Existing home prices continued to fall in the first quarter, several agency networks said, but they are seeing an incipient recovery driven by slightly cheaper credit. According to Orpi, in the first quarter, prices per square meter across the country fell by 3% year-on-year. For Laforêt, this decrease is 4.7%; and according to Century 21, it’s 3.2% for apartments and 3.3% for houses. Price erosion, which has not yet halted the decline in sales, also saw the number of transactions fall compared to early 2023, down 11.2% at Century 21 and 19% at Orpi. In Ile-de-France, the slowdown in sales volume is even more pronounced than in the rest of the territory, “the price of gasoline has risen again», According to the President of Orpi, Guillaume Martinaud.
Also to blame are lending rates, which are still close to 4% after a sharp rise from 2021, despite a slight decline in recent weeks. But there seems to have been a shake-up in the real estate market recently, President Orpi pointed out on Tuesday. “January and February were extremely challenging. Mars is much happier, data is starting to come back to us, morale is coming back” he declared at the press conference. Orpi signed more than 22,000 mandates at the start of the year, up 11% from the first quarter of 2023.
A more promising second half of the year
“Prices have leveled off, down, we are finding a form of planetary alignment that will get us excited for the coming months», Century 21 France president Charles Marinakis told AFP. “It won’t be at the end of April“, mitigated, but rather “in the second part of the year“. For Guillaume Martinaud,”we are returning to the normal market“. However, Century 21 observes significant differences depending on the territory. Thus, prices fell by 12.1% in Pays de la Loire, while they rose by 4.4% in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, with a number of transitional situations. Large coastal cities, always very popular, are well represented among those where the market continues to rise.
Laforêt also notes that compared to the last quarter of 2023, the number of transactions increased by 0.5%, thanks mainly to Île-de-France and especially Paris, where prices have been eroding for a long time. Century 21, in turn, noted that steps to acquire a property (consulting advertisements, requesting information from agencies, etc.) were all more frequent.
As for the rental market, it remains tight, with many households remaining renters because they cannot access property, notes Orpi. “This rental market is suffering everywhere. Not only in big cities» worried Corinne Berec, vice president of Orpi. “The supply of rental properties is shrinking dramatically“, he adds.