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– It is the outskirts of regional metropolises, such as Lyon, which contain the greatest potential for falling prices in 2025, according to Laforêt.
Real estate purchases mainly take place in the spring, to allow future owners to be in the premises before the start of the school year in September. If you have an acquisition project, pSo take advantage of the Christmas holidays to mature itin order to hit the agencies from January! Having fallen to 3.37% on average in December, compared to 4.20% a year earlier, according to the Housing Credit Observatory, real estate loan rates should fall to 3% in the first quarter of 2025, predicts the broker Vousfinancer.
But what about the evolution of prices, the other crux of the matter when it comes to property purchases? In 2024, after two years of real estate crisis, prices of old housing fell by 3.6% on average in France, over one year, more or less as in 2023 (-3.9%), observes the Laforêt agency network.
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Fall in prices in Ile-de-France
«It is in Ile-de-France that prices have fallen the mostby almost 8%”underlines Yann Jéhanno, president of Laforêt, to Capital. It must be said that they had increased considerably in the inner and outer suburbs just after the health crisis, with many Parisians, traumatized by repeated confinements, having decided to sell their apartment in the capital to buy a house with a garden in the Val -de-Marne or in Yvelines.
“Today, the people who buy in these departments are no longer Parisians, who arrived with their Parisian purchasing power, but locals, who know that sales prices are disconnected from reality and therefore do not hesitate to negotiate them”explains Yann Jéhanno. In fact, nine out of ten purchases are now the subject of negotiations in Francecompared to only six out of ten in 2022, before the surge in credit rates.
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In Paris, again a hierarchy of prices according to the districts
In inner Paris, prices have fallen by almost 4% this year. A decline half as much as in Ile-de-France but which allowed the average price in the capital to fall below 9,500,000 euros per square meterat 9,470 euros, after falling below 10,000 euros in 2023. “Prices in Paris have returned to their 2018 level, before the Roaring Twenties”which propelled them to 11,000 euros per square meter in 2020, deciphers Yann Jéhanno. Above all, the capital has found a hierarchy of prices according to the districts.
While, during these famous Roaring Twenties from 2019 to 2021, “there was a sort of single price of 10,000 euros per square meter in Paris, regardless of the district, it has now fallen to 8,000 euros per square meter in eastern Paris, for example”notes the boss of Laforêt. In total, the average price per square meter has fallen below the threshold of 10,000 euros in eleven of the 21 districts of the capital.
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Insufficient price reductions on the outskirts of metropolises
It is in the regions that the drop in prices was least significant in 2024, at -2.2%. With a distinction between large metropolises, such as Lyon and Bordeaux, which saw prices fall by up to 5%, and their peripheries, where “the reductions are not yet sufficient» to restart purchases, “many owners remaining reluctant to adjust their rates”, specifies Yann Jéhanno.
It is therefore these outskirts of large regional metropolises which contain the greatest potential for a drop in prices in 2025, estimates the president of Laforêt, who is counting on a drop of 2 to 4% in prices for the whole of France next year. Paris will undoubtedly have to settle for the lower end of this range, “the bulk of the price drop having already taken place”according to Yann Jéhanno. This resulted in an 11% rebound in the number of sales agreement signatures in the capital this year, within the Laforêt network, after a drop of 7% in 2023.
