The French people go to the polls Sunday for the presidential election between Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen. The victor will face a sluggish economy, one where house prices have declined 4.3% during the five years of Francois Hollande’s tenure.
Knight Frank, a luxury real estate consulting company, has compiled data on the past 47 years of housing sales in France, which shows that the current French president, a Socialist, is the only one to have seen prices decline from the beginning to the end of their tenure.
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"The French economy hasn’t had any significant growth over the last few years," said Kate Everett-Allen, a partner on the international research team at Knight Frank, who helped compile the data.
Prices rose by 4.9% over Republican Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year term, from 2007 to 2012. France saw smaller declines after the global financial crisis in 2008, when prices in France dipped 9.3%, and they have remained largely static since, according to Knight-Frank.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a centrist, in office from May 1974 to May 1981, saw the greatest home price gains, with average prices accelerating 141.5%. Republican Jacques Chirac, who held office from 1995 to 2007, wasn’t far behind, with 138.2%.
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But Ms. Everett-Allen noted that Mr. Chirac’s tenure was almost twice as long as Mr. d’Estaing’s, and on an annualized basis, Mr. d'Estaing recorded 20.2% average annual growth. Mr. Chirac had a lesser 11.5%.
Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was only readily available from 1970 on, Ms. Everett-Allen said.
Knight-Frank has also issued its 2016 "Inside View" of France, which takes a look at the country’s prime second home destinations. According to that report, the Alps and South France are as popular as ever, with sales volumes the strongest within the €1 million ($US1.099 million) to €5 million (US$5.49 million) price range. Transactions above €5 million are slow, according to the report.