Advertisements for a studio for sale, a T2 or even a T3 and even a house in Bordeaux but “No, it’s not going away!” Jean-Luc Billard points to the window of his real estate agency Laforêt, located on avenue Thiers, in Bordeaux-Bastide. “I had to lay off four employees and I closed my agency in Bègles, I filed for bankruptcy, and I am thinking of getting rid of the one in Fargues-Saint-Hilaire”testifies this business leader who speaks of an unprecedented housing crisis.
“Worse than the subprime crisis”
“I know there was a crisis in 2008, but even people who lived through it say it wasn’t much compared to what’s happening today, adds Jean-Luc Billard. We manage to do well by doing rental management with landlords, but when it comes to transactions and sales, I have never experienced that!”
This real estate agent is not an isolated case. “In Fargues-St-Hilaire alone, I know that Plaza Immobilier filed for bankruptcy, the Bedin firm, there were four of them, there is now only one, NCI Immobilier sold, yes it’s very complicated.” The crisis is such that Jean-Luc Billard is considering a reconversion. “We’re thinking about maybe doing something else!”
“The problem? Bank rates”, according to a Bordeaux promoter
At the start of the chain, promoters are not better off. “It’s true that it’s a fairly complex and unprecedented situation. Indeed, we have sales rates that are longer than usual, delays in the start of construction”explains Matthieu Roué, founder and manager of ADE-IMMO, a group specializing in real estate construction whose headquarters is located near the Allées de Tourny in Bordeaux.
For the real estate developer, the reasons for the crisis are multifactorial. “There is a problem with rates and bank loans. There was also a problem with the costs of materials which have increased significantly since the war in Ukraine. And there is also a real problem with confidence in the future for certain buyers in a context where there is government instability (…) and in the finance bill, nothing is completely finalized, we are still waiting for measures concerning new or old real estate in France“, regrets Matthieu Roué. The Bordeaux promoter remains “confident thanks to a positioning in luxury housing”.
440 companies and 1,564 construction jobs lost in 2024 in Gironde
The current housing crisis is plunging many Gironde businesses into the doldrums. “We have 54% more failures among companies in the sector“, says Thierry Leblanc, president of the French Building Federation of Gironde.
“Today, we have a certain number of construction sites at a standstill because the developers have not managed to achieve their level of sales. To give an idea, new housing starts fell by 15.8% over the last twelve months and for individual houses, it was a drop of 35.3%!”
“When you are a builder of individual houses, minus 35.3%, you have difficulty getting over it, warns Thierry Leblanc. We are affected by temporary economic factors which have disrupted the dynamic in which we have been for ten years. Sales are down significantly (-28.3% compared to last year). It’s worrying. It’s traumatic for business leaders and employeeswarns the president of the FFB 33. Knowing that the year before, we were already in decline and this one is monstrous.”
