The number of British people snapping up property in France has risen year on year, new research shows. Always a firm favourite with Brits moving abroad, there was a 23 per cent rise in the number of British people buying property in France in 2010 than the previous year.

Of all the properties sold to foreigners in the country, 11 per cent of those foreigners were British nationals, pushing them into second place behind the Portuguese as the biggest foreign group to invest in French property.

Top locations for British investors continue to be Bordeaux and the Basque Coast, along with the Rhones-Alps region and the Cote d’Azur which have recently been attracting even more interest from Brits looking to invest.

It is expected that many more properties will come on to the market in the coming months when the additional duty tax scheme begins. Many owners will be looking to downsize and as a result may be looking for a quick sale. Now is the time to grab a French property at a bargain price! To browse property for sale in France, see Rightmove Overseas’s France property listings.

To understand the full step-by-step process to buying a property in France, collect The Overseas Guides Company’s ‘France Property Buying Guide’