St Gervais, Megève and Chamonix are playing host this week to the Alpine Junior World Championship. Over 300 participants from all over the world will be taking part in ski races between the 30th Jan and 6th Feb 2010. These elite participants are aged between 15 and 20 years old.
The official opening ceremony took place at the St Gervais ice rink on Sunday 31st January. For the rest of the week the men’s giant slalom is scheduled to take place in Megève (Cote 2000) and the ladies slalom in Chamonix. Eurosport will be covering the event. The closing ceremony and medal presentation will be in Megève on the 6th Feb.
The program
Sunday 31st Jan and 1st Feb – Ladies downhill training
Tuesday 2nd Feb – Ladies Downhill
Wednesday 3rd Feb – Ladies and men’s Giant Slaloms
Thursday and Friday – Men’s downhill training
Saturday 6th Feb – Men’s downhill
Further information can be found on the official website:
Built in 1995, Chalet Les Pommiers is a semi detached property. It has been rented successfully as a business during the winter and summer over the last 5 years, thanks to its location return custom has always been guaranteed. The chalet is demi-detached and is shown here as the right half of this building.
Here are some interesting statistics that were published in the Dauphine Liberé this week. They refer to the amount of money the Commune (translates as Council) owes divided by the number of people who pay taxes in the Commune.
I have selected some of the more popular Communes for comparison. I don’t suppose you should make a property purchase decision on the basis of these figures, they just give you an idea of who owes the most! I’ve no idea what happens should a Commune in France goes bust.
Les Gets looks to be on shaky ground, it is an “average” sized ski resort and owes a lot. I know that in the last few years they have built and underground car park, a reservoir to supply water to the town and they have upgraded their sewage system too.
On a similar subject the Dauphine Liberé ran a story on the amount of ski lift investment in the Haute Savoie over the last year. Full story via the link below.
I reported that we had a busy summer with lots of transactions thanks to more negotiation than normal and lower prices. So a good time to buy a chalet or apartment but not a great time to sell one.
The Connexion newspaper has just done a “Property Supplement” that looks at the figures across France for 2009. *
Many of the figures they use fly in the face of our experience. In general they report that 2009 was a difficult year for property sales in all respects. This opionion is contrary to ours and could be explained by:
They are looking at 2009 as a whole, I report on what has happened over the last couple of months.
They are using figures for either the whole of France or individual departments, our experience is just of a few particular ski stations and the surrounding areas.
Some of the facts used by The Connexion are:
Total Sales
2009 = approx 550,000
2008 = 770,000
2007 = 844,00
Mortgages down 22% on 2008
5,000 (out of 35,000) estate agents shut their doors in 2009.
I don’t dispute any of these figures, they just (on the whole) don’t match up with our “local” experience. One of the findings we do agree with is:
Lowest level of housing construction since 1998 – Though even this is picking up again now.
The Connexion does pick up on an anomalous statistic being quoted by the FNAIM (The French Estate Agents Association), that in general house prices have increased by 3% over the year. I don’t think anyone agrees with this – even their spokesman questioned this – and for that he ended up having to find another job!
Our opinion is that property prices have fallen over 2009. It’s difficult to put a figure on it, as it depends on the type, value and location of the property. Some generalisations follow.
The big name resorts (Megève and Chamonix) have resisted the price falls but then they have probably seen less transactions as a result.
The smaller ski areas (Grand Bornand, La Clusaz, Morzine, Les Gets, Samoens, Chatel etc) have seen quite large price reductions of 10 to 30% on asking prices.
The outlying areas (St Jean d’Aulps, Le Biot, Verchaix etc) have seen two effects. Cheap family homes have held their value (so chalets for less than 400,000 Euros), there are a lot of people that live and work in the resorts that need to house their families, these properties are less effected by speculation and the bubble that was created by the second home price inflation. Small apartments have held up in the outlying areas too. The property that is really struggling is the larger (so 600k+) property in the outlying areas, few families working in the Haute Savoie can afford a family home of that price and people looking for a second home are being more cautions and insisting on regarding their properties as investments that can provide an income, this leads them to look into the centre of the resorts where the rental incomes are more secure.
So too cut a rather lengthy post short.
Property Transactions are still fluid, in fact they have returned to post 2009 levels.
Prices have come down, or at the very least the owners will negotiate heavily.
Mortgage rates have improved.
There is still no shortage of properties coming onto the market 244 properties are listed on our website, up from 228 in September 2009.
Some of the Alpine Propetry team managed a morning out about the Valley de la Manche (Morzine)
Last Snow Update of 2009:
26/12/2009. No pictures I’m afraid. Just to say that the “early season” conditions have fluctuated hugely, from very good conditions to very bad conditions! The stable weather of the middle of the month broke down around the 20th of December, since then the temperature has been fluctuating from “Baltic” to “Tropical” and is still in that cycle. Everything (from the valley floor up, with artificial snow cover is white and varies from good to icy, From 1500m to 1800m the natural snow starts to appear and anything above 1800m is in good condition. These observations seem to match quite closely the full descritption from the “ Bulletin neige et avalanches”.
Snow update 15/12/09, we decided to dispel some of the rumours circulating about the snow conditions, we took the Alpine Property video camera to document what we saw. Below are details of two half day excursions in the Portes du Soleil. If it softens the blow, we will be working this coming weekend!
Tuesday morning (15/12/09)
Monday afternoon (14/12/09)
Snow Reports from earlier in the month.
3/12/09 It looks like Avoriaz/Morzine/Le Grande Terche! are all opening this weekend (for the weekend), I guess everyone else will be as well.
The snow has reached the lower reaches of the Alps over the last day or so. This is a picture of my garden in St Jean d’Aulps, at 800m altitude, 4/5cm here. No announcements yet about a possible early opening of the lifts but I suspect they will this weekend.
We have been busy adding new properties to our website. Over the last 3 weeks we’ve added another 20.
The “Bulletins Municipaux” has just been published in Morzine. This a the newsletter published by the Morzine Mairie 3 times a year. It has always been very informative and this issue is no exception.
I will summarise in a list the projects and stage of development they have reached.
The Tourist Office square, worked restarted here at the beginning of the Autumn 2009, good progress has been made, there is plenty of nice smooth tarmac, open space and quality looking bits of rock disspersed around the area. The outdoor ice rink is scheduled to be complete before the winter and the “square” will certainly be functional by Christmas, there is more work to come however with a very advanced lighting system and work to the surrounding roads scheduled to be completed by the end of 2010.
The work for the wood-burning heating network started in the summer of 2009. This environmentally friendly heating project uses local wood harvested in a sustainable way. This huge project includes 1.4km of heating conduit that snakes around the town providing heat for the Town Hall, Library, Vicarage, ANPE Offices, both the schools, judo and music rooms, the Palais des Sports and the swimming pool.
New pool for Morzine. The plans for this project where but on display at the outdoor pool this summer. The work is due to commence in the Spring of 2010, pause for the the summer and then carry on in the Autumn, scheduled to be completed by the winter of 2011/12. All the existing pools will be retained, the existing changing rooms and restaurant will be removed and replaced with a 25m x 15m indoor pool, a spar, 3 saunas, 2 hammams, relaxation space and new restaurant.
The new Pierre et Vacances apartment project at Avoriaz continues, we have the apartments for sale on our website. The apartment building works start in the Spring of 2010, the Aquariaz project starts in the Autumn of 2010, the second phase of apartment building is scheduled to start in 2011.
The work towards the replacement for the Prodains cable car is due to start in the Spring of 2010 and due to be completed by the winter 2011/12. The cable car that has been proposed linking Morzine to Avoriaz is still in the feasibility study stage.
The Morzine ski company reports that plenty of work has been carried out adding snow cannons and moving snow cannons around the pistes to deal with “gaps” in cover. Everyone will have seen the earth works carried out on the “Retour des Nants” AKA the “Green return piste”, included with this is 6 new snow canons therefore adding another snowsure route back to the foot of the Pleney side of Morzine. Also mentioned was a proposed to 6 seater chair lift to replace the acient Chamossiere chairlift. Work is due to start on this next year to be completed for next winter.
There is lots more information in the newsletter and it is produced in English and French. Click below for links:
3. This snowy picture was taken at 1800m above Morzine at 11am on Friday November 6th.
It’s always reassuring when the first (proper) snows arrive, especially after such a long hot summer. The forecast is predicting over 1m of snow will fall this week high on the mountan. It’s already looking fairly white up high. If you get a warm feeling inside when at the sight of snow then let me draw your attention to the following links.
For the cycling fans that live in the Haute Savoie this is like having the World Cup (Football) staged on your doorstep. We won’t have the “final”, that will be in the Pyrenees this year but we will have one of the most important matches.
Morzine has been a regular tour stop since 1975, it has had 18 finishes and 16 starts over the years. We last watched the Tour arrive in Morzine in 2006, Floyd Landis controversially won that day (after climbing over the Joux Plan).
So in 2010 the finish will be in Avoriaz, it’ll be the first mountain day of the tour. I don’t think Avoriaz has seen many finishes. As far as I can find it is just one, 1994, a time trial from Cluses to Avoriaz, won by Piotre Ugrumov.
It’ll be an interesting Tour (it always is?), although it looks like a climbers tour and so must therefore favour Contador, on the third day the tour will spend 13km on cobblestones. It doesn’t sound much but for Contador it could be a bit like being beaten up, he’ll need a strong team around him to shepard him through this section.
In summary.
Sunday, July 11th. Station des Rousses to Avoriaz
Monday, July 12th. A rest day in Morzine
Tuesday, July 13th. Morzine to Saint Jean de Maurienne
For the second year in a row Alpine Property attended the “Second Home International” property exhibition in Utrecht. Last year produced some good sales and some contacts with other Dutch sales channels so we headed over again. Early signs are promising, we registered 20% more prospective buyers on our database and the general feeling was that the people we spoke to where more serious about a purchase than last year. It is always hard to tell how things have gone straight after the exhibition, for example one of the people we met last year has just signed for his new property this month. These things are very long-term! The organisers have not released their official figures yet but so far it looks like about 10,000 people visited the exhibition over the weekend. In a country of only 16 million that is fairly impressive.
So why Utrecht? The Dutch have always been very keen on the Haute Savoie, especially in the 90’s, they went a little cool when the British pushed the prices through the roof but are now returning in their droves and mopping up the bargains. They are in the Eurozone so don’t feel the effects of the weak pound. Apparently Utrecht is the best place to meet in Holland, it is within an hour of anywhere in the country.
Here is a little video too, a word of warning though. It’s not terribly exiting.
Posted by Gareth 
