Most Popular Property Areas in France 2011

Most Popular Property Areas in France 2011

The following InfoGraphic might be of interest if you’re wondering what areas of France may be the most popular and if, alternatively, you’d like to find the area with the least overseas interest to just ‘get away from it all’ and ‘find the Real France’. Click on the InfoGraphic to enlarge it and read it properly. Just remember that the results are predominantly from the UK, but the website would also attract quite a bit of Irish traffic.

Information courtesy of The Move Channel:

“The most popular region of France for real estate is Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, according to a new infographic by TheMoveChannel.com. The infographic, which is based upon the enquiries received by the overseas property portal in 2011, shows that South France is the area that attracts the most attention from buyers.

Property in Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur is the favourite, accounting for 15.65 per cent of all Frnch real estate enquiries in 2011. Other southern regions are also popular with house hunters, with Aquitaine receiving 14.11 per cent of enquiries, closely followed by Languedoc Rousillon, which accounted for 13.94 per cent.

The least popular area for property in France is Lorraine, which took just 0.29 per cent of French property enquiries on TheMoveChannel.com last year, ranking below fellow northern areas of Champagne-Ardenne, Franche-Comté, Picardie, and Upper Normandy.

Despite this demand for property in South France, Paris is shown to be the city with the strongest investment appeal, accounting for over one-fifth of the portal’s enquiries last year. Bordeaux and Marseilles were close runners-up, flying the flag for the regions of Aquitaine and PACA respectively.

The infographic also highlights interesting buyer behaviour for French property. Analysing the trend of search keywords in Google over 12 months, TheMoveChannel.com’s chart finds that “houses for sale in France” is the most commonly used phrase for French property hunters, with “houses” ranking far above other types of real estate, such as “cottages in France” and “French villas”.

Indeed, “houses for sale in France” are so popular with investors that the term is used twice as often as the more general “property for sale in France” and “French property”.

Editor Ivan Radford comments: “France: At a Glance is the first in a series of infographics that will provide overviews of global property markets in a new and accessible way.

“We’ve found some really interesting facts about French real estate – the preference to hunt for houses is a particular surprise, which can perhaps be explained by the number of lifestyle buyers searching for a French holiday home. We look forward to doing the same for other countries. ”