Ean Vassort, dressed comfortably in jeans and blue cotton shirt, stands on the terrace of his whitewashed house, taking in the view of long golden beaches and a broad estuary snaking eastward into a hot, rocky valley. Retired since selling his restaurant near Avignon, France in 2002, Vassort, 74, now lives year-round in this sun-washed setting where he once took his holidays. But unlike earlier generations of French pensioners, Vassort's retirement idyll isn't tucked away along the villa-studded expanses of the Côte d'Azur, or in one of the popular resort towns of Spain's Costa Brava. Instead, Vassort is one of a growing number of European pensioners jumping the Mediterranean to Morocco — and getting much more bang for their euro."We have a wonderful life in Morocco, so it's easy to understand why more French people are coming to live here," says Vassort, who lives with his wife and lumbering labrador Othello among the serpentine streets of les Oudayas, the ancient casbah of Morocco's capital, Rabat. "The Moroccans are friendly and astoundingly hospitable. The weather is good all year. There's a rich cultural and social life. And with virtually all Moroccans speaking French, language isn't a problem."
While most European societies are hotly debating what to do about the influx of immigrants from North Africa — tens of thousands make the trek to Europe every year, legally or not — a small but significant population is moving in the opposite direction. The generations of retirees who once flocked to Nice, St.-Tropez, or the Algarve are now exploring more exotic locales such as Thailand and Vietnam, and thereby extending Europe's reach beyond the acknowledged borders.
And, at least officially, places like Morocco are thrilled at the prospect. To encourage investment, the kingdom offers foreign pensioners a tremendous incentive to bunk down in Morocco at least half the year: 80% tax relief on money placed in Moroccan investments or bank accounts. Just how significant is that?
"The money we save on taxes pays for nearly an entire year of rent here," marvels Max Ferrero, 69, who operated a string of car dealerships in northern France before retiring in 2001. Sitting in the shade of his garden a mere 50 m from the Sid el Abed beach ("Sable d'Or" to the new locals) south of Rabat, Ferrero motioned to the 240-sq-m villa he and partner Cathy Conticello have lived in since last March. "We're not rich — we could never afford something like this in France," says Ferrero, who counts half a dozen fellow French expats, several local vips, a Moroccan general and King Mohammed VI's brother as neighbors. "The Côte d'Azur would be far beyond our means if we wanted a house there — which we definitely don't now we've tasted life in Morocco," agrees retired nurse Conticello, 69.
Intra-European migration, especially among retirees, is a long-established fact. Some 300,000 British nationals reside in France, for example, and it will be a long time before migration outside Europe's borders matches that. Given widely varying official statistics, it's hard to know just how popular the road to Morocco is. "The numbers are debatable, but what's beyond doubt is seniors buying homes in Morocco has grown exponentially over the past half decade," says Laurent Paul Alteresco, director of the real estate service company Ramses Consulting, which specializes in assisting non-Moroccans buying homes and relocating to the kingdom.
The French Embassy lists around 35,000 of its nationals as residents in Morocco — certainly not all pensioners. Still, there's indication many French seniors and younger expatriates don't even bother to register with their diplomatic missions. In Marrakech alone, for example, the number of French citizens signed in with their consulate in 2005 exceeded 3,300 (up nearly 60% since 2001), but fell short of the almost 7,000 residence permits local authorities say French nationals now hold. Some 17,000 homes in and around Marrakech, meanwhile, are French-owned. And while Marrakech and its cultural marvels have traditionally been the main destination of Europeans relocating to Morocco, coastal cities and towns like Agadir, Essaouira, Tangier and increasingly Rabat have become booming real estate markets with the arrival of house-hunting pensioners in recent years.
French transplants remain the largest group, but Italian and German seniors are also getting in on the rush — and the British contingent is becoming active in the higher-end sector. But as in any hot market, increased activity meansrising prices. "Certain properties in beach areas have increased from €100 to €300 per square meter in three years," says Alteresco. Annual rise across the board, he estimates, has ranged from 80-100% over the past few years.
That's been a trend everywhere Europeans have started to call home. During her 11 years as a resident of Marrakech — where she's worked as an interior designer, hotel operator and property developer — former Paris-based lawyer Meryanne Loum-Martin has seen the local real estate market rapidly go from bubbling to booming. In particularly hot neighborhoods, she says, traditional riad villas that sold for j90,000 per hectare six years ago are now priced at €700,000. Per hectare prices in less effervescent areas have risen from €80,000 to €500,000 during the same period. "The only place that isn't rising as fast is the medina (old city), where many people who bought recently have been disappointed," she says. "Now they're selling — and joining the crowd looking to buy elsewhere in Marrakech or Morocco."
Despite the rising housing market, Morocco will remain an attractive and affordable option for both retired and active Europeans for years to come. Significant progress in massive construction, transport, roadway and communications projects launched by the government to develop the country and boost annual tourism from the current 6.5 million visitors to 10 million by 2010 is already evident in and around major cities. "Morocco is utterly unrecognizable from what it was 10 years ago — and in another 10, it will be totally transformed," says Hassan Belmaheb, a 64-year-old retired Moroccan Bell Telephone factory worker who has lived in Belgium since 1964 and bought a Rabat holiday home in 2002.
Meanwhile, under an open-skies accord between the European Union and Morocco, current frequent daily flights between Europe and Moroccan cities will expand as low-cost carriers open routes. "I can get from Paris or London to Marrakech flying faster than I can get from London to Paris by train," Loum-Martin notes. Even some enthusiasts worry, however, that the kingdom's success in luring residents from Europe may produce some friction. For example, Marcelle and Max Billaux say they know affluent French residents of Rabat's casbah who not only do not declare their domestics to authorities, but pay them j3 per day — not unlike the subservience wages some bosses in Europe pay illegal immigrants who will similarly accept nearly anything to land hard-won work. Moroccans who see such treatment happening at home could start asking where transcontinental integration stops and neocolonial exploitation starts.
"We're aware this economic advantage that allows us to buy a home and live well here cuts two ways," says Marcelle Billaux, a seasonal resident of Rabat who manages an interim work program for socially disadvantaged people in Normandy, northern France. "People must take care that it doesn't become abusive. You have to be sensitive to the fact that, at the end of the day, Morocco is their home, not ours."
The Moroccan people and monarchy have long been proud of their religious tolerance, warm relations with Western nations and traditionally moderate practice of Islam. But the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca proved the kingdom isn't immune from the jihadist virus. In August, authorities announced nationwide arrests of 56 radicals accused of plotting strikes against political leaders, government buildings, tourist sites and foreign-owned properties. "It's the very moderate, reformist, Western-oriented nature of states like Morocco that make them the worst enemies of bin Laden and his followers," says a senior French counterterror official. Ironically, however, pensioners living in Morocco said they feel safer from terror and ordinary crime than at home. The seeming omnipresence of uniformed police may explain why. "I've never felt more secure," assures Conticello.
What do the average Moroccans think of this influx from Europe? Most seem to view it as positive. But will that last? One consequence of the hot real estate market has been an inner-city housing pinch that is forcing a growing number of Moroccans out of town. Members of an expanding middle class longing to be homeowners themselves must often move up to 30 km from cities to find affordable housing. "There's some resentment over people being squeezed out," says Belmaheb, who has bought a new vacation apartment in the Residence Chatea complex outside Rabat. "But people know the euro is almighty."
For their part, the emigrés don't want to ruin what they came for. "On the one hand, you fear this flow from Europe and development to cater to it may undermine things that make Morocco so special," says Billaux, the Rabat homeowner. "On the other hand, you can't ask people you've come to live with to eternally lag 50 years behind for our sake." That used to be the dilemma that confronted richer Europeans making new homes in the Continent's poorer nations; now it plays out in Europe's neighbors.
