Will small and medium-sized cities be the big winners of the Covid-19 crisis? Does what some call – not without condescension – “peripheral France” hold its revenge? Everything suggests this, according to a survey released by SeLoger.
Would the trivialization of telework give us the desire for space? At the end of confinement, it seems that more and more French people are wondering about their homes. Because if you no longer have the obligation to go to your workplace every day, why settle for a cramped apartment in a metropolis when only a few tens of minutes of transport, and for the same price, could we afford a house with a garden and / or an extra room to be able to telecommute?
Could this upheaval in the order of buyers’ priorities lead to the cards of the hexagonal real estate market being reshuffled? Are we witnessing the revenge of peripheral France? This is suggested by a recent survey by Housing
Choisy-le-Roi capitalizes on the Parisians’ desire for space
Slammed in their apartments for two months which seemed endless to them, Parisians are, more than ever, in need of space! No wonder, therefore, that the real estate searches they are carrying out have evolved because they extend, more and more, far beyond the ring road, where the grass is greener, the greenery more present and lower prices per m².
The SeLoger survey thus shows that in the very nearby (20 minutes by car separating it from the capital) Choisy-le-roi, houses are much more sought after than they were before. Judge instead, by analyzing the real estate searches targeted in this town of Val-de-Marne, we discovered that the occurrence of the term “house” had jumped 25% compared to last year. This renewed attractiveness for Choisy homes can be explained in particular by the gain in space which the property price in Choisy-le-Roi allows a Parisian buyer to take advantage of because by leaving the City of Light for Choisy, it will triple the area of his home! Finally, the survey tells us that by tracing the contours of the Ile-de-France real estate market, the Covid-19 has put a spotlight on cities like Alfortville and Gennevilliers which allow inner Parisians to gain respectively, in terms of meters square, 114% and 152%.
” The period of isolation, to which the French were subjected, impacted their property searches, underlines Séverine Amate, Spokesperson for the SeLoger group. The audience of our sites thus reveals that the type of property sought and their location have changed. More research was done in the provinces than before the containment. In Brittany, the ad consultation rate jumped 17% in mid-April. We also note an increased appetite for houses which concentrate 2/3 of research against half before the crisis and this in the old as in the new “
Givors, Ambarès-et-Lagrave, Saint-Herblain… cities where life is good and telecommuting!
It’s not just the Ile-de-France property market whose cards seem to have been shuffled by the Covid-19. According to the survey, the province is also experiencing a rebalancing of the real estate market. Because metropolization of the economy obliges, after having literally siphoned the cities in periphery of their inhabitants, here that the metropolises start to lack arguments to convince the townspeople to resist the sirens of the countryside. In the post-containment real estate market, cities such as:
- Ambarès-et-Lagrave (½ hour from Bordeaux but where a Bordeaux resident can buy, for 251,000 €, 35 m² more),
- Saint-Herblain (23 min from Nantes / 41% gain in area),
- Ronchin (13 min by car from Lille / 75% gain),
- Givors (26 min from Lyon / 155% gain),
- Marignane (24 min from Marseille / 19% gain, i.e. 15 m² more),
- La Trinité (¼ hour from Nice / 60% gain),
- Bruz (25 min from Rennes / 42% gain),
- Castelginest (½ hour from Toulouse / 30% gain),
- Hoenheim (14 min from Strasbourg / 73% gain).
Good to know: € 251,000: the average price of housing in France, in the former (Source: LPI-SeLoger).
The number of searches on the keyword “house” has exploded!
There is sometimes a gap between the intention to do something and the act. When looking at a real estate ad, it may be without the intention to buy, but only to stay informed of market prices, imagine another living environment or get away from your daily life. The fact remains that at the moment, the houses seem to exert a real fascination with French Internet users, whether they are content to “stroll” on the advertisement pages of portals or that they are actively looking for a property. Indeed, compared to 2019, the presence of the term “house” in the real estate searches carried out on our sites increased by:
- 55% in Gennevilliers (near Paris)
- 54% in Hoenheim (near Strasbourg)
- 52% in Chantepie (near Rennes)
- 37% in Saint-Herblain (near Nantes)
- 36% in Écully (near Lyon)
- 28% in La Trinité (near Nice)
- 22% in Ronchin (near Lille)
- 20% in Floirac (near Bordeaux)
- 19% in Castelginest (near Toulouse)
” I’m fighting so that beyond the metropolises, we make medium-sized cities real centers of centrality, indicates Julien Denormandie, Minister responsible for Housing. Our Action Coeur de Ville program aims precisely to revitalize these cities of a few tens of thousands of inhabitants who have sometimes been neglected; to revitalize these collapsing city hearts, where local shops are closing one after the other and where housing is deteriorating. But the period that we have just lived makes us wonder about regional planning. However, what has been observed since the visits resumed is a very strong appetite for territories which, in terms of real estate, did not enjoy as much attractiveness before the crisis. And telework has a lot to do with it. Today, we realize that new societal models are possible. And that will have an impact on land use planning “
© mysweetimmo / adobestock
