Despite the health and economic crises, the passion of the French for real estate does not seem to be affected.

While we might have expected a market collapse in 2020, buyers are still very numerous and prices keep rising.

Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

Crisis or no crisis, the passion of the French for real estate does not weaken and prices continue to climb.

The year 2019 had been historic, with more than a million real estate transactions throughout France in the former.

We could therefore fear this year, after weeks of confinement, a fall in the number of sales.

If only because the visits had to be suspended in March-April: the agencies were closed.

Well no !

Figures from notaries show a drop of only 5% over one year at the end of September.

And since then, the activity of notaries has not weakened.

Offices remained open, moves were authorized and the signing of distance selling deeds became commonplace.

In short, the market continued to turn.

2020 will not have been a year of euphoria, but there has been no collapse in the market, far from it.

And even less lower prices.

This is the most amazing.

Prices in the old have increased in all major French cities.

The prize for dynamism goes to the West with an increase of 14% in Rennes and 13% in Nantes.

But the increase in prices per square meter also reached 10% Lyon, Lille, Marseille.

And in the capital, where a square meter costs on average 10,640 euros, more than double the second most expensive city in France, which is Lyon (4,770 euros per meter), prices rose 7.6% on a year.

We can learn from this: all that we have heard about the urban exodus, the fact that teleworking would encourage the French to settle in the countryside, is absolutely not verified in the figures of the immovable.

The French continue to rush to town centers.

We also get the impression that the real estate market is completely disconnected from the state of the economy.

When prices increase by 6.5%, because this is the average across France, more than three times faster than purchasing power, we suspect that at some point there will be an adjustment .

But for the moment, we don't see it coming.

Despite rising unemployment, the buyers are still there.

Banks, moreover, bear witness to this, since mortgage lending continued to grow this year, driven by interest rates which remain extremely low.

It is clear, the long-awaited turnaround in the real estate market is long overdue.