“For the first time in 18 months”, the Individual to Individual site notes an increase in property searches

The real estate site recorded an increase of 2% in April. “A tremor of recovery” which will take time to translate into sales, according to the real estate site, especially since buyers “have lost approximately 20% of financing capacity”.

The real estate site Particulier à Particulier (pap.fr) recorded a 2% increase in property searches in April. “This is the first time in about 18 months that we have made progress”underlined Corinne Jolly, president of PAP on Wednesday May 29 on franceinfo.

The sector has been in crisis since the start of the war in Ukraine. The fall in prices continues, particularly in old properties, and interest rates are starting to fall to below 4%. “It’s starting to have an impact on purchasing searches,” she notes. “A thrill” recovery, but “It will take time to translate into sales”she specifies.

franceinfo: Do ​​you see the end of the crisis?

Corinne Jolly: It began with the war in Ukraine and especially the consequence that followed, which was inflation and then the rise in interest rates.

“The source of the problem really comes from a funding problem.”

Corinne Jolly, president of PAP

at franceinfo

Since January, we have started to see interest rates falling again, we have fallen back below the 4% mark. It’s starting to have an impact, at least on purchasing searches. On PAP.fr, in April, we saw + 2% of searches for real estate purchases. This is the first time in about 18 months that we have seen progress. We are still starting to see a stirring. Now, obviously, it will take time to translate into sales and probably even longer into prices, because we still have, despite everything, buyers who have lost around 20% of their financing capacity in two years.

A weak signal, can we talk about recovery?

This is a market landing. We must still keep in mind, before talking about a crisis, that we are coming out of two years of historic records in the number of transactions.

“In 2021-2022, the number of transactions had largely passed the one million sales mark, this had never happened. We returned to levels of around 800,000 sales.”

Corinne Jolly

at franceinfo

This is the average for the last 20 years. We are not looking at alarming figures either. In fact, it is unlikely that we will soon be able to cross the million mark again. You don’t necessarily have to worry about it. The years 2021-2022 were truly frenetic years. It’s quite normal that we don’t go back. But it’s true that the decline is brutal.

When will the European Central Bank lower its rates?

Last year, every month, we had announcements of increases. Rising interest rates are linked to inflation. This is a measure by the European Central Bank to curb inflation. It calms down. We already have signs of improvement. The European Central Bank is letting up and so are the banks. We also tell ourselves that we are not necessarily going to return to the rates we had two years ago of 1.5% which were still very favorable historically. The market will probably stabilize with rates around 3%, which is not catastrophic either.