The highly-prized resort of Moliets-et-Maâ
By Laetitia Rossi - 09 October 2012
Accommodating 1,000 residents in winter, 28,000 in the high season, this little town in the forest of Les Landes, on the Côte d’Argent, lies halfway between Mimizan and Bayonne. It owes its excellent reputation to its golf-course, designed by the American, Robert Trent Jones Senior : 18-hole and 9-hole courses, in a spectacular site of about 207 acres.
Moliets stands at the mouth of Le Courant d’Huchet, nicknamed “Petite Amazonie” due to its tropical vegetation. Offering lots of biking trails, the commune also benefits from two beaches ideal for surfing and marked paths threading their way through 5,285 acres of pine forests. Relaxation and outdoor activities are on the programme of the resort, extremely popular in the holiday season.
“Statistics in fact bear out this popularity,” confirms Maurice Wagnon of Alis Immobilier. “Seventy-five per cent of our transactions concern holiday homes. The buyers are mainly French, from Paris, Bordeaux or Toulouse. They are in their forties and come here with their families.” The majority are looking for 3-bedroom apartments with a view of the golf-course, priced from 150,000 €. Some can afford to pay from 400,000 to 500,000 €, the budget required for classy houses of 110 m2 at the edge of the greens. The remaining 25 % of the clientele want to live here year-round. Most of them are retired and have just sold their homes in their native towns : they opt for the town with its shops and services catering for essential needs. Soustons is 16 km away, Dax 35 km. The few clients still active work on site, at the factory of Saint-Girons or in the immediate proximity.
L’Agence des Golfs, directed by Jérôme Lassabe, is a relative newcomer to the area. Like its parent company in Hossegor, it specializes in the so-called “golf market”. From this point of view, Moliets can offer a lot of assets. Starting with two courses of international renown and attractive prices, given the quality of the housing. For the same type of property, prices here are 10-20 % lower than those currently observed in Hossegor. Apartments of 60 m2 on the golf-course range from 150,000 to 200,000 €, 5-bedroom houses from 500,000 to 600,000 €. Some fans of tranquillity and nature decide to take the plunge. The market for holiday homes is maintaining a satisfactory cruising speed, despite the tense economic context.
Among the most recent sales handled by Bastide Immo, Christophe Bouilleveaux mentions two maisonnettes of 50 m2 in a Pierre & Vacances golfers’ residence with a pool, priced at 180,000 € each. Pleasant pieds-à-terre also prove to be profitable investments, likely to bring a gross return of 7 % with only eight weeks’ occupancy. Today, the notion of an investment always hovers in the background, with potential buyers clearly taking rental value into consideration. This type of seasonal income often enables owners to cover their maintenance costs. Parisians coming up to retirement then paid 380,000 € for a 3-bedroom villa with a swimming pool. By renting it out for eight/ten weeks between Easter and All Saints’ Day, the owners will make 20,000 to 30,000 € per year. Finally, a couple of doctors from Brittany paid 500,000 € for a villa with four suites, built in 2001 on the golf-course. The market for year-round homes, is, however, showing a real decline. While interest rates are still low, obtaining a mortgage sometimes proves to be complicated. In fact, all the acquisitions completed over the past few weeks were paid for without any recourse to a loan.