Century 21, which for its part took stock of the first nine months of the year, indicates that “sales volumes decreased by only 1.6% for houses and 3.1% for apartments”. The president of the French division, Charles Marinakis, boasts of a “good summer” and a “rather positive trend in September”. “The combination of falling prices and falling interest/trading rates restores the purchasing power of buyers, whose projects are once again studied by banks,” explains Laforêt in his quarterly post.
Falling house prices
As for prices, they continue to fall, but less rapidly than last year. Laforêt and Foncia noted in France, in September, a drop in the average price per m² of 4.5% compared to the previous year. Orpi observed a 5% drop in prices compared to the third quarter of 2023. The National Real Estate Federation (Fnaim) reports that prices “appear to have stabilized since the spring, or even rebounded slightly,” which brings the drop to September From 1 to 2.2% in one year.
In some cities or regions, slight increases in prices per m² have occurred, but the data differs significantly from one agency network to another. For Charles Marinakis, the drop in real estate prices, of around 12% in two years according to Century 21, “was necessary to eliminate the excesses of the past”, and even constituted “an absolute necessity in Paris, where the market was tense” to due to an average price per m² that exceeded 10,000 euros, and which fell to 9,286 euros in 2024.