British expats and holiday home owners made up the largest group of foreigners buying French property last year.
Property sales to international buyers increased by 29 per cent to 17,785, compared to 13,823 in 2014 and 13,621 in 2013.
British buyers completed 6,066 purchases – just over a third of all properties.
These figures are according to a survey by French bank BNP Paribas.
The most popular place for the British to buy was Rhone-Alpes.
The region accounted for 17.5 per cent of all homes purchased by British buyers and most of these were ski lodges in Haute-Savoie.
The average price paid for a home was 262,000 EUR (220,000 GBP), which has stayed around the same level for the past three years.
The most expensive average regional price paid by the British was 797,000 EUR (669,000 GBP) in Ile de France (which includes Paris), while the lowest was 42,000 EUR (35,285 GBP) in Auvergne.
Meanwhile a post-Brexit survey has revealed that more than half of British buyers looking for a home in France want to leave the country permanently.
The figure is up by almost a third on the results of a similar survey by Leggett Immoblier, a leading French estate agent for expats and second home owners from the UK.
Sales to British home buyers were also up by a fifth in the first half of 2016.
The research was carried out during the two weeks after the Brexit referendum vote to leave the European Union.
More than a thousand British home seekers were polled – 50 per cent were looking to live permanently in France. 20 per cent wanted a holiday home and 2 per cent were property investors.
Around 70 per cent said that buying French property was a good financial move.
Figures from Notaires de France, specialist lawyers who deal with property sales, average house prices in the country were static again in the first three months of 2016.
All older properties gained 0.3 per cent year-on-year, while apartments lost 0.6 per cent and houses gained a little less than 1 per cent.