Collapse of the new housing market: towards an inevitable crisis?

Over the whole of 2022, sales could drop to around 102.000 units, a level very close to the worst year in the last fifteen years. Grouped individual housing [1] is not doing much better with sales to individuals down 17,3% year-on-year in the first half. As for collective housing [1], over the same period, reservations by individuals fell back by 9% and sales to institutions by 33,4%, while listings for sale fell by 9,8%.

This collapse of the new housing market can be explained by a series of headwinds: difficulties in accessing real estate credit [2], inflation and uncertainties about purchasing power, continuous increase in land prices (especially under the first effects of the principle of Net Zero Artificialisation), and above all the vertiginous rise in construction costs caused by the entry into force of the RE2020 and the explosion in the prices of materials.

New housing is therefore heading a little more towards a deep and severe crisis every day. The Pôle Habitat FFB calls for rapid responses from the Government. Faced with the materials crisis, it is first necessary to support operators by neutralizing late payment penalties in private contracts and by reforming the terms of price revision in CCMI. It is then necessary to support access to property by loosening the constraints in terms of financing, by restoring the zero-rate loan to 40% without territorial discrimination, by raising the operating ceilings taken into account for its calculation and by introducing a tax credit on loan annuities to offset the impact of price increases. It is also necessary to restore confidence and desire to private investors by restoring, before its disappearance, the attractiveness of the Pinel system and by committing to the implementation of a universal regime for private rental investment.

For Grégory Monod, President of the Pôle Habitat FFB: “The situation requires responses from the finance law for 2023, under penalty of a collapse of new housing, despite the persistence of needs. Beyond that, we must give the sector more stability and visibility, and allow it to build more, better and cheaper. It is therefore also an issue of ecological transition, at the heart of the territories, for those who work and live there. »

[1] Over two quarters, year-on-year, at the end of June 2022.

[2] Rise in interest rates, increase in applications refused by credit institutions (cumulative effect of the HCSF directives and the formula for calculating the usury rate), suspension of the production of real estate loans to individuals by several banks .