Apartment rental in France

Finding housing is a universal need, yet the task is not always easy. So how is the rental market doing in France? What is the average rental price? What are the cities where it is good to live as a tenant? Studapart conducted the investigation for you!

For several years, the price of real estate has been increasing every year in France, both on the buying side and on the rental side. In 2019, you had to spend an average of around €650/month to find accommodation in France. In 2021, this average was nearly €700/month. This means that the rental price per square meter is on average €16/m², i.e. a low range of €11/m² and a high range of €24/m².

The average is not very representative of the reality of demand. Indeed, a large part of the rental demand is concentrated in the Paris region or the Lyon region where prices per square meter are between €20/m² and €25/m². Rental prices in Île-de-France are actually twice as high as in the rest of France.

In 2021, the rentals that were signed concerned spaces with an average surface area of ​​41m². This surface corresponds to the average size of a two-room apartment (T2).

State of the rental property market

The rise in rental prices has become widespread in recent years throughout the territory and for all housing. The least rented accommodation in France are homestays, which are mainly of interest to student tenants, four-room apartments (T4) as well as houses, which are mainly of interest to families, and households who prefer home ownership. Each of these types of accommodation represents 5% of rentals for the year 2021.

Properties that meet the criteria of studios and one-room apartments (T1) are the most requested areas, and have been for several years: they represent 36% of rentals in 2021. These areas are very popular with young students who leave the family home, but also young graduates who get their first job. T2 apartments account for 27% of rentals, while three-room apartments (T3) accounted for 15% of rentals in 2021. It is interesting to note that more than half of these rentals are furnished accommodation. This is a very popular option among students and young professionals.

Taking a closer look at the cities most in demand for rental, it is no surprise that the largest cities top the ranking: Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, Montpellier, Toulouse, Nantes, Rennes, Lille… Paris and Lyon are the two cities that stand out the most, each accounting for 6.8% and 4.3% of rental requests, while the rest of the cities mentioned represent 1.4% of these requests each.

Since the health crisis, the French rental market has seen an increase in the list of the most sought-after departments: Rhône, Paris, Gironde, Bouches-du-Rhône, Hauts-de-Seine, Loire-Atlantique and the North are the departments most in demand and alone account for a third of demand. Behind this statistic, we must read a better distribution of the rental search on the territory, but also a stagnation or even a decline in the attraction of the Paris region.

The average budget of tenants looking for is €735. The profiles of tenants looking for accommodation are distributed relatively evenly between couples, young working people living alone, but also students who have represented a large proportion of tenants for several years (28% in 2021). Indeed, for several years we have observed a constant increase in the number of students to be housed because a large part of this population has to leave the family home to follow a university course.

Another phenomenon is linked to this density of students looking for accommodation to rent: rental tension is higher in so-called student towns. This ranking is clearly different from the ranking of the most attractive cities on the scale of the entire population. In this list, we naturally find the cities whose student dynamism is notorious such as Angers, Lyon, Rennes, Bordeaux, Nantes, Strasbourg.

Of the 3 million students in France, more than half are looking for rental accommodation each year. The choice of shared accommodation still remains a minority option but which continues to increase each year: this option is attractive economically because the rents are the same as for a single apartment but allow you to live in a much larger accommodation (a T3 or even sometimes a T4).

Did you know? Rental tension is the ratio between rental supply and demand in a city. We speak of rental tension when demand is greater than supply. It is low when there are more rental housing offers than requests.

The rental market is simplified with Studapart, which offers tenants looking for accommodation throughout France. Online booking platform, it is now possible to escape certain constraints such as the visit of the property in case of unavailability, the absence of a guarantor or even the commitment and secure payment. To try the experience, try studapart.com!