French Second-Hand Home Prices Fell 1.0% in Q2 2026, Led Down by Houses

INSEE data published on 8 September 2026 show French second-hand home prices down 1.0% in the second quarter and 0.8% over a year, with houses falling fastest.

Prices of second-hand homes in France fell in the second quarter of 2026, with a seasonally adjusted quarterly change of -1.0% after -0.2% in the first quarter. Over 12 months prices are down 0.8%. The Notaires-INSEE index, published on 8 September 2026 as Informations rapides no. 216, shows the decline concentrated in one segment: houses lost 1.3% over the year, while flats were effectively unchanged at -0.1%.

Paris is the exception, not the rule

Ile-de-France held up better than the rest of the country, slipping 0.6% over the quarter, with flats down 0.5% and houses down 0.7%. On an annual view the region is down just 0.3%, and that figure hides a split: houses in the region fell 1.5% over the year while flats gained 0.3%. Paris itself is the only line in the release that is clearly positive, with flat prices up 0.6% year on year.

Outside the capital region the picture is weaker on every measure. Provincial prices fell 1.2% in the quarter, a clear acceleration from the 0.4% decline recorded in the first quarter, and are down 1.0% over 12 months, with houses at -1.3% and flats at -0.3%. The pattern is consistent with a market where the cheaper, larger, further-out property is adjusting first.

Volumes stopped recovering rather than fell

Transaction counts tell a flatter story than prices. Some 958,000 existing homes changed hands in the 12 months to the end of June 2026, against 953,000 three months earlier and 952,000 at the end of 2025. That is stabilisation, not a rebound: annual sales now represent about 2.5% of the housing stock, well below the 3.3% peak reached in the third quarter of 2021.

One detail deserves flagging for anyone tracking the series. INSEE revised its first-quarter reading, lowering the quarterly change by 0.4 percentage points, so the current run of declines is deeper than the previously published figures implied. The next quarterly release is scheduled for 24 November 2026.

Where this leaves France on our own numbers

The Glopra snapshot for France, dated 7 September 2026, carries a national average of $3,419 per square metre and a gross rental yield of 4.83%. Our stored annual price change of 0.1% is the Eurostat reading for the first quarter of 2026, so the INSEE release does not contradict it: it is a later reference quarter on a national transaction basis, and it is the more current of the two.

For a cross-border buyer the two numbers that move the arithmetic most are neither of those. Round-trip transaction costs in France come to about 9.1% of the purchase price, among the higher levels in Western Europe, and rental income earned by a non-resident carries an effective tax of roughly 27.5% on our standardised case. Against a gross yield below 5%, a market that is drifting sideways to slightly lower leaves very little room for those two lines to be treated as an afterthought.

Sources: INSEE https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9040119

Market data: France