The latest market thoughts for Autumn 2020
Hamlet would not have made a good prime minister, nor president. He found choosing between his own life or death was too complex to cope with. How much more complicated when the choice of life or death of an economy is weighed against that of a population. Difficult to avoid the life of one becoming the death of the other. Questions instead of decisions defined Hamlet, and questions, instead of answers, define our Covid combat.
How the world has changed since our last blog on 1st April. Six months such as we have never seen in our lifetimes.
We had already begun asking the questions back in April.
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?
One of the above is that property transactions have indeed been reinvigorated. We have not been as busy as we are now since 2007. Astonishing but true; and we are not alone. Many, in fact most of our friends on the selling side of the industry, traditional agents, not advising buyers as we do, are experiencing the same phenomenon. Property is booming, and property in the most sought-after areas of France certainly booms best.
Why?
There’s no easy answer. Perhaps lockdown has resuscitated a primeval, instinctive craving for one’s own space, and lots of it.
Perhaps a desire to satisfy a long-held maxi-ambition before a mini-virus gets in the way and it’s gone forever. Perhaps we all feel that little bit more mortal, that little bit more “Let’s get on and do it”. Carpe diem has always been good advice.
Perhaps simply the sensible approach: as the French say, if you invest in “la pierre“, in the long run you can never go wrong. And the run may not be so long as central banks print money to save economies and interest rates head ever downward.
Perhaps the reasons are not important. Too many questions. Suffice to say we are delighted to see the market so robust and delighted to be assisting more and more retained clients with their wish to be, rather than not to be, owners of a property in France.