In Provence and especially in Marseille, housing sometimes resembles a long Stations of the Cross. According to the rent observatory which publishes this Thursday the report for the year 2021 of the private rental stock in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, “the market remains very tense in the face of unmet demand”.
Rent from simple to double between Arles and Aix
If rents remained fairly stable in 2021, the reality hides great disparities between the east and the west of the department. It’s in Arles, Salon and Tarascon (about 10€ per square meter) that we spend the least on housing, while in Cassis, Aix and on the Côte-Bleue, median rents are the highest in the Bouches-du-Rhône (between €15 and €17 per square meter).
In Marseille, rents below the average
Between the two, Marseilles (€12.20 per square meter) is below the Bouches-du-Rhône average (12.60€) and the Metropolis (12.70€) but again with very different situations depending on the arrondissements. Thus we find lower median rents in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 14th and 15th boroughs, the latter two located in the northern districts. That is to say the poorest sectors of the city.
A mobility rate at its lowest in Marseille
The rents observed are in the Marseille average in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 10th and 13th arrondissements. They are above the city average in 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th and 16th.
Other singularities in Marseille, the rent observatory indicates a slight increase in re-rental prices (about 80 euro cents per square meter between a change of tenants) and especially a mobility rate of barely 17% (in a normal market the mobility rate varies between 25 and 30%).
“Rent control would send a pernicious signal to landlords” – Didier Bertrand, president of FNAIM 13
This situation of the private rental market in Marseille is considered “very worrying” by industry professionals. Some call for a vast new housing construction plan and warn of the harmful effects of the rent control desired by the municipality of Benoît Payan. “We don’t need this rent control, ensures Didier Bertrand, president of the FNAIM 13. We lack new housing, intermediate housing, we lack renovation in the old. Rent controls would send out an image signal that would be harmful. A certain number of owners would withdraw their property and we would only accentuate the cause. So that wouldn’t solve the problem in our territory.”