Historic new housing crisis: faced with the emergency, professionals are calling for a "housing shield"

The market for new homes in the diffuse sector fell sharply by 31,3% in 2022 and even by 38,2% in the last quarter (year-on-year). With 96.000 gross sales, this is the worst financial year in the last sixteen years. Grouped individual housing also collapsed by 22,2%, to 6.100 sales, the worst vintage of the last twenty-two years. As for collective housing, sales to individuals contract by 14,1% in 2022 and even by 30,4% in the last quarter (year-on-year). With 96 sales, they fell to the level of 000, marked by the confinements due to Covid-2020. Collective block sales for their part recorded a further decline of 19% in 21. Thus, all segments combined, 2022 new homes were lost in the space of one year.

The real estate purchasing power of the French and new housing are victims of an explosive cocktail: continuous inflation of construction costs and land prices, which generate unsustainable exit prices, weakening of support systems for accession and rental investment, and rapid and sharp rise in interest rates. These ingredients, combined with the constraints of the HSCF, the limits set by the usury rates and the sharp contraction in the supply of home loans, caused the production of home loans to individuals for new builds to plummet by 19,6% in 2022 (-44,6% over the last three months year-on-year).

Faced with the seriousness of the situation, the Pôle Habitat FFB calls on credit institutions to remobilize around the production of real estate loans for individuals, and calls on manufacturers and construction distributors for more transparency and temperance in the evolution material prices. It also calls on the Government to establish a “housing shield” to support the real estate purchasing power of households. This is based on 5 pillars: the extension of the zero-rate loan, its restoration to 40% without territorial discrimination, the raising of 25% of the transaction ceilings taken into account for its calculation, the establishment of a 15% tax on the first five loan installments to compensate for the impact of RE2020, as well as the restoration of the Pinel system in its 2022 version until the establishment of the status of private lessor.

For Grégory Monod, President of the Pôle Habitat FFB: “This acute crisis, in the face of which our member companies are adapting, requires a leap forward and requires urgent responses before it spreads to the detriment of the production apparatus. It is about meeting affordable housing needs, which are constantly growing, and safeguarding a significant proportion of jobs in the sector. »