The French do not borrow more to buy, but they borrow for longer. For two years, to preserve their real estate project in the face of rising rates, the French extend the duration of their credit at unprecedented levels, while these have stabilized around 3% to 3.5% in recent months.
According to the Crédit Logement/CSA Observatory, the average loan duration is around 252 months, or more than 21 years. The organization emphasizes that it “continues for the longest periods ever observed”. A historically high level, revealing a market under pressure. With nearly 950,000 transactions expected in 2026the real estate market remains at a high level, a sign that activity is resilient despite degraded financing conditions.
Real estate credit has therefore not become more accessible again: it has been transformed. And this adjustment now involves almost exclusively the extension of durations.
A simple mechanism: buy time
With the rapid rise in rates since 2022, household borrowing capacity has clearly contracted. At constant income, buyers can finance a smaller surface area or must revise their project downwards.
To circumvent this effect, only one variable really remains activatable: duration. By spreading the reimbursement further, borrowers lower their monthly payments and respect the required debt ratio by banks, generally capped at 35% of income.
To get the files through, borrowers extend the duration, observes Meilleurtaux. A practice that has become almost systematic, especially for first-time buyers.
The shift towards 25 years
This use of long durations is part of an underlying trend. For over a decade, the duration of real estate loans is increasing. But the recent break is more marked: 25-year loans have become the norm.
They now represent the majority of financing, compared to a significantly lower share a few years ago, according to broker data. A shift which reflects less a choice than a constraint.
According to Youfinancer, almost all first-time buyers today use these long terms to complete their financing plan. Without this adjustment, a significant portion of projects would simply not see the light of day.
A lever that reaches its limits
But this strategy has its limits. Unlike other settings, the duration of a loan cannot be extended indefinitely. It is governed by the recommendations of the High Financial Stability Council, which sets a limit around 25 years in the vast majority of cases.
So this lever, long used to absorb the interest rate shock, is starting to run out of steam. As this room for maneuver is reduced, access to credit becomes more difficult for some households, forced to postpone or even abandon their project.
An invisible but very real cost
If extending the duration makes it possible to maintain a bearable monthly payment, the long-term impact is far from neutral.
Let’s take an example: for a loan of 250,000 euros at 3.5%, the monthly payment amounts to around 1,450 euros over 20 years, compared to almost 1,250 euros over 25 years. A gap which can be enough to send a file to the bank.
But this reduction has a price: over the total duration, the cost of interest increases from around 95,000 euros to more than 125,000 euros. That is almost 30,000 additional euros for the borrower. Over 25 years, the difference with a shorter credit can therefore represent several tens of thousands of euros.
An additional cost often relegated to the background, with households remaining primarily constrained by their ability to realize their project. More than a simple technical adjustment, the extension of durations thus acts as a revealer: that of a real estate market which remains under constraint, despite a recent stabilization of rates.
