autumn, and the food markets will reopen one day soon. France is France, and always will be.