Bad start for home loans. New home loans fell in the first half of the year to their lowest level in 10 years, according to data published Monday by the Banque de France, in a market where buyers, stuck between still-high rates and prices that do not fall or fall only slightly, are becoming rare. The total amount of new home loans excluding renegotiations amounted to 47.3 billion euros between January and June, down 36% over a year and the lowest since 2014.
The rate The average interest rate of these new loans is however a little more favorable for borrowers, according to the same source, going from 4.17% in January to 3.70% in June. These rates exclude taxes and insurance. Including costs, rates went from 4.79% to 4.62% from the first to the second quarter for a period of twenty years or more, according to the Banque de France.
Real estate prices still high
This is a real shock to the purchasing power of households in real estate: in the first quarter of 2022, this rate was still two and a half times lower, at 1.80%. If this slight downward movement and the banks’ requests are normally able to stimulate the market, Real estate candidates don’t push at the gate. The main obstacle is common to all market operators: still high property prices. The political context in June added a certain degree of uncertainty and a wait-and-see attitude on the part of households. In the second quarter, “the market context was weak» for real estate loans, commented last Thursday the financial director of Société Générale Claire Dumas, “due to a more uncertain and wait-and-see context, especially after the dissolution» of the National Assembly.
Banks and intermediaries also believe that the market is being held back by certain rules decreed by the High Council for Financial Stability (HCSF), which regulates, among other things, the conditions for granting real estate credit, particularly in terms of rental investments. The signs of recovery are timid: the production of new real estate loans excluding renegotiations reached 8.6 billion euros in June, the second worst month since the beginning of the year, behind April. They could ease in July and August, months that are generally quiet for real estate transactions. The Banque de France, however, sees a “gradual recovery», but several stabilizations mentioned for April 2023 and December 2023 ultimately did not hold.