the end of the frenzy?

Charlie Cailloux, legal advisor for the PAP.fr site today talks about the fluctuations in the real estate market, from the first confinement until this September start.

franceinfo: Is it the end of the boom in the real estate market that we have seen since the end of the first confinement?

Charlie Cailloux: It is true that since May 2020, we have been witnessing a frenzy of the real estate market. Last year in September, there were almost 50% more searches on our site than in September 2019; a few months later, the notaries announced a number of real estate transactions in the old, close to one million despite the three months of strict confinement. In September 2021, it is the end of the frenzy: as you said, the number of searches for housing to buy falls a little below the level of 2019.

Are we going back to normal?

In terms of volume of research, yes, we are returning to the level before the health crisis! On the other hand, the health crisis marked a real and lasting break in the criteria for finding housing; the rupture is on the one hand the appetite for small towns and rural areas (whose research has progressed by 21.9% compared to 2019 even though research in Paris fell by a quarter in the same time).

And on the other hand, the Covid-19 episode had another lasting effect on the real estate market: the craze for single-family homes. Homes represented 63% of searches in September 2021, against 59% in September 2019. These two lasting trends are linked to the development and installation of teleworking.

Now that we have made this observation, what advice can we give to people who are in the process of putting their home up for sale?

I will give two tips. The first is obvious: you have to be careful about setting your price, especially in areas that are usually tense (large metropolitan areas): fewer buyers means you have to update your price reference systems, and so on. prepare to perhaps have to negotiate downwards, at least for goods which have defects.

And the second tip?

We must not waste time. Often, we hear that it is in the spring that it is necessary to put on sale. Usually, this is already a strategy that we do not recommend, because it may put you in a hurry, and we sell better when we are not in a hurry.

As the context is rather slowing down, it is safer to start a sale as quickly as possible. The decline in the number of buyers may require more time to close the sale. This is all the more true since next year is an election year, which can cause buyers to wait.