Century 21 is one of the largest real estate agency networks. In France, it is the first in volume, with almost a thousand agencies, which gives a global vision of the real estate market in old buildings, houses and apartments. This allows its president Charles Marinakis to take stock of the first nine months of the year.
franceinfo : How is the market doing? ?
Charles Marinakis: Rather better. We have had much more difficult times. We ended up having a summer that was quite unexpected. To be completely frank, we had imagined that the opacity of the political situation in France would curb the enthusiasm of buyers. It didn’t happen. So we’re pretty happy with that. We are especially pleased to see that once again, the two key elements of our market are coming together, that is to say a drop in prices accompanied by a drop in rates. And that’s mechanically what undoubtedly gave it breathing room.
And so the drop in prices is taking place and is it lasting?
Yes, it lasts, but it was necessary at the end of the 2021 period of euphoria, as soon as rates mechanically soared, prices had to fall. I had called for prices to fall by 12 to 15%.
“Prices have fallen by 12% in two years, which was necessary.”
Charles Marinakis, president of Century 21at franceinfo
It was necessary, because we were no longer able to finance these prices with rates which were at 5.5%, when we were able to finance them at rates at 1.2%.
Rates are 3.5% over 20 years. What is the picture of falling prices?
The most marked drop in prices is perhaps in Paris, with -6%, and a transaction volume which also fell by 1.2%. But we will say that in France it is -2.2% for apartments and -3.5% for houses. After Covid, it was the houses that had skyrocketed and set the real estate market on fire. So all that has come back to reason a little, with disparities from one region to another.
There are still regions where it continues to increase.
Yes, the PACA region, typically. It is the sun that prevails over reason and prices have still not fallen. In Normandy, prices rose slightly again, but they had fallen significantly. Each region has its own truth.
And in Paris, do you think that it will continue to fall, or do you think that we have reached a reasonable level today?
You know, we are at 9,200 euros per square meter. At the time, when we first announced that we were going below 10,000 euros, we threw a bomb into the real estate market. No, it will adjust.
“I have always been convinced that this market has the ability to self-regulate. And the Parisian market has self-regulated faster than the others.”
Charles Marinakisat franceinfo
Is this a call to sellers that you are making?
Yes, I would not like to see a situation of tension again, with sellers who, seeing rates falling, raise their prices. If they do that, we will find a deadlock situation and they will not sell their goods.
So today, transactions have resumed. Is the sales volume rather satisfactory?
It is not yet visible, but we see it in the compromises, and that will be reflected in the coming months. But yes, it’s the first time in a long time that we’ve seen rates and prices falling and that’s what encourages transactions.
In your press kit, we can read that there are a lot of consultations on your website with people wondering what they will be able to buy. Does this mean buyers think prices will continue to fall?
Yes, they will go down, they will adjust. What I call a drop is two numbers. There, it will be an adjustment between 1 and 3%. We will arrive at the end of 2024 with prices which will have fallen by 15% over two years, which was necessary. The surprising surprise of this summer is that we thought that the political slump and political uncertainty could have made buyers tense. But in fact, the opposite happened. They said to themselves there was a first drop in rates, we know what we have, prices have fallen, finally we’re going there. Because we don’t know what we’ll find.
This is perhaps one of the only sectors where there has been no stagnation due to political inaction.
Against all odds.
Are we in the middle of a budget debate? The tax loophole on rental investment. The Pinel system will disappear at the end of the year, which real estate developers obviously deplore. Do you also fear being a victim of the obligation to restore public finances?
For now, as a citizen, I will bear, like everyone else, the obligation to restore public finances. If this results in a change in taxation, I think we may be spared from this taxation. Perhaps the taxation of private landlords is a real subject. Because today, there are disparities between private landlords who place their property in the private rental stock and those who rent it seasonally, typically in the status of unfurnished professional rental. But we generate revenue for the State. We generate transfer rights each time there are transactions. And we see today that the drop in transaction volume represents a loss of 8 billion euros. And these 8 billion directly penalize the municipalities, the regions, the departments which are the main recipients of this tax revenue. So I don’t dare imagine that the State will again fiscally sanction this decentralization that it put in place a few years ago.
So you’re not part of the lobbies that are starting to howl wolf?
You know, the old has always had this ability to self-regulate. The only time we really benefited from a system was the deductibility of interest on loans. The rest of the time, it is a market price, a price of supply and demand, we have never been on a state drip.
Stone remains an investment, but at the same time we see that the acquisition of housing for rental investment is declining. This means that most buyers want to live in their property, this is not speculation, which is rather good news for the sector?
In France, housing is 82% primary residences, barely 10% secondary residences and above all 8% vacant housing. The real scandal is there: there are more than 3 million vacant homes in France. It is in this market segment that we all need to do important work. There is an anomaly between a demand for housing which is not nourished for people who do not have housing or not in good conditions, and these 3 million vacant housing units. This is a problem that has been dragging on for years and that no one has been able to resolve. So I think we should put our energy on that.