When will the residential real estate market return to normal? Professionals want to believe that 2024 will be the year we hit rock bottom.
Admittedly, the figures confirm the scale of the disaster. In the new-build sector, sales fell once again last year, and have even collapsed by 60% since 2021. Only 59,000 new homes were put up for sale last year, half as many as two years earlier.
In the resale market, sales fell by a further 10%, dropping below the 800,000 mark. In two years, a third of sales have disappeared.
"It's a crisis that's lasting, that's hardened, that's lengthened", rightly pointed out notary Élodie Frémont.
So everyone's looking forward to the world after. That of the end of the crisis. The new real estate cycle.
We shouldn't expect any miracles this year", warns Alain Taravella, Altarea Group PDF, in our columns. We can guess that the road back to normal will be long and full of pitfalls that can be summed up with the three "i "s: Inertia. Unknown. Irrationality.
Inertia is the real estate market. In the new-build market, developers must first clear out the previous world before they can restart the pipeline. The most agile are already rebuilding tomorrow's supply. But it will take time to rebuild significant production volumes.
The unknown is the attitude of politicians. There is little chance that the government will be able to push through a major rescue plan for housing in France. At most, there will be a few measures to boost the market, such as an exemption from inheritance tax on the purchase of a new home, or the extension of the LLI scheme to private individuals. And let's not forget the hope of attracting private investors back with a private lessor status. Local elected representatives hold the key to market recovery, particularly in the new-build sector. Will Malthus prevail in the 2026 municipal elections?
The third "i" is irrationality. The irrationality distilled by the Trump administration on both the geopolitical and economic fronts. It could influence the downward trajectory of interest rates, which remains the key indicator for a recovery, a rebound or an upturn in the real estate market.
A crisis can be overcome. Alain Taravella reminds us: "It's never what you think it's going to be. So we'll refrain from making any predictions.