the market (finally) out of the woods in 2025?

The National Real Estate Federation (FNAIM) takes stock of the real estate market for 2024 and gives its outlook for 2025. And the hardest part seems to be behind us, since the trend is towards a gradual recovery in 2025.

Borrowing rates noted on 01/08/2025

Hit rock bottom to bounce back better?

Coming out of Covid, the real estate sector has increasingly seized up over the months, leading to a real crisis situation. Indeed, the number of real estate sales has gradually fallen since 2021 (1,176,000), reaching in 2024 a floor level (775,000) never reached since 2015, i.e. a drop of 36%.

The fall in sales was followed by that of real estate pricesbut to a lesser extent. Since 2020, the average price per square meter in Paris has fallen by 11% to €9,768. While regions with ski resorts or seaside resorts have recorded increases of 26.2 and 24.7% respectively in the price per square meter over the past five years.

The evolution of prices is also different depending on the departments. Those which record an increase of 3% or more on average in the price per square meter (between 1^is January 2024 and 1^is January 2025) are:

• L’Allier (03);
• Creuse (23);
• Corrèze (19);
• Cantal (15);
• The Hautes-Alpes (05);
• Lot-et-Garonne (47);
• The Meuse (55);
• Haute-Marne (52).

However, even if certain cities are resisting the crisis and seeing their property prices increase, such as Toulon (7.1%) or Caen (2.8%), the underlying trend is indeed downward. The cities recording the most pronounced decreases are Nantes (-5.4%) and Reims (-5.2%).

Source FNAIM, January 2025.

The conditions for a recovery

The real estate crisis is due to the “combined effect” of increasing borrowing rates and inflation. Which significantly reduced the real estate purchasing power of the French.

However, in 2024 and despite the numerous political twists and turns, real estate rates have taken a downward path to follow that of the key rates of the ECB (European Central Bank), which as a reminder, serve as a reference for lending organizations to set their rates. rate. In addition, 10-year OATs, representing the cost of money, remained below approximately 3.5% in 2024, the context was therefore conducive to improving the conditions for granting real estate loans.