OPINION / ORNA MULCAHY: A friend is on tenterhooks waiting for a call from a carpenter in Marseilles. Monsieur can't make up his mind whether to sell his house in the country which my friend desperately wants to buy.
It's a tiny cottage in an obscure - thus affordable - part of Provence, surrounded by peach and olive trees, with a hazy view of the hills. While it needs lots of work, there's wisteria poking through the regulation pale blue shutters and you can hear the cicadas all around. Already my friend sees himself parked at a little metal table outside the local cafe, a baguette in a string bag at his feet, making friends with the locals and sipping vin ordinaire.
Not that he has won the Lotto or anything. He can comfortably afford to buy a house in the south of France since his south county Dublin house is now worth three times what he paid for it 10 years ago. With interest rates at a historic low, he can raise a cheap mortgage on the equity and fly down to Nice or Marseilles whenever he likes on cut-price air fares. All he is waiting for is the nod from the carpenter.
Meanwhile, a colleague's computer screen holds a picture of her dream house in the Dordogne - another pretty farmhouse with distressed shutters. She hasn't bought it yet but hopes to next year. Another colleague can't wait for her next trip to Spain where she has bought a casita - an old labourer's cottage - surrounded by almond trees. It's in a valley where the temperature rarely dips below 20 and the living is remarkably cheap.
On her first visit to the supermarket she bought 12 bottles of water, a bag of fruit and a toothbrush and still had change from €2. She bought the house on five acres for about the price of a decent car. It would have been mad not to!
The urge to buy abroad is stronger than ever and the market has widened out from the traditional investment - apartments on the Spanish Costas - as buyers become more adventurous, some might say reckless.
Property prices are high in Ireland and by comparison, other European countries seem relatively cheap. Carried away by the value of our homes after seven consecutive years of price rises, we're heading off in search of bargains in all kinds of places. South Africa; Barbados; Budapest!
Our traditional hunger for property has moved on from simply wanting a home to coveting homes thousands of miles away.
Like the Germans and the Dutch who colonised Cork and Kerry in the 1970s and 1980s, we are claiming our stake in Europe and beyond. Talk to any taxi driver and you're likely to hear that he has a villa in Spain or Florida, and he's thinking of buying another to rent out.
Meet a retired teacher and you may find they're off to spend winter in their apartment in Seville or Perpignan.
Canny investors are buying in European capitals, from Paris to Prague not to mention London, Manchester and, the latest hot spot, Newcastle. It's estimated that the Irish spent €1 billion on overseas property this year.
Investors are in it for the returns, but house buyers are looking for a lot more. Some simply want a place in the sun, others an escape from their lives to a more peaceful place where their children can learn a European language. Some might have started out looking for a place in Wexford or Connemara, but realised that they could get a lot more for their money in Brittany or Cascais. Others are still dreaming about it and probably ogling the Net where you can view and probably buy a holiday home just about anywhere.
Having a terrible day at the office? Just click on one of a thousand property websites and be soothed by pictures of "charming house with dovecote tower in hill top village, €90,000" or "old coaching inn with beamed ceilings 15 minutes from the Med, €60,000". Sure you couldn't buy the proverbial broom cupboard in Dublin for that!
A rock bottom fare to Nice had allowed me to spend December 1st on the Promenade des Anglais, basking in 75 degrees of heat and thinking, what about it it? Apartments a short trot from the sea front in class art deco buildings can be had for under €100,000. It could be rented out for the peak months and for weekends in spring and autumn, nicely washing its own face.
Then we could use it ourselves for those very weekends when it's lashing rain and miserable.
THE daydream lasted for about three days before the "buts" began. How often, really, would we use it? At the moment we don't have time to visit friends in Wexford or west Cork at the weekends, so would we ever get it together to fly off to Nice with the children? And supposing the fares go up, could we afford to go there at all?
And would it mean that we had to spend all our holidays there in the future, and feel guilty about going anywhere else?
Then, how easy would it be to rent out the property? Who would change the sheets and mop up after the holidaymakers and deal with the occasional burst pipe or cockroach? And for the cost of the annual service charge, insurance and maintenance, could we not all spend a week in the best hotel in Nice any time of the year?
It's hard to answer all those questions and still say Yes. Just because we could buy the darn thing, doesn't mean that we should.