From Billionaires' Bay to the old town in Nice

Profile: The Riviera. ...  the lure of the Côte d'Azur is as strong as ever - and Irish people are queuing up after the Brits and the Russians to buy their place in the sun. Frances O'Rourke reports

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich paid €22 million for his slice of the Riviera on exclusive Cap d'Antibes.

But you can find something much more affordable on the Côte d'Azur for around €125,000-plus, if a studio apartment in Nice's old town or perhaps Juan les Pins would suit.

Millionaire, London city whiz kid or early retired Irish pensioner flying Aer Lingus's cheap mid-week special, there's something for everyone in this part of the south of France nowadays.

Well perhaps not everyone. If you're one of the super rich, you may have to join a queue to buy one of the expensive, exclusive villas on Cap d'Antibes, a part of the Riviera that has retained its starry allure.

Anthony Van Wouwe, the Dutchman who has been running estate agency Cap West International on the Cap D'Antibes for the past 15 years, has too many clients and too few villas to meet their demand.

Prices start at around €1.5 million for a 170sq m (1,829sq ft) house on around 1,000sq m (10,763sq ft) of land, and can go up to around €28 million or more. And there aren't enough of them.

A growing number of Irish people are amongst those - the British, then Russians are the top buyers - who've asked Cap West to find them a house.

But even if you have the cash to buy a place on "Billionaires' Bay" on the east side of the Cap - where Abramovich owns the château that once belonged to the Duke of Windsor, and his former friend oligarch Boris Berezovsky owns one just as expensive that's now at the centre of a French financial investigation - you may be out of luck.

"The Cap is 20 minutes' from Nice airport, near Cannes and Nice; it's accessible from all over Europe," says Van Wouwe. "Everybody wants to be here."

The airport, and low cost airlines, are part of the key to the Côte d'Azur's thriving property market. Denis Broadfield, a former UK TV journalist who set up property search company Totally Nice in Nice two years ago with another journalist, Tristan Rutherford, says that from 1995 to 2003, prices in the region grew by 9.6 per cent, way above the French national average of 6.7 per cent.

"And agents in Nice are talking about an 18 to 23 per cent growth in prices between 2004/2005," he adds.

Broadfield points to the "Easyjet effect" as a major force driving the current property market. There are 25 flights a day into Nice from that airline alone, plus huge traffic from many other airlines, including of course Aer Lingus, which has daily flights from Dublin to Nice and weekly flights from Cork.

"Busy young execs from London can make the trip to Nice in 90 minutes, and work half the week from here, since Nice is a fully broadband wired city," says Broadfield.

Getting around is no problem - a good public transport system means you can catch the bus from the airport to Nice's old town for just €4, and there are regular trains that can get you to Juan les Pins in 20 minutes or to Italy in 35 minutes. On top of that, a new tram system is being built.

Totally Nice has carved out a niche for itself working with local agents, finding mainly second-hand apartments in Nice's old town. Refurbished apartments with modern facilities in old buildings cost from €100,000 upwards; for around €250,000 you can get a 50sq m (538sq ft) one-bed and for €350,000, a two-bed. If you need to rent the property, you'll get about €350 a week in season (June to early October) and €300 a week during the rest of the year for a one-bedroom apartment.

Totally Nice's clients are people who like the urban buzz of Nice, not the villa-with-pool set. But Irish buyers are generally more interested in holiday homes in summer places, says Dominique André of Coldwell Banker, a real estate agency with offices along the Riviera.

While the coast from Nice to Monaco has attracted quite a few Irish people - Bono and the rest of U2 have villas at Eze-sur-Mer - it tends to be a rather more expensive stretch of the Riviera. Antibes (the town, not the Cap) and its adjacent resort of Juan les Pins, around 30 minutes from Nice, is a little more affordable.

With a population of some 80,000 compared to Nice's 400,000, Antibes/Juan les Pins is a real seaside town. Prices here are very different to those on Cap d'Antibes: they can range from €120,000 for a 20sq m (215sq ft) studio apartment up to €250,000-plus if you want to buy in the heart of the charming old town of Antibes.

It can be hard to generalise about prices, though, as Jennifer Jones of the Agence des Remparts in Antibes explains. Properties with a sea view, or in walking distance of the beach will, unsurprisingly, command higher prices than other properties. The other must-have is some kind of outdoor area, whether it's a balcony that will accommodate a small table and chairs or a terrace.

If you need to rent your holiday home to help cover your costs, it will be easier to do it year round in old Antibes, which doesn't shut down in the way that the resort of Juan les Pins does out of season.

Most agents recommend that owners rent their holiday homes from June through September, when rents quadruple, using it themselves at off-peak times like Christmas and Easter.

HOK's Maura Kinney, which is currently marketing Les Nereides, a new development on a palm-lined street right in Juan les Pins, agrees that this is the right strategy. The 26 apartments being built on the site of a former villa cost from €208,000 for 39.7sq m (427sq ft) one-bed apartments, and from €338,000 for 65.86sq m (709sq ft) two-beds.

These are not sale and leaseback properties, a type of development that has become popular with Irish buyers. Typically, these offer guaranteed returns of 4 to 5 per cent a year for nine years, and usually give buyers the right to use their property for one or two weeks out of season (or in some cases, one or two weeks in a sister development).

It is hard to find what HOK calls "front row" sale and leaseback schemes right on the Riviera, but HOK is finding ready buyers for Les Bastides des Chaumettes near Montauroux, just down the road from Grasse, about 40km inland from Nice.

The units are attached duplex townhouses, in which 55sq m (592sq ft) two-beds cost from €180,566 including VAT, while 63sq m (678sq ft) three-beds cost from €224,698. Guaranteed rental return is 3.4 per cent and Kinney says that appreciation last year was apparently 30 per cent.

Meanwhile French agency Conseil Patrimoine is selling sale and leaseback apartments in Palais Rossini, a scheme in the Musiciens quarter of Nice starting at €85,000 for studio apartments going up to €200,000 for one-beds. Paul Hosier of the agency says the scheme guarantees rental income of 5 per cent.

Agents selling sale and leaseback schemes emphasise that buyers should look on these properties not as holiday homes but as investments, and should buy only in prime locations.

If you're buying with an idea to using such a property as a holiday home in 10 years' time, it's essential to check whether the developer will insist on keeping hold of it for another 10 years after the first period. If you do want possession of it, you should get this in writing at the outset.

AGENTS:

HOK, www.hok.ie 01 6181390

Carlton International, www.carlton-international.com    01 6636363

Agence des Remparts, www agencedesremparts.com    00 33 4 93331313

CapWest International www.cap-west-international.com    00 33 4 92931313

Totally Nice, www.totallynice.com     00 33 493 55 45 62

Conseil Patrimoine, french-real-estate.com    00 33 4 97030333

Coldwell Banker, www.coldwellbanker.fr    00 33 66 4532121