Record levels of interest during confinement

France has been emerging from its 55-day confinement with a cautious sigh of relief. Life is slowly beginning to return to normal and the summer travel looks hopeful. But lock down has been surprisingly busy for us, suggesting many people are eager to progress with their property-hunting as soon as possible.
Whilst people have been confined to their homes they have made the most of their time by researching properties and we have seen record levels of traffic to our website. Traffic was up around 30% compared to the same period last year, and we had the highest levels of traffic ever to the sites at the end of April.
Your searches for property have included many of our listings that offer 360-degree virtual tours, giving you the chance to see around the home without physically visiting. In fact, traffic to our properties with virtual tours was up 43% on last year – this feature has really come into its own. We have also been providing extra ideas and inspiration with our agent blogs and also a webinar on buying in France by our Joanna Leggett.
These searches have also translated into enquiries to our staff, who have been working from home during confinement. Enquiry levels were up by around 10% compared to the same period last year.
We have been making sales too! 109 sales were completed during the confinement period. These were started before the lockdown, and with cooperation between Leggett and notaire offices, as well as some new technology, they were able to be completed during confinement.
In addition to this, we agreed 111 additional sales during lockdown, for buyers who had done the vital preparation and were able to proceed with most of the process over the eight weeks of home-working.
We even sold several properties without the buyers ever having visited them – including a chateau! – again, great photography and video tours facilitated this.
But what about if you want to sell your home? Well lockdown has not prevented us from helping new vendors prepare their properties for sale and even giving them photography masterclasses over the phone to take the pictures for their listing.
We have put on 500 new mandates during confinement with agents, so there are not only dozens of ‘new’ opportunities fresh to the market for buyers, but also the chance that vendors might attract interest as soon as possible when there is clearly so much pent-up demand. Bonne chance!
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Property ref: 110501DDE84