Property prices in Haute Savoie

Hi!

I moved to Thonon-les-Bains in Rhône-Alpes, Haute Savoie a little bit over a year ago.

Thonon is the neighboor town of Evian and is located by the Lac Leman (or Lake Geneva if you ask the Swiss) in the east part of France and the north part of the French alpes.

I didn´t need to find a flat since I´m living with the reason I moved here, my french girlfriend.

We live in a 41 square meter flat about 10 minutes walk from downtown and we pay about 600 Euro per month including a garage.

I think this is a fairly accurate figure for a rental apartment here, 150 Euro/ 10 square meter and month.

Since our apartment is too small we´re looking to buy a bigger flat our house.

The house prices is about 80.000 Euro / room and calculated approximately 20 square meter / room so a house of 4 rooms and 80-100 sqm will be about 240.000+ Euro.

If you are a complete rookie on the French house/apartment market one thing that you have to keep in mind if you are buying is that besides the cost of the house/apartment you will also have to pay a non-disclosed cost for the notarie and this can be a very high cost.

The older the house/apartment is the more expensive is the cost for the notarie, I have tried to figure out the connection here but failed.

If you, for instance, buy an old house for, let´s say, 300.000 Euros the cost of the notarie can be as much as 10 %, 30.000 Euro.

The notarie´s job is purely bureaucratic and I can´t understand this cost but the French just shrug their shoulders and say that this is how it´s always been.

Having friends and my girlfriends family living around Haute Savoie and Savoie I´ve found that even though the prices fall when you look for living further away from the bigger towns, the prices seems to be rising just about everywhere.

The whole of the Rhône-Alpes are, of course, dense with ski-resorts so this might be a reason for this quick increase in prices.

If you´re looking to buy an apartment or house close to one of the more famous resorts, like Val D'Isere you´d better be prepared to pay several millions of euros.

Can also add that the cost of living in Thonon and all towns close to Lac Leman and Switzerland is very expensive.