Having been slow for several months, the real estate market could breathe a little in the coming weeks. According to the president of the law committee of the National Assembly Sacha Houlié (Renaissance), the Ministry of Finance is in fact studying the possibility of relaxing credit conditions to encourage the relaunch of transactions. Bruno Le Maire, to whom Sacha Houlié spoke about it, “said he was studying this hypothesis”, according to the Vienne MP, interviewed on France info.
“We are extremely attentive to the dynamics of production of real estate loans in France,” responded Bercy, stressing that Bruno Le Maire had “received representatives of the French Banking Federation (FBF) last week to take stock of the subject” . On this occasion, “he notably encouraged them to use all the flexibilities that already exist and which were already relaxed a few months ago”.
“A new lease of life for construction or renovation”
In June, for example, the High Financial Stability Council (HCSF) increased the share of real estate loans to which banks can apply their own criteria in an exceptional manner. “The minister will see the governor of the Bank of France to explore the subject in more depth”, Tuesday morning during a meeting of the HCSF, the body which can rule on these questions, Bercy further indicated, stressing that Bruno Le Maire was not not the sole decision-maker within the High Council which he chairs.
For Sacha Houlié, the possible avenues would be to “loosen some conditions, i.e. the rate [d’endettement maximum] of 35%, i.e. the exemptions that are open,” declared the MP for Vienne. The minister, as president of the HCSF, received a request to this effect from several Assembly committee chairmen, including Sacha Houlié, as well as the general budget rapporteur Jean-René Cazenave.
“There are multiple cases in which households, whose income could justify borrowing to acquire a main residence or invest in rental property, are deprived of access to real estate credit. This reluctance can only be explained by the strict and prudential application of the rules decreed by the High Council,” they deplore in their letter obtained by AFP.
A loosening of credit conditions “would unblock many individual situations and give a welcome new lease of life to housing construction or renovations,” they judge. The debt ratio of borrowers, including the cost of credit insurance, is currently limited to 35% of their income, although with exemptions for first-time buyers.