Annual property sales in 2024 are predicted to fall by 17% as the effect of the property market slump that began in 2023 continues.
A total of 780,000 properties were sold between the third quarter of 2023 and 2024 with predictions that this may drop to 700,000 between January and December 2024.
For comparison the pre-Covid figures were 1,080,000 in 2019 and 1,208,000 between August 2020 and August 2021.
However, more recent figures point towards a market recovery at least in terms of property prices.
The information comes from the end-of-year report by the Conseil Supérieur de Notariat.
Notaires are involved in all property transactions in the country, therefore being an authority in property market trends.
The report contains full information to the end of September 2024, as well as preliminary information up to December 2024 on property price changes over the last 12 months..
Further information will be available in more detail when the Notaires de France publishes its quarterly report on the property market, expected in early 2025 (covering up to the third quarter of 2024).
Sharp decline of property sales in south
The number of transactions fell in all departments but was more prominent in the south and particularly the south-west.
Ad
Almost all departments in the southern regions saw transactions fall by at 15% or more.
The Gironde and Pyrénées-Orientales departments saw the biggest year-on-year drop (between September 2023 and 2024) of 23%.
Figures for Charente-Maritime and Seine-Saint-Denis were similar at 22%.
Conseil Supérieur de Notariat
The fall in transactions in turn saw property prices per m² fall, particularly in major cities.
Prices fell almost across the board for both flats and houses (including in suburbs) of all major cities, including Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, and Marseille.
However Nice saw flat prices rise over the year by 0.1%
Elsewhere, year-on-year flat prices between September 2023 and 2024 fell by -6.7% in Paris, -8.6% in Lyon, -7.5% in Bordeaux, and as high as -9.2% in Nantes - the largest drop of France’s 18 largest cities.
No areas saw house prices rise in the last 12 months – all 18 cities studied saw prices drop by at least -4% except Orléans which saw a -2.2% drop.
The highest drop was again recorded in Nantes (-9.7%) followed by Bordeaux (-9.2%) and Saint-Etienne (-8.4%).
Hope on the horizon?
The statistics are not all doom and gloom, however.
Whilst the above year-on-year figures show significant drops, more recent data suggests a market upturn.
Notaires recorded a ‘cautious optimism’ in the last set of property market data released at the end of October 2024, which saw quarterly price drops ease.
This optimism seems to have been well-founded as predictions for prices in the final three months of 2024 see flat prices per m² steady outside of the Île-de-France capital region, and fall by just -0.3% inside it.
House prices per m² outside of Île-de-France fell by -0.2%, but have risen in the region by 0.4% in the last three months.
If these trends continue, property prices will rise each quarter in 2025, leading to a year-on-year increase in prices by the start of 2026.
The property slump was a natural cycle of the market and, in the longer term, prices have increased across the country.
Despite seeing a price drop of -2% between 2019 and 2024, flat prices in Bordeaux have increased 39% in the last ten years (2014 - 2024).
In the same ten-year time frame prices rose in Orléans (30%), Marseille (31%), Nice (32%), Nantes (35%), Lyon (36%) Strasbourg (41%) and Rennes (53%).
Only two cities did not see the price of flats rise by more than 10% in the last 10 years – Grenoble (7%) and Saint-Etienne (9%).
It is a similar story for houses: between 2019 and 2024, no city has seen property prices decrease, and between 2014 and 2024, prices increased by at least 14% in all cities.
The highest increases have been seen in Montpellier (32%), Toulon (32%), Rennes (34%), Lyon (34%) and Bordeaux (37%)
