Is the European Central Bank’s rate cut good news for personal loans?

A further cut in interest rates from the ECB is expected in the coming days.

A further cut in interest rates from the European Central Bank is expected in the coming days. In the process, mortgage rates could continue to decline. Professionals believe in it, like the brokers at Artémis brokerage.

Experts are convinced: real estate loan rates will fall further at the end of the year or at the beginning of 2025. We should arrive at around 3% for loans over 20 years and 3.15 or 3.20 for 25 years old. Today, buyers borrow on average at 3.35 over 20 years and 3.60 over 25 years. This is already a significant drop since the start of the year, rates have fallen by almost 0.70%. Between 2022 and 2023, they soared and quadrupled, to above 4%.

Real estate prices have already fallen on average by 5 to 7% but not everywhere. Not in Brittany, nor in New Aquitaine, nor in certain cities like Marseille or Nice. On the other hand, prices in Paris have fallen.
But since the start of the school year, we have seen it in the sales promises: it’s over. The reflux continues in more rural regions but really little.

First-time buyers like others are benefiting from rate cuts and a recovery in real estate, but little by little, according to Ludovic Huzieux, founder of the Artémis brokerage firm: “We are around 34% of our customers who are first-time buyers. In the best years, we were around 45-50%. We can clearly see that it is they who were the first affected by this credit crisis and that it will really start again very strongly when they have access to credits in the same proportions as before It relaxes first because all the banks have returned to the table and they are all lenders again. level of contribution which had reached historic levels is also starting to relax We can arrive with a smaller contribution. If you can have 10% more contribution, you will be able to negotiate even nicer conditions.

After almost two years in slow motion, we can say that the real estate market has picked up again. For Artémis brokerage, the number of credits granted has jumped: +30% compared to the start of the school year a year ago. In France, we predict 780,000 real estate transactions this year and 900,000 next year. But we will be a long way from the years of recovery after Covid, exceptional with 1.2 million transactions. For good reason: the market remains tense with rental offers lower than demand and still low production of new housing.