AFTER Spain and France, Cyprus used to be the most popular destination for those seeking a place in the sun. But it seems that Cyprus’ popularity amongst overseas property investors from Britain is in decline according to statistics from the overseas property portal PropertyIndex.com.
The breakdown of overseas holiday home searches via the property portal for January and February 2009 were as follows; in order of popularity:
- Spain – 23.4%
- France – 13.24%
- Turkey – 7.18%
- Portugal – 6.27%
- Bulgaria – 5.81%
- Italy – 4.84%
- Cyprus – 3.41%
- USA – 3.33%
- Greece – 2.83%
- Malta – 1.03%
- United Arab Emirates – 2.17%
- Egypt – 1.43%
- Morocco – 0.96%
- Cape Verde – 0.69%
The overall average house price searched for in all countries dropped 9.4% from €227,680 in Jan-Feb 2008 to €206,218 in Jan-Feb 2009.
PropertyIndex.com claims to be the UK’s largest database of overseas property listings, holding over 150,000 global properties and said that it recorded 298,000 property searches in 2008.
Editor’s comment
MANY Cypriots blame the credit crunch, the current weakness of Sterling against the Euro and inflated house prices for the decline in the islands’ popularity amongst British property buyers.
However, I have no doubt that media revelations about the numerous ‘property scams’ are causing Brits to look elsewhere for their dream holiday home in the sun.
