Rental: cities where demand for housing is highest and supply lowest

The number of rental candidates has soared in recent years in large cities, as they suffer from a shortage of rental accommodation. Here are the cities where the situation is critical.

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A real obstacle course. For two years and the start of the housing crisis, rental candidates have had a hard time finding an apartment in big cities. The cause is a plummeting supply of available properties, due in particular to the surge in mortgage rates between the start of 2022 and the end of 2023, which has greatly complicated access to property for first-time buyers. “Blocked in their purchase project, many tenants found themselves forced to remain so, not allowing turnover, thus preventing the stock of properties for rent from being replenished.», Explains Alexandra Verlhiac, economist at the real estate advertisement portal SeLoger.

This phenomenon creates an imbalance between supply and demand and causes a shortage of rental properties, particularly in metropolitan areas. Here are the cities where the supply of properties available for rental has been in free fall for two years, and those where demand is at its highest.

Rental supply is collapsing

Nationally, the supply of properties for rent stabilizes at a very low level in October 2024 according to Se Loger. Over the last two years, the fall has been spectacular with a decline in the stock of housing available for rental of -31.9%. However, the situation is heterogeneous within the ten largest cities in France. In Nice, Strasbourg, Toulouse and even Montpellier, the rental supply collapsed for two consecutive years, from October 2022 to October 2024. Conversely, the situation is improving slightly in Bordeaux , Marseille and Nantes, the only three cities in the TOP 10 which have seen their number of properties for rent increase slightly over the last two years.

The situation is also critical in terms of demand with a spectacular increase of +45% in the number of rental candidates between October 2022 and October 2024 nationally. The only good news in this gloomy context is that the rental market is relaxing slightly in recent months, with the number of candidates falling year-on-year in October 2024, in several large cities. This is particularly the case in Lyon (-10.6% of requests over one year), Bordeaux (+-14.1%), Nantes (-11.6%) and Nice (-10.9%). This improvement is explained in particular by the decline in mortgage rates since the start of 2024, which facilitates access to property for households, and therefore turnover in the rental housing stock. But the market remains particularly tense in Marseille, Montpellier, Strasbourg, and even Toulouse. In these four cities, the number of candidates has continued to increase since October 2023.

Unsurprisingly, the very low level of supply properties to rent, combined with demand which remains very high despite its recent inflection, mechanically leads to an increase in rents. In October 2024, the level of rents increased by +4% over one year nationally according to Se Loger, an increase now well above inflation, assessed by INSEE at +1.1% over one year. year in September 2024. In the ten largest cities in the country, the surge in rents even reaches on average +4.7% over one year in October 2024, an increase of two points compared to October 2023.