BUYING IN FRANCE:An apartment in a château, a studio apartment and a five-bed villa are on the market in Biarritz
A STUDIO apartment costing €179,000 and a five-bedroom villa by the beach costing €1,924,000 are two of five properties an Irish businessman is selling in Biarritz, south-west France.
Matthew Kelly of M Kelly Interiors built up his portfolio of properties over the past six years, and has been renting them out for prices from €600 to €3,000 a week in high season. Three of the properties are close to Biarritz’s centre and also to beaches; a fourth property is in the resort’s St Charles area.
The largest property, the five-bed villa, is by the beach in Anglet, a village about five to 10 minutes’ drive from Biarritz, according to Kelly. The €1.924 million villa is the first property he bought there. He paid €890,000 for a site with a “falling down” property on it and completely redeveloped it.
Kelly looks for rents of €3,000 a week in the high season for the villa, which is next to the beach at Anglet, a surf school, golf course and supervised children’s play area.
A two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a château in the St Charles area is for sale at €367,000: this is a typically French property with tall windows and doors to a balcony overlooking red-tiled roofs.
The studio, one-bedroom garden apartment and a three-bed townhouse for €660,000 are all in the same building on Biarritz’s Avenue de la République, close to the town’s main street and five to 10 minutes’ walk from a choice of beaches, according to Kelly, who owns four interiors shops in Dublin. He is selling his French properties to release equity for his business here, which has been hit by the recession.
He and his wife have been visiting Biarritz for over 20 years, which is what attracted him to invest there. The upscale resort has been a popular holiday place since the 19th century, and properties there command rents similar to those charged on the Côte d’Azur.
Mr Kelly says that the rental market runs from May to the end of September, and investors should expect to get rents for about 14 weeks a year. Somebody with time and energy to do more marketing might increase this up to 20 weeks a year, he believes.
The investments have appreciated in value by a modest amount in the years since he bought them – capital appreciation in the area was about 6 per cent to 8 per cent a year up to the last six months, when they fell by around 4 to 5 per cent. He reckons that he is more or less breaking even on the investment after accounting for loan repayments, taxes and so on.
He pays a local woman about €300 to €400 a week to manage the rentals in the high season, and markets them through his website, Biarritz.ie. He visits the properties every couple of months to take care of business, “things like leaks and so on”.
He says that Biarritz, which is in France’s Basque country, “is the nearest thing to being in Ireland, it’s completely different to the rest of France”.
Rentals are “down a bit” but Kelly believes that a buyer who is able to borrow to invest should be able to cover repayments “and still have the use of the property for a month or two a year”.
The properties are for sale through agent Biarrissimo in Biarritz, or direct through the owner.
www.biarrissimo.com
www.biarritz.ie
