The coronavirus crisis is pushing more and more buyers to turn to real estate in the countryside, with larger areas and lower prices than in cities.

Attracted by the new possibility of teleworking, these executives participate in raising the price of houses in rural areas.

REPORTAGE

This is a trend that is being confirmed by more and more notaries and real estate agencies: a real exodus from the big cities since the deconfinement.

This boom in the purchase of second residences, away from Lyon or Paris, is explained by the desire to spend a third, or even half of the time there, thanks to teleworking popularized by the coronavirus crisis.

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Far from the cities, but not too much

Among the areas most popular with these new buyers are the Perche, between Chartres and Alençon, less than 2 hours from the capital.

"It's a Percheron house, with a double bedroom and a guest bedroom", explains Claire, new owner with her husband of a 160 square meter house and a large garden in Saint-Maurice-lès-Charencey , in Orne.

"We are not on Parisian surfaces, there."

For them, the investment was not about buying a vacation home.

It is almost a second main residence, in addition to their Ile-de-France apartment.

"It's 1h20 from Paris," she explains.

"With telework, you can even leave on Thursday evening and come back on Tuesday morning. It's not really a weekend house, but a 'weekend-telework' house."

The room dedicated to teleworking has already been found, with "the right light and the right connections".

Rush for property

It had been their dream for a long time.

Claire and her husband took the plunge just after confinement but they are far from being the only ones: "We made a few visits, people were buying goods in 24 hours," she says.

This trend is confirmed at the national level.

"There, we have a very clear change in buyer profiles: we were more on retirees there is still some time but, today, they are more senior executives", details Christine Fumagalli, president of the real estate network Orpi .

There has been a one-third increase in compromise signatures over the same period between 2020 and 2019 in Chartres, according to this network.

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The arrival of new buyers has an inevitable consequence on prices: they have increased by 14% since deconfinement in a city like Saint-Amand Montrond, in the Cher, where sales have doubled compared to 2019, according to the figures of Orpi.