Rental real estate: to invest, prefer these 10 medium-sized cities to large metropolises

Medium-sized towns, the new Eldorado of real estate investment? With much more affordable prices and unregulated rents, they have many advantages compared to metropolises.

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“A real estate investment in a large metropolis, like Paris or Lyon, is a safe bet, we will never lose money”we hear regularly. Certainly, but at what cost! Even if the prices of old real estate have fallen by 12% in France over the last two years, due to the surge in credit rates, they still comfortably exceed the 9,000 and 4,000 euros per square meterin Paris and Lyon, respectively.

However, one of the first conditions for making a profitable rental investment is not to overpay for the property. The real estate investment platform Maslow.immo therefore advises today to look towards medium-sized towns with less than 100,000 inhabitants, some of which are not far from the compromise “perfect between affordable prices and sustained rental demand».

Do not invest in a medium-sized city that is too small

Let’s take the example of Lyon again. The average purchase price of an apartment in the capital of Gaul currently stands at 4,614 euros per square meter, according to MeilleursAgents. “In Lyon, prices are not only high but the city is also subject torent control and almost half of the housing stock is rated very poorly on the energy performance diagnosis»which will force you to carry out energy renovation work due to the ban on renting thermal strainers, lists with Capital Pierre-Emmanuel Jus, deputy director of Maslow.immo. The triple penalty for a real estate investor.

Barely 30 minutes from downtown Lyon, the landscape is much more favorable for a rental investment. The town of Saint-Priest has an average price per square meter of 2,895 euros. “In Saint-Priest, I buy at least 1,000 euros cheaper than in Lyon an apartment that I rent for 50 to 80 euros less than in Lyon, it’s worth it!”assures Pierre-Emmanuel Jus. Especially since Saint-Priest has other assets than its moderate prices, starting with its nearly 50,000 inhabitants. “We must not invest in a medium-sized town that is too small because we must think about resale»explains the manager. On average, 1 to 3% of a city’s housing stock is sold each year. To be sure of finding a buyer when you resell your property, “you need a market with 500 to 1,500 sales per year, no less”he specifies. Another interest of Saint-Priest, and not the least, is that rents are not regulated there, unlike in Lyon.

Saint-Herblain at the top of medium-sized towns in which to invest

The city must also be attractive to tenants, which requires good transport connection to the nearest major cityLyon in our case, to benefit from its employment area, its cultural activities and other amenities. Conditions met by Saint-Priest, served by the tramway. But also by Saint-Herblain, a stone’s throw from Nantes, which tops the ranking of the ten best medium-sized towns in which to invest established by Maslow.immo, just ahead of Saint-Priest, followed by Bègles, less than 10 kilometers from Bordeaux.

A ranking which is also based on annual population growth greater than the national average of 0.3%, a proportion of vacant housing lower than the French average of 8.8%, a location in a tense area, where the demand for housing is much higher than the supply, and an employment concentration index greater than 100, a sign of a sufficient number of jobs offered compared to the active population.