In its second seller barometer, the BPCE Observatory takes stock of transactions in 2022-2023, based on the sellers’ point of view. And the results reveal some surprises.
What conclusions can we draw from recent months regarding real estate? On the buyers’ side, as we have already written at length, things have become extremely difficult over the past two years. While credit rates almost quadrupled between January 2022 and February 2024, the number of loan applicants has melted, leading to a fall in real estate transactions in 2023 (870,000 transactions estimated at the end of December, a drop of 20% compared to 2022, Editor’s note).
For buyers, therefore, the blow was hard. But what about the sellers? This is the question that the seller barometer presented this Tuesday, February 27 by the BPCE Observatory wishes to answer. The first lesson concerns the type of goods sold. While many professionals believed that faced with the market downturn, sales would be more and more constrained (in the event of transfer, death or divorce for example), it would seem that the reality is a little different.
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Thus, if 48.7% of properties sold in 2022-2023 are indeed main residences, a very significant part of the market is for properties which are not main residences. 19.3% of properties sold in 2022-2023 are second homes and this share has even increased by 2 points since 2020-2021, notes the barometer. Furthermore, 17% of properties sold are rental housing. Concerning the latter, the upcoming arrival (on January 1, 2025) of rental bans for properties classified G in the energy performance diagnosis (EPD) may have played a role in the choice to sell these homes.
The energy rating of a home, an increasingly important factor
The importance of DPE is also increasing, reveals the barometer. Only 11.9% of sellers do not know the energy label of the housing being sold. The share of sellers who consider that the DPE played no role has fallen by 3 points since the last barometer, to stand at 31.9%. Conversely, the share of sellers who consider that the DPE played a significant role increased by 3 points, to stand at 21.2%.
However, notes the Observatory, the report from sellers of this label reveals biases in perception. The bias is observed on the extreme labels. 13.5% of sellers declare having sold a property with label A or B while 6% of properties sold in France and 5% of the housing stock belong to these labels. Conversely, 9% of sellers declare having sold a property with label F or G while the transactions carried out account for 18% and the stock 17%.
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Finally, the study reveals that in 67% of cases, the owners sold their home to buy another. But the sale can also make it possible to help someone close to you financially, or to mobilize money for another project. Concerning sales of main residences, they are motivated in 65% of cases by the purchase of another main residence. The purchase and sale of main residences constitutes a market in itself, with its own logic. When we consider this time the sale of an inherited property, in 45.7% of cases, it does not result in the purchase of another home. This share drops to 7.5% when selling a main residence. This means that the money generated from a sale is not used in the same way depending on its origin, the barometer concludes.