Aerial view of houses under construction in Hédé-Bazouges, in Ille-et-Vilaine, October 29, 2022 (AFP / Damien MEYER)
Concomitant with the fall in house construction, the number of building plots purchased by individuals between October 2023 and September 2024 fell by 37% over one year, according to figures from Notaries of France published Monday.
In September 2024, notaries recorded 43,000 building land transactions accumulated over the previous twelve months, compared to 68,000 recorded between October 2022 and September 2023.
Compared to the period from mid-2022 to mid-2023, sales of building land even collapsed by 43%.
Data which is in line with the downturn experienced by builders of individual houses: the Housing Unit of the French Building Federation noted “a drop of more than a third in sales over one year” of individual houses located in subdivisions (3,100 over one year at the end of June 2024) and detached houses (49,300 over one year at the end of July 2024).
The number of home sales is currently two to three times lower than the long-term average for the sector.
New real estate has suffered for two years from rising construction costs and rising interest rates which have reduced the real estate purchasing power of French households.
Sales of land to individuals are also hampered by the government's decision to refocus the zero-interest loan on areas considered to be under pressure in terms of housing and for collective housing.
The Superior Council of Notaries (CSN) underlines that “if the decline in the number of building land transactions was already well underway, its acceleration comes at the same time as the announcement of the exclusion of individual houses from zero-rate loans “, measure which entered into force on January 1, 2024.
– Basic sobriety –
Added to this is the objective of “zero net artificialization” of land (ZAN), which aims to stop urban sprawl by 2050. At this date, any new urbanized surface area must be compensated by the “renaturation” of land. an equivalent surface area.
“These measures are based on laudable intentions”, but “they should not have the consequence of depriving and diverting people from accessing property”, worries Frédéric Violeau, responsible for national real estate statistics for the CSN.
Opposed to the idea of linking the lack of housing to the cessation of land artificialization, the town planner Jean Guiony names as the causes of the drop in land sales “a movement of land sobriety started previously” in the ZAN and “difficulties in acquiring real estate among the French”, linked to purchasing power and not to town planning.
French households have indeed suffered from the surge in property prices after the Covid crisis and then from the rise in interest rates, which has seized up the market from 2022.
In their assessment for the year 2024, the notaries of France underline that the cumulative number over twelve months of sales of old housing recorded at the end of September 2024 is down 17% over one year.
“Recycling and transformation of buildings, densification, elevation, vacant housing” are “resources” of new housing, according to Mr. Guiony, also president of the Land Transition Institute. And remember that less built land means more preserved agricultural and natural land.
As for the average price of land, it more than doubled between 2000 and 2008, then continued to increase to reach 84,100 euros in 2024. At the same time the average surface area of plots acquired shrank between 2000 and 2015 and began to increase again. from 2020. In 2024, the average surface area of a building plot purchased is 920 m².
“Sales of building land, more localized in increasingly urbanized areas, with smaller surface areas, but more expensive, partly explain this observation” of rising prices, notes the CSN.
