In terms of real estate, what to think of 2020 and what should we expect from 2021? Olivier Colcombet, President of Optimhome and member of Unis, shares his vision with us …
A word to define the real estate market in France in 2020?
Resistant ! And I allow myself to add two: Resilient and improbable. We went from surprises to surprises!
How did this year 2020 go for the real estate sector?
The real estate sector has started the year 2020 with a bang, with good growth in turnover in January and February. Since November 30, we have again had a very sustained activity rate, materialized by a significant number of signatures by notaries. The current question is whether the notaries will succeed in making up for the delays accumulated during this second confinement (for information, 20 to 30% of compromises could not be signed in November) 2020 was very unexpected, but it was is a good year despite the various stress and brakes: the second historic year for real estate.
Will there be a before / after 2020 among real estate professionals?
Yes of course. A glazed agency must bear charges such as the lease, walls, office hours. So when this presence is prevented 3 months out of 12; the impact is necessarily colossal!
France has 120,000 agents: 80,000 of them work for “hard” agencies. The managers of the major glass agency brands are announcing 10/15% closures, which means that 10,000 / 12,000 real estate professionals attached to these agencies will no longer be active. At Optimhome, a network of 1965 independent real estate advisers, containment was approached with much more advanced products in terms of digitalization: digital marketing, marketing automation (social networks, tools) …
A dematerialization strategy that allowed us to carry out 20% of our actions from the first confinement! Where we had a slow evolution, our model represents 16% of market share this year.
Will there be a before / after 2020 for buyers?
The youngest are the most motivated to buy. But between the first confinement and November 2020 they are also those who have demobilized the most. In February 2020 they were 42% to have a real estate project, in November they are only 35%: 7 points of decline, whatever one thinks, over a short period, it is symptomatic. Conversely, we see that owners wishing to sell to acquire another property were 27% in February 2020. They rose to 32% in November, ie 5 points more. Their projects are more likely to materialize because they have a contribution, and often confinement has been a driving force that motivated them to change housing.
What major trends are we going to have in 2021?
The quality of life and therefore housing takes more and more place in the hearts of the French. The mobilization to invest in stone has not changed, they are moving to benefit from a better environment. The organization of well-being around real estate has changed: there is clearly one before 2020 with a traditional way of working, in the office, and one after 2020 with much more teleworking.
Even if the number of properties available for sale on the market has also fallen by nearly 15% in 1 year, the market remains predominantly dominated by supply. In addition, the owners are not inclined to lower the prices. Between the first and the second confinement, we went from 2.4% to 3.4% negotiation on the prices of goods displayed; which is very little when you consider that in 2012, we were at 17% of negotiation. The real estate refuge, “the stone”, is in the hearts of the French. The French have saved 83 billion since the confinement. These savings are invested in stone, which is a more “secure” investment than the stock market.
What have the confinements strengthened or weakened among real estate professionals?
In our model, we observed a very strong need for support from advisers. Our advisers are autonomous but never alone. The head office teams were very much in demand and mobilized to support our advisers, particularly with regard to training. Many had not anticipated how digitization was a key success factor in deploying. The relationship is evolving, meeting customers too, confinement has accelerated the transformation and digital tools whether it is marketing automation, social networks, the sharing of goods …
At UNIS, I come across heads of independent agencies who cannot put these tools in place: it is often too complex. At Optimhome, it took us 2 years to set up these tools and we devoted 3 million euros to them. But for 5,400 advisers within the DigitRE group, the economy of scale is obvious. All alone in his corner, it’s much more complicated …
