Rental: how many square meters can you rent for 700 euros per month? The city by city response

The average rent paid in France is 723 euros per month, charges included, according to LocService. An amount that allows you to afford areas that vary greatly from one city to another.

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Among your good resolutions for the year 2025 is perhaps that of to relocate in more spacious accommodation. But to what area can you claim for 723 euros per month including charges, an amount which corresponds to the average rent paid in France, according to LocService? For this price, you will be able to rent 54 square meters in Rouen, that is to say a apartment of two or three rooms, indicates this specialist in rental between individuals, on the basis of some 150,000 rental offers and requests recorded on its site last year. In Lille and Nantes, on the other hand, you will only be able to rent 43 to 44 square meters. An area which falls to 25 square meters in Bordeaux and…15 square metersor a studio, in Paris.

It must be said that the average rent in the capital amounts to almost 40 euros per square metercompared to an average of 17.03 euros for the whole of France. Despite therent control in force in Paris since 2019, these increased by 4.15% in 2024, compared to 2023. “While its attractiveness had dropped after the health crisis”when the French fantasized about a house with a garden, “the renewed interest in the capital is confirmed”observes LocService, with Paris topping the list of most searched cities on the rental site in 2024.

Rents rising almost everywhere

The fact remains that the rise in rents “is observed both in the provinces and in Ile-de-France, the average rent per square meter having increased by 3.3% across the entire territory last year, i.e. more than inflation»which emerged in December at 1.3% over 12 months, underlines LocService. For example, rents jumped by 7.25% in the very student city of Rennes last year, and by 6.24% in Orléans, which has the advantage, for telecommuting workers, of being located only 1h15 from Paris by train. Lyon is not to be outdone, with an average rent per square meter increasing by more than 5% last year, while, as in Paris, rents are controlled there.

Ivan Thiébault, head of studies at LocService, sees this increase in rents in France as “the cumulative effects of difficulties accessing creditbans on renting thermal strainers and, now, the end of Pinel. After quadrupling between the start of 2022 and the end of 2023, mortgage rates have certainly been falling continuously for a year but they remain above 3%. Still not having the financial means to buy property, many tenants therefore do not vacate their accommodation.

An increase in rents that is likely to last

The rental stock is also reduced by the ban on renting thermal strainers G+ since January 1, 2023, a ban which also applies to housing rated G on energy performance diagnostics (DPE) since January 1, 2025. This situation is not likely to improve with the removal, as of December 31, of the Pinel rental investment scheme, which offered an income tax reduction in return for the commitment to rent new accommodation at a moderate rent for a certain number of years. This means that the rise in rents in France is “a trend that is likely to continue»warns Ivan Thiébault.