Barker's £12,000-a-week French Villa

dopester

Take a read of this...

'I'll ride out my euro nightmare' says Linda Barker, who plans to let her French villa for £12,000 a week

By Eve Mcgowan
Last updated at 10:14 AM on 13th January 2009

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When Linda Barker bought her £ 1.25million villa on the French Riviera a year ago, she hadn't bargained on the pound plummeting to an unprecedented parity with the euro - meaning a 25 per cent hike in mortgage repayments.

The interior designer and former Changing Rooms star bought the six-bedroom house in the village of La Mole, 12 miles from St Tropez, with her TV producer husband Chris Short and their close friends Vanessa, 38, and Mike Wilderink, 51.

'When we bought it, the euro was 1.4 against the pound, now it's practically level-pegging and we've had to take that hit,' says Linda, 47.

Confident: Although Linda has been hit by the exchange rate, she has no regrets about buying and renovating the villa

She's drinking champagne with her co-owners in the riad-style central courtyard at a table dressed immaculately with Really Linda Barker crockery and artfully arranged clementines from the garden.

The couples, who met more than ten years ago after Linda commissioned some work from Mike's Teddington-based garden decking company, plan to rent out the villa for up to £12,000 a week, which will certainly help with the mortgage payments and explains the relaxed champagne quaffing.

...continues

Property. Just buy it and it always goes up in value. Nothing ever changes that. The constant changes, ups and downs, which life sweeps no longer applies in the present. History is bunk. Good times forever.

It is 12 miles from St.Tropez then?

St.Tropez

It wasn't always this kind of place. For many centuries, the coast near St. Tropez was uninhabitable, not because the climate was different, but because St. Tropez suffered from corsair raids out of North Africa until Charles X captured Algiers in 1830. The few natives who chose to live here cowered in scattered walled villages like Grimaud and Bormes, built high on hills safely away from the sea where the view of the coast and watch-towers gave adequate warning to bring in families and cattle to safety. St. Tropez itself was destroyed by the Moorish corsairs multiple times from 739 AD onward.

Today, those in St. Tropez want to be on the once-shunned coast. St. Tropez lies at the end of a road, out on the end of a peninsula, and has been frequented by literary and visual arts greats like Guy de Maupassant, Matisse, and Bonnard. Some of the finest works of these visitors may be found at L'Annonciade, a deconsecrated chapel converted into first a home, and now among the very best twentieth-century French art galleries in the country. Among the works to be found there are Matisse's Corsican Landscape and Vuillard's Two Women by Lamplight.

If you go to St. Tropez, go in the summer; during winter, the weather here can be miserable. St. Tropez has the misfortune of facing north, and picks up the cold weather of the mistral, the north wind, when it blows in the winter.

ghostbusters

I have noticed a few of these in the property sections recently ..'the place is to our own design ' 'we love being here much' folllowed by .. 'this is how much it is to rent or sell ' and the rent/ask price being double anywhere else around there ... my favourite was a house on the A4 in the times a few months back , somebody wanted a million + .. front door opening onto the A4 ..backing on the the picadilly line...

Kez100

12000 a week for 6 bedrooms? That's a 1000 per person if full. Do people really rent for that sort of money?

She is known but only for changing rooms and DFS. Her fan base will hardly have that sort of money even in a boom.

BenL

I went to St Tropez in May last year. Didn't really get it at all. The best thing was the pirate themed sweetshop on the front.

Saw Gok Wan filming in front of some Yachts, must be cheaper to leave them here than in Monaco.

Cassis down the coast was a million times nicer.

Dithering_Dad

I don't understand the point of this thread...

Kez100

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

I don't understand the point of this thread...

Don't post then.

Dithering_Dad

Kez100 wrote: »

Don't post then.

How can one gain knowledge if one doesn't ask questions?

I didn't state that 'this thread is pointless', I stated that I didn't understand its point, the two statements are quite different. I am waiting to be enlightened.

chucky

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

How can one gain knowledge if one doesn't ask questions?

I didn't state that 'this thread is pointless', I stated that I didn't understand its point, the two statements are quite different. I am waiting to be enlightened.

it's about another celebrity who is not doing well from her very nice rented villa - she's also disliked because she is linked to property and making money out of it, etc, etc, etc...

for some strange reason it gives some people great satisfaction and heals their anger to see other people not doing well. i don't understand this bit.

Dithering_Dad

Ah so it's another Schadenfreude (please note correct spelling, carolt :rolleyes:) thread. Excellent. It does so much for the healthy promotion of the Housing board amongst the wider MSE community.

Cannon_Fodder

It is strange that she was bright enough to spot the poor investment in Bulgaria, mentioned later in the piece, but not bright enough to lodge funds in France/buy some Euros to avoid getting caught out by FX fluctuations...

...or to buy the villa outright, as she was worth £6m in 2003 according to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/loyd-grossmans-saucy-face-worth-acircpound50m-study-claims-542448.html

As her fortune is partly(?) based on the high regard she is (mysteriously) held in by the public, then seeing one of these "experts" learning from the effects of the downturn could be a useful lesson for her followers.

chucky

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

Ah so it's another Schadenfreude (please note correct spelling, carolt :rolleyes:) thread. Excellent. It does so much for the healthy promotion of the Housing board amongst the wider MSE community.

until financial difficulties are delivered firmly into people's lives through unemployment, inability to change jobs or even not be able to relocate or even upgrade property - this feeling of pleasure at other people's misfortune will not change.