Sales stabilize in old real estate but prices still fall in the 3rd quarter

The market for old real estate seems to have stopped sinking during the summer, with the number of transactions tending to stabilize or even rebound in certain real estate agency networks, notably thanks to the fall in prices and the recent drop in interest rates.

The Laforêt group achieved 2,5% more sales in the third quarter than in the same quarter last year, but for Foncia it is a decline of 3% and for Orpi a drop of 7%.

Century 21, which has also taken stock of the first nine months of the year, indicates that "sales volumes have only fallen by 1,6% for houses and 3,1% for apartments". The president of its French division, Charles Marinakis, boasts of a "good summer" and a "rather positive trend in September".

"The combination of falling prices and lower interest rates/negotiations is restoring purchasing power to buyers, whose projects are once again being studied by banks," explains Laforêt in his quarterly post.

As for prices, they continue to fall, but less quickly than last year. Laforêt and Foncia noted a 4,5% drop in the average price per m2 in France in September, compared to the previous year. Orpi observed a 5% drop in prices compared to the third quarter of 2023.

The National Real Estate Federation (Fnaim) reports that prices "appear to have stabilized since the spring, or even rebounded very slightly", which brings the drop as of September 1 to 2,2% over one year.

Some cities or regions have seen slight increases in prices per m2, but the data varies greatly from one agency network to another.

For Charles Marinakis, the drop in property prices, by around 12% in two years according to Century 21, "was necessary to purge the excesses of the past", and even constituted an "absolute necessity in Paris, where the market was tense" due to an average price per m2 which exceeded 10.000 euros, and which fell back to 9.286 euros in 2024.

In detail, it is mainly house prices that have fallen over a year: -5% according to Century 21 and -6,8% according to Laforêt. "It was houses that had set the real estate market on fire in 2021", when they were highly sought after at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, recalls Charles Marinakis.

"The worst is probably over on the real estate market, but we must remain patient because real estate cycles are long and buyers' purchasing power has not yet been fully restored," believes Fnaim, for whom this is at this stage a "catch-up" phase rather than a "real recovery."

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.