Are property prices in Languedoc still rising

I was going to title this “are property prices in France falling” and I left off the question mark as it messes up technical things. I changed the title to Languedoc because France has so many regional variations I would need a huge spreadsheet to show the results - also I live and work in Languedoc.

My personal observations on sales made last month in Languedoc are that prices are not rising, although a lot of properties which have sold have been bought at the asking price.

The market is bouyant and there are a lot of buyers here at the moment, but ther eare a lot more properties on offer and a huge volume of new building.

Looking at some figures from the Noataires sites and guidelines of average sales across most regions indicates that prices are falling in most places over the last three months, although the trend has been for an overall increase of around ten percent over the last twelve months.

Interestingly, in most areas of Languedoc, higher priced properties have had stronger growth than the average.

My theory is that in Languedoc there is a big investment and a lot of incentives to build new housing estates, land has been released on an unprecedented scale and tens of thousands of villa/bungalow type homes are being built at the moment.

Every village seems to have fresh fields of homes growing as fast as the grapes are on the vines this year. This is making the classic landowners 19th century houses in town centers a scarcer commodity and may be one reason for the disparity in price levels.

What I am seeing is a lot of overpriced property on the estate-agents books, owners are very optimistic about what their property will sell for and seem to pluck numbers out of the air, agents then put their commission on top of this and end up with a fat portfolio of overpriced offers.

It is very tempting for owners to do this as prices have been steadily increasing for over ten years and with that sort of track record it is too tempting to think it will go on for ever - but - average sales prices for most properties have dropped over the last three months so a property put onto the market with an optimistic price tag is unlikely to shift.