After the surge in prices that occurred following the Covid-19 crisis and then the drop in transactions caused by the sudden increase in interest rates, the real estate market is now experiencing a kind of normalization. He “landed softly”summarizes Century 21, the leading agency network in terms of number of transactions. The brand publishes, on Monday, September 30, a review of its activity during the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2023, thus revealing that “Sales volume fell only 1.6% in the case of houses and 3.1% in the case of apartments”.
Although the recovery has not yet begun – sales periods continue to lengthen, up to ninety-eight days for houses (+ nine days) – the fall in credit rates is beginning to have its effects. Closing the period of historic increases in interest rates, decreed to curb the rise in inflation, the European Central Bank initiated a measure in June to lower its rates, which banks are now happily passing on to their clients. The average rate on real estate loans thus stood at 3.6% (and even 3.5% for loans granted for more than fifteen years) in August, compared to 4.2% in December 2023, according to the Housing Credit Observatory/CSA.
With more than 1.2 million sales in 2021, “The real estate market was overheating, artificially supported by a postponement of transactions from 2020 to 2021 due to Covid-19 and by exceptional interest rates around 1%, and we will never find similar transaction levels againestimates Charles Marinakis, president of Century 21 in France. The market will reach almost 800,000 transactions in 2024, which, remember, was a record in 2016.”
In this slow market, prices continued to fall overall during the first nine months of 2024, by 5% for houses and 2.2% for apartments, with large disparities between cities and regions: notable increases for apartments in Provence-Alpes. -Côte d’Azur (+ 3.6%), Normandy (+ 3.5%) or Nouvelle-Aquitaine (+ 1.6%), but decreasing in Auvergne-Rhône -Alpes (- 7.1%), in Ile- de-France excluding Paris (− 4.6%) and in the capital (− 6.1%).
In two years – since the market came to a standstill – the sales prices recorded in Century 21 have generally fallen by 12% and have even plummeted by almost 22% in the case of houses in the Ile-de-France. “which had experienced a significant increase after Covid-19”.
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