A record was broken for real estate transactions in old buildings in France between March 2020 and March 2021. Guest on Friday evening on Europe 1, Laurent Vimont, president of the Century 21 France real estate agency group, deciphered the new trends that were observed in connection with these purchases.

INTERVIEW

"It's a historic record."

Laurent Vimont, president of the Century 21 France real estate agency group, sums up with these few words the latest figures published on sales in the former in France, at the microphone of Europe 1 on Friday evening.

With nearly 1.08 million old homes sold between March 2020 and March 2021 in the country, the number of transactions has effectively crossed a historic level, slightly exceeding the peak observed at the end of 2019, before the start of the health crisis, according to a report. analysis of notaries and INSEE published this week.

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Sell ​​in hyper-centers to reinvest

Beyond this record, real estate professionals have identified new trends in the behavior of buyers, as Laurent Vimont underlines.

"The French want to live better and to live better they want better housing," he observes.

"And so they use the selling price of a housing in the hyper-center, high, to reinvest in housing five or ten kilometers away."

Generally, this accommodation is "bigger", "has a piece of garden" or "is a house", specifies the boss of Century 21 France.

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"There is a phenomenon of slight migration from the hyper-centers of large agglomerations to peripheral towns", he adds while insisting on the fact that these moves are rather done over short distances.

"It's never 15 or 20 kilometers away. It's rather close enough. These are chip jumps that are carried out. In Paris, people go to the first or the second crown."

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"We must not imagine that we have an exodus"

Therefore, it is not necessarily entire regions that are benefiting from this boom in the real estate market.

For Laurent Vimont, we must rather look at what is happening within a radius of "ten kilometers" around the "large metropolises of France" to see that "the market is very active".

"We must not imagine that we have an exodus (to the countryside), it is not true. What people are looking for is better living and better housing."