with the drop in credit rates, the real estate sector is regaining color

While real estate loan rates have started to decline since March, real estate professionals are returning to sustained activity.

The news had been awaited for two years and here it was, in February, home loan rates started to fall. From 4.17%, they rose to 4.11%. We are still far from the lowest rates reached three years ago around 1.1% but the clouds are moving away one by one for the world of real estate, with a resumption of activity as a result.

In Fontainebleau, in this Century 21 real estate agency, sets of keys are piling up on the desk of Laurence, sales agent, and his days are filling up visibly: “I’m going on a visit, I started the day with an estimate, I end the day with an estimate and, tomorrow, I will be signing. Then, again in estimate… There are all five of us, at the agency, very busy.”

“There is a kind of confidence that has been restored”

The phone started ringing a little more at the beginning of the year but the real change was last month: “Things are moving at all levels. Clients who wish to sell are starting to ask for estimates again and entrust us with mandates and buyers are coming back. There is a sort of trust that has been restored. We are in great demand to estimate, visit and sell It started again throughout the month of March, April looks like it will be the same.”

Morale is high, we understand why: between the last quarter of 2023 and the first of this year, the agency signed 25% additional compromises. A godsend for Anthony, a 27-year-old first-time buyer. His project had been at an impasse for two years. Everything has changed with the fall in rates, prices and even inflation: “I didn’t expect it. I tried, I succeeded in lowering the price of the house by about 15% because it had been for sale for almost three months. The owner wanted to close a sale fairly quickly. I think that’s starting to turn around.”

“I wouldn’t say that the buyer is in a strong position, but he has more freedom than in the last two years.”

Anthony, first-time buyer

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Is this really the end of the slump for the real estate market? Without doubt, according to the director of the agency. With a small reservation all the same, underlines Sabine Ficheux: “The only little thing that would possibly worry me is that sellers, given that the banks are reopening the floodgates and that the loan rate is falling again, become quite demanding again in terms of price. If we start there again, I think that we will once again have the problem of a blockage. It is up to us to make the sellers listen to reason.”

Not all the lights have returned to the green, with less than 10 billion in credits granted to individuals each month since the start of the year compared to 25 two years ago.