Brilliant news if you’re thinking of buying a property on the Cote d’Azur! The pound to euro exchange rate has rocketed of late, meaning it’s far less costly to purchase real estate on the French Riviera. To be specific, sterling has touched 1.43 versus the Eurozone’s common currency this week, +23 cents higher than the start of 2014, and just a smidgen below its strongest in 7 years.
So, to illustrate this for you, let’s say you’ve got your eye on a 6-bedroom villa in Cannes. Were you to transfer £2,500,000 to complete the purchase, you’d now receive €3,575,000 in your French bank account, or +€575,000 more than if you’d bought the same villa 22 months ago, in January 2014, when the pound was relatively down and out. So, this will add greatly to your euro total!
After all, with an extra €575,000 available to you, you could immediately pay off the legal fees and real estate costs of buying a Cote d’Azur property. Equally, you might buy a more luxurious French Riviera property than you’d originally had in mind, perhaps a mansion with a sea view, a chateau with a swimming pool, or a chalet in the Alps, to go skiing in Winter and mountain biking in Summer.
Moreover, it may soon become even more financially attractive to buy a property on the Cote d’Azur, because the pound to euro exchange rate is tipped to rise further. The euro could weaken, because the European Central Bank looks set to cut interest rates even further in December, to stimulate the Eurozone’s economy, but weighing heavily on the common currency.
Hence, whatever the French Riviera property you’ve got in mind, it’s the ideal time to purchase, thanks to this favourable exchange rate.
By Peter Lavelle at foreign exchange broker Pure FX
