Brits in rush for French second homes

THE entente cordiale may be under intense strain over Iraq but one aspect of Anglo-French relations - the second-homes market - is smashing all records. The number of British people buying property across the Channel is soaring to unprecedented levels as they are priced out of expensive British rural areas such as Hampshire and Devon.

The three French property exhibitions already held in Britain this year have been 'staggeringly' busy with expressions of interest-in the first quarter of this year about treble the same period last year, according to Miranda John, a manager at overseas mortgage broker Propertyfinance4less.

'It's amazing, particularly when you consider we have not even had Easter yet and you normally get a boost to the market when people return from their holidays,' she said.

The upsurge is part of a third wave of a British property invasion that began in the Seventies when the rural Dordogne region of south-west France was first 'discovered'. A second explosion of interest in the 1980s, fuelled by the last-but-one property boom and the Peter Mayle books, was centered on Provence.

In the latest wave, the arrival of low-cost airlines has opened up areas of France once considered way out of the league of most Britons, particularly the Cote d'Azur and the Alps.