The atmosphere has changed in notarial studies. Elodie Frémont, spokesperson for the notaries of Greater Paris, testifies to this by presenting on Thursday September 7 the quarterly activity of the Ile-de-France real estate market.
“The meetings take place in a tense climate: the negotiations last well over a month, we see withdrawals, obtaining credit offers is laborious and everyone finds themselves, on the day of signing, under tension”she observes, before adding: “We feel that the sale was dictated by an external constraint”.
No owner is in a hurry to sell their property in a falling real estate market. For Ile-de-France notaries, “sales made often correspond to divorces, inheritances, professional or family changes”. “And we feel in our studies that we have less work”adds Olivier Clermont, notary in Paris.
Wait-and-see context
In this wait-and-see context, sales volumes in Ile-de-France collapsed by a quarter in the second quarter of 2023, compared to the same period of 2022 (– 23% in Paris). For the profession, “the real estate market is still deprived of its main engine, because the monetary tightening continues with a double problem: very difficult access to financing and home loan rates at their highest” for many years.
Since July 2022, the European Central Bank has carried out the fastest interest rate increase in its history, after more than a decade of extremely low cost money, in order to counter high inflation. installed since the start of the war in Ukraine. As banks pass on these increases, the average rate of mortgage loans has almost quadrupled, going from 1% in December 2021 to 3.8% in August 2023, according to the CSA Housing Credit Observatory.
The notaries of Greater Paris have calculated what such an increase represented for households embarked on a property ownership project. According to their simulations, taking into account housing prices and credit rates expected in October 2023, “the monthly payment would be 22% higher for apartments and 26% higher for houses, compared to the situation observed at the start of 2022”.
Additional effort to the detriment of the less well off
This additional financial effort to be made obviously has consequences on the profile of buyers, to the detriment of the less well-off. “Artisan households, business leaders and executives (CSP +) are at the origin of 51% of acquisitions of old apartments in Ile-de-France in 2e quarter of 2023, compared to 46% a year earlier. For houses, they now represent 43% of buyers in 2e quarter 2023 compared to 37% in the 2nde quarter 2022 »indicates the press release from Ile-de-France notaries.
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