Margaux Fodéré / Photo credits: Fiora Garenzi / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP (Illustration) 08:14, 06 December 2023

While the housing market is plunged into crisis, a brightening seems to be looming in the sky of real estate loans. Bercy and the Banque de France have agreed on a relaxation of borrowing rules and some banks are starting to lower their borrowing rates. This good news has been confirmed by the sector's players.

Could this be the beginning of a lull in the real estate market? First good news: this week, Bercy and the Bank of France agreed on a relaxation of borrowing rules. Another positive sign: the production of housing loans stabilised in October, at more than nine billion euros. And that's not all: some banks are also starting to lower their borrowing rates.

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Lull

Cuts of around 0.10 or 0.20 percentage points are applied by regional banks, but also by national banks. According to information from Europe 1, this is the case of Société Générale. So for the moment, these movements remain marginal. The objective for these players is to find offers close to the competition, explains Pierre Chapon, the co-founder of Pretto, an online mortgage search platform.

"These are banks that until mid-2023 decided not to lend or very anecdotally to certain customers. Then they came back but with uncompetitive rates and now they are back in the market," he said. Contacted by Europe 1, Société Générale acknowledged that the current climate is more favourable to real estate loans. Even if, on average, the scales sent by banks are still stabilizing at a high level: around 4.32% in November for a twenty-year loan, according to the broker Cafpi.

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For Caroline Arnould, the broker's general manager, this is indeed the beginning of a lull. "We imagined that at the end of the year we would land at a 5% credit rate over twenty years. We certainly won't go. I think there's a consensus that borrowing rates are really going to stabilize," she said. However, not everything is resolved. The French also need to want to subscribe to the banks' offers again. Only a drop in prices will change the situation, and it is only just beginning timidly.