Paris (AFP)

Paris real estate should finish the year above 10,000 euros per square meter: this threshold never seen, whose passage should be confirmed on Thursday, marks a symbolic stage of the surge in prices in the capital, uninterrupted for years .

"The price per square meter of Parisian apartments (...) will approach 10.200 euros in September 2019, well over 10,000 euros," announced late July notaries Ile de France, in a note spotted last week by the World.

It is the notaries who, together with INSEE, establish the reference figures on the old French real estate. They will give this Thursday their quarterly report.

This will concern the second quarter, during which Parisian prices have probably not passed the threshold of 10,000 euros. But it is on the basis of their preparatory contracts that the notaries - distinctly from INSEE - think that this threshold was passed this summer.

Whatever the precise date, the fundamental evolution is indisputable: the prices of the Parisian houses have known since years a flare uncommon with the rest of the territory.

Ten years ago, according to the figures of the notaries, the Parisian square meter sold for just over 6,000 euros: despite a pause in the first half of 2010, its price soared by 66% while, on any Ile-de-France, the progression was well below 50%.

As for the rest of the big French cities, if the real estate market is generally in shape for three years - prices are now leaping faster than in Paris in some cities like Nantes - it is far from the capital: still according to the notaries Bordeaux and Lyon are the most expensive, but the square meter is two times cheaper than Paris for apartments.

Even if the purchasers are deported to the neighboring departments of the capital - Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-De-Marne - prices remain much lower: apart from exceptions such as Neuilly-sur-Marne, Seine, just pass the device to observe large gaps.

On the other hand, the high level of prices is homogenized throughout the capital: in the first quarter, all districts were worth more than 8,000 euros per square meter.

- Political stakes -

The evolution of the Parisian market has social consequences: "the share of the most favored socio-professional categories has greatly increased, in a slow but continuous movement", noted the notaries in their note of July.

They noted that among the new buyers of Parisian housing, the share of workers and employees fell to 5% last year against 15% twenty years earlier.

These social consequences are on the political ground and the housing issue promises to be central during the municipal campaign of 2020 where the socialist Anne Hidalgo will put his mandate at stake.

"When a professor, a police officer or a person who works at Paris hospitals can not find accommodation, this is not healthy," said Sunday Franceinfo Benjamin Griveaux, the candidate invested by the Republic Marche, the presidential party.

"When we were spokesman for a government that dropped the APL, which has drained the social landlords, who has dragged its feet to put the rents and regulate Airbnb, we get a little modest on the housing ", replied on Twitter, Ian Brossat, communist housing assistant of the current municipality.

It has conducted a housing policy focused on two pillars: private price regulation, including the reintroduction of a ceiling on rents this summer, and strengthening of the social housing stock.

But it is partly this last element that notaries target to explain a Parisian situation not only marked by the price surge but also a persistent decline or stagnation of the number of transactions from one quarter to another.

This conjunction "is mainly due to lack of supply," noted in May the Parisian notary Elodie Fremont, during the previous quarterly review.

"This volume deficit is mainly due to the increase in social housing in Paris," she said. "We have more social housing and a lot less housing in the private sector."

© 2019 AFP