In a Covid afflicted year, sales of French property to non-residents fell to 1.3% of total sales, compared to 1.7% prior to the pandemic.
However, with record total sales in the year of around 1 million that still means sales to non-residents were around 13,000, albeit down around 25% on the average for the past decade.
With the exception of the North-East, all areas of the country recorded a decline in the share of non-resident foreign buyers in the year.
Sales to resident foreign property owners remained broadly stable at 4.1%, giving total sales of 5.4% to foreign nationals, both resident and non-resident.
The graphic below shows the trend of sales to international buyers for the period 2010 to 2020.
The notaires state that the trend in 2020 continued into the first quarter of 2021, with only 1.2% of sales to non-resident foreign buyers.
Conversely, sales by non-residents in 2020 were 1.9% of total sales, a figure that has remained stable since 2015. That indicates a net reduction in the number of non-resident owners has been taking place. The highest percentage of sales by non-residents occurred in Provence/Côte-d'Azur, at 6.2% of all sales, a figure that is similarly stable.
The most popular choice of department for non-resident buyers in 2020 was Creuse (9%), a position that was maintained into Q1 of 2021.
Behind Creuse in 2020 was Dordogne (8%) followed by Lot (7%), positions that were reversed in Q1 of 2021.
Over the period 2010 - 2020, Dordogne, Creuse, Alpes-Maritimes and Haute-Savoie have been the most popular departments for non-residents, representing 8% to 10% of buyers in each of these departments, as can be seen from the following graphic.
Although British buyers remained the largest group of non-resident foreign buyers, at 22% (around 3,000 properties), there has been a strong decrease since the 2016 Brexit referendum. In 2020, the Belgians ran them very close with 20% of all non-resident purchases, a share the notaires consider significant when it is related to their overall population: Belgium has about 11.5 million inhabitants against about 67 million in the UK.
In the 1st half of 2021, the share of purchases by Belgians exceeded for the first time that of the British, with respectively 22% and 17% of transactions. The Germans, the 3rd most represented nationality, accounted for 9% of transactions. The share of the Dutch is around 7%.
The graphic below shows the share by nationality over the period 2010 to 2020.
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