Athena sells luxury chalets in the Alps from Portugal
Portugal is on the path of the richest and already serves as the launch pad for a luxury real estate product as unique as challenges in the French Alps.
But let’s go by parts. Athe Advisers, a company founded by three French partners, has been headquartered in France for 20 years and specializes in the sale of luxury challenges in the Alps that are part of the epicenter of the profitable winter tourism market. Athena Advisers is also present in Portugal in the last five years, specializing in the luxury market, in exclusive areas such as the center of Lisbon, Comporta or the Azores. In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Athena, parent company and subsidiary, in Portugal, had its best years ever, respectively 100 and 80 million euros. With an average delivery value in Portugal (close to one million more precisely 980 thousand euros), Athena marked all its invoice last year exclusively in foreign countries.
This lucrative market of families and investors who have purchased a home in Portugal and which include Brazilians, South Africans, among other nationalities, represent great value potential as they have the liquidity to invest in more secondary homes.
This afternoon, Athena’s management met to outline a strategy for the development of Portuguese customers who also like snow sports and/or want to invest in a business that has always valued this business in recent years, in a mix that includes glamour, lifestyle and geographical limitation, which makes the square meter in the French Alps, for example, between 6,000 euros and 8,000 euros, in Combloux, and from 19,000 euros to 30,000 euros/m², in Val d’Isère, for example.
“There are many benefits to buying a chalet in the Alps. As a Portuguese customer, you can also benefit from a fixed mortgage, for 20 years, at a rate of 1.5%. In addition, France, when you rent a house, all the VAT that we are going to receive, we end up being returned to us”, exemplifies, to Visão, David Moura-Jorge, general director of Athena in Portugal and who honored the house in today’s event by welcoming Camille Letuve, partner specialist in the French Alps, and also founding partner Roman Carel.
In the French Alps, the Athena Portfolio usually includes between 500 and 1,000 units (chalets and apartments) available for sale, which you select based on location factors (within the resort, centrality, proximity to the ski slopes or ski lifts, views) investment potential and quality of the real estate developer or builder.
Athena Advisers works with property developers, but in selected locations, it also develops its own projects, the company said in a statement. Over the last few years, it has promoted top-tier ski properties (chalets and/or apartments) with a gross development value (GDV – Gross Development Value) of between 10 million and 20 million euros per year. And it also manages tourist chalets for those who want to monetize.
The appreciation of real estate has been consistent, because “in the Alps there is not much space to build due to the slope and therefore, many times, there are resales and important houses”, explains David Moura-Jorge, adding that, in a way, it reminds Real estate is scarce in Lisbon and there is a need for high-rise buildings. The average valuation is around 3% but it all depends on the location, the property and the resort. “For example, an apartment purchased by one of our customers in 2019 for 1.6 million euros is already worth 2.6 million euros, an increase of 62% in 3 years”, is also underlined in the information provided by the company. .
Among the projects that Athena has in its portfolio are, for example, La Ferme des Pistes, at the Les Gets resort, in Les Portes du Soleil with T1 to T6 apartments, from €450,000. Or Le Hameau d’Ourea, in the Châtel resort, in Les Portes du Soleil: T4 to T6 apartments and chalets from €1,085 million.