Michele Tecchia : We’re seeing the shift to that second home market.
And, obviously, in many cases that need has changed to be much more about a longer, more sustainable home for that lock down window. So really, that comes to some of the more practical natures of the property and its ability to communicate. So whether that’s fast, reliable broadband, the requirements for being able to work remotely, and having the space and the technological backing to be able to do that effectively, but at the same time to have inroads to good communications locally, so that you can move around as you need to. And almost that’s becoming almost as important as having the pool and the view.
Over the last few years, health and wellbeing has been creeping up more and more in terms of the priorities for our clients and for high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. But the pandemic has really focused everybody’s real sense of priorities and the things that are important at the moment. And particularly with people planning ahead for future lock downs. They’re reappraising how the core of their family structure works. And all of a sudden, you’ve got husbands and wives spending more time with each other than they have ever have done. And also in a lot of the time, particularly when locked down having to share those homes with the children who are either tearing around or who are trying to be homeschooled at the same time. So the dynamic has slightly changed a little bit in terms of the properties that people are looking for. And then we’ve got a number more clients who are looking for, shall we say, multifaceted family unit properties or compound type properties, where we have one client at the moment, who lives in a European capital city.
They want to buy a property on the French Riviera, a very big property with multiple villas on it. They’re going to base the mother they’re lucky her on her own for most of the year. But then that property is going to provide, we could say a refuge for have a family to retreat to, or a safe haven for the family to retreat to during the pandemic, but also, it’s just going to be a holiday home for the rest of the year. And as we are starting to see people travelling to fewer locations, and those people then spending more time in those fewer locations, it is it’s impressing more, I think the appetite for people to buy, rather than to rent. And particularly because it then means you can guarantee sorry that you can then use the property whenever you want to. So the technology bit the Wi Fi element, I think the quality of the properties, certainly the amount of outdoor space, whether it’s a tennis court, whether it’s a swimming pool, you know, if you’re slightly further into the back country and away from the Riviera, maybe it’s, you know, you want to have some more lives, you want to have some oranges, you want to be able to have your lemons and have a vegetable garden and other more simple things.
But that trend for that trend for bigger spaces is definitely there and is definitely pushing people, I still think that there is appetite. And there’s continuing appetite for quality trophy assets everywhere. And doesn’t matter it really matter what market it’s in. But if a best in class property comes on the market and the French Riviera, I think there are even more people around today probably than there used to be. And again, this is about people thinking about and imagining themselves spending more time in those locations.
Those that are looking at that Eastern code as you are between, whether it’s kept my tail between Monaco and nice, and lots of these people have still wanted to make sure they’ve got ready and easy access to Monaco. And I think there are quite a lot of people that are enjoying spending more time in their houses outside, you know, not sitting in traffic for an hour and a half every morning to get into town. But across the Riviera, we’ve got there are fantastic anecdotes all through about how people are continuing to want to come I’ve got a client from from Berlin, who wants to come down, he doesn’t want to get stuck in Berlin again. So they, you know, flew down his private jet stay the hotel decap and is aggressively looking for properties. We’ve got a we’ve got a client from Canada, funnily enough, who are French, but moving back to France, they want to put their children into the school. And interestingly enough, they are potentially ready to buy a property without physically having seen it. They are looking to send their banker who was an advisor for them to come and see the property. But not I think that there is definitely that appetite is still there. The fact that we’ve got the best part of 100 million euros worth of property under offer at the moment shows that the appetite isn’t reduced.
Multigenerational model is something that seems to have developed in lots of markets during the pandemic. It’s somewhere that we’ll use the word refuge and retreat and safe haven. It’s it gives you a greater sense of security during insecure times.
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