The health crisis can have good, in particular for the tenants when it causes what seemed impossible, to relax the rental markets of the most expensive and sought-after cities. The ad sites and real estate agents are seeing, in chorus, an unprecedented influx of rental offers. In March 2021, the SeLoger site counted 79% more ads for empty rented apartments and 129% more furnished than last year.
The movement began in September 2020, but gained momentum in the first quarter of 2021 and is causing, even in Paris, Lille or Nice, a slight but historic drop in rents. In one year, the number of rental advertisements has tripled in Nice as in Annecy, Rennes, Toulouse, and quintupled in Bordeaux. The influx of offers shows the influence of Airbnb-type tourist platforms that exerted, before the crisis, on the rental markets of the historic centers of large cities, Bordeaux and Paris being the symbols and main victims.
“In Paris, it’s unheard of, confides Stanislas Coûteaux, founder and manager of Book-A-Flat, which manages 3,000 furnished apartments, rather upscale, in the capital. Today, on the SeLoger site alone, there are 10,000 offers of furnished property for rent compared to the usual 5,000 and our owners, so far accustomed to finding a tenant within eight days, take several weeks or months and must reduce their financial claims. “ Since January, this manager has welcomed 300 new clients, most of them landlord owners who, until then, rented furnished accommodation and short-term rentals to tourists.
“Almost the same income”
The De Particulier à Particulier (PAP) site also recorded a jump in the supply of goods for rent, + 24% for the whole of France and + 75% in Paris alone. “We quickly recognize the apartments previously intended for tourists with their neat and standardized decoration, with the essential Nespresso coffee machine and sometimes the mention“ redone by an interior designer ”, underlines Corinne Jolly, president of PAP. And these goods sometimes remain on hold for several months ”, she notes.
A studio at 5e arrondissement of Paris, the announcement of which was published in November 2020, saw its monthly rent drop from 1,500 to 1,400 and then 1,300 euros and, at the beginning of May 2021, still had not found a taker; another, near the Trocadéro (16e arrondissement), found a tenant after two months, not without a 6% drop in rent. Not only have the tourists not yet returned, but the students have returned to their parents’ homes to take the distance learning courses and the young working people have seen missions and internships postponed. So many less tenants and more free accommodation.
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