Confidence returning to the Alpine Property Market

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May has been a milestone for Free Spirit Alpine for many reasons – a month of overcoming difficulties, of equally relying on the old fashioned and embracing (and succeeding at) the new. We’ve grown and evolved – and its not over yet! Here are some highlights so far:

Transaction levels have remained stable

We’ve had a number of property transactions complete despite the difficulties of lockdown around the world. Motivated buyers have remained committed and notaires, banks and accountants have helped us close sales on time.

Increased activity

After an understandable period of reflection, buyers and sellers are back in the market. Last week our enquiry numbers were up by 500% from the week before. This is not resort specific – indicative of the quality of property that we sell and its appeal across the Alps

New ways of selling despite Covid -19

This week we agreed our first ‘virtual’ sale. Second homes in ski resorts are emotional, intimate and very much discretionary purchases. We spend a lot of time story telling, painting a picture for prospective purchasers before they come out to visit.

Our sale this week was closed completely remotely, with Tess our Val d’Isere agent successfuly agreeing the sale after a two hour Zoom walkthrough of the property and many hours of hard work to answer every question the purchasers had. We’ll see more of these ‘virtual visits’ in the future where time poor clients need the services of their trusted agent on the ground.

Breakthroughs in remote working

French Notaries were authorised by the French government to accept electronic signatures to sign deeds remotely for the duration of the crisis. We hope the success of this may prompt it to be continued after – a huge benefit to second home buyers.

As France has started to relax its confinement levels, and the UK housing market has been allowed to restart, we expect the rest of May and into the month of June to build on this momentum. The change in confidence levels this month has been palpable – and has led to tangible results. Our fingers are all crossed here….

Andrew Beale is Free Spirit Alpine’s Founder and Managing Director, see more about Andrew here