“My friend and I are starting to despair of finding accommodation (…) we’ve been looking for three months and my term starts in a week.” Zoé’s message on a Facebook group, a student from Caen, is evidence of a real urgency. But her quest, studded with “refusals and rents that are skyrocketing” has finally paid off, while many are still homeless. At the end of August, Caen (Calvados) is celebrating a strange anniversary: on August 25, 2023, a decree declared the urban area a tense real estate area. “It was a surprise, but it has really been confirmed over the past year,” comments Cyril Legallois, a property manager.
In the professional’s office, his colleague cites the example of a small house put up for rent in Colombelles (East of Caen), at the beginning of the summer: “I received 40 requests in a quarter of an hour.” A frenzy that Jean-François also noted for his 47 m2 apartment, vacated during the summer by his former tenants. “I put the ad on Le bon coin,” rewinds the man who manages his own rentals. “There were about fifty requests in 30 minutes. We had to dissect the messages, the situations. I had been told that Caen was in the red but I had never seen that.” The lucky winner had been looking for a place to live for… two months.
On the other side of the screens, rental candidates find themselves stuck in a laborious search, often longer than imagined. This is the case of Johnny, who had to look for a smaller place to live. On a permanent contract in public broadcasting, he “sent between 30 and 40 applications for only three or four visits. And the criteria were very demanding. If with my profile, with a reassuring employment contract and a good guarantor, I don’t find anything, how can I find anything?” He ended up finding a new roof thanks to a “stroke of luck”. He wasn’t the landlord’s first choice. “We were always in the last files,” says Zoé, the student. “There was always a little better, sometimes on the pretext that there were two of us. We were preferred to single people who could pay for a T2 and for a T1, we were told that it wasn’t made for two people.” The impasse.
Highly sought-after properties, both by students, who are very numerous in Caen, as well as by young workers or single people. These accommodations are also very suitable for tourist rentals. “Many owners have turned to Airbnb in recent years,” notes Cyril Legallois. “But it’s a housing shortage in the broad sense.”
The end of the Pinel system
In addition to the tourist phenomenon, the reasons are difficulties in renovating part of the current stock and, according to the property manager, “the end of the Pinel scheme (end of 2024) and its tax advantages. However, around 80% of new homes were purchased by investors who wanted to reduce their taxes. So there are fewer buyers.” Homes remain vacant, expensive and some of them do not meet what is most sought after. New obstacles for buyers. And at the end of the chain, a scarce supply for tenants.
The post-Covid period has boosted the attractiveness of Caen and its region. The city is also seeing some of its schools grow. With more than 30,000 students, demand is high. Supply is not keeping up. Although the August 2023 decree reduces notice periods to one month and regulates rents, they have still increased and the market has frozen a little: “Tenants are not giving up their apartments because they know how difficult it is to find one again,” explains Cyril Legallois.
This pressure leads Jean-François to bet on stability. The owner notes that he has more “young workers than students” in his properties and seems relieved that the movement is limited. His summer ad has made him experience an “unmanageable” situation. We can’t respond to everyone and it’s not satisfactory for anyone. If this continues, I might think about entrusting the rental to an agency.” In Caen, some of them already cross out many ads with a “Rented”. The search for a place to stay promises to be long and tortuous for many, and for a long time.
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