How are house prices changing in your area of France?
Notaire data shows strong growth in north but big cities such as Paris and Bordeaux see prices drop
Smaller and mid-size northern French cities saw housing prices increase the most between the first quarter of 2025 and 2026, while several larger cities saw prices fall across the year, new data from notaires reveals.
Steady growth was recorded across the year in many cities, particularly in the north, while Bordeaux, Lyon, and the Île-de-France area all saw prices drop.
However, large fluctuations such as those seen in the post-Covid slump are increasingly rare, with only three cities and Corsica seeing prices fluctuate by more than 7% across the year.
The information comes from the latest dataset from the Notaires de France.
It is the most comprehensive information on France’s property market and covers the sale of all existing homes (typically those five years or older and with at least one previous owner) across a given time period.
It is the most accurate data on house prices in France but due to the time it takes to compile the information, comes out around two trimesters after the period it covers.
The data below covers year-on-year changes between January 1, 2025 - March 31, 2025 and January 1, 2026 to March 31, 2026. This means it essentially covers the 2025 year.
The quarterly report also uses recent data to suggest upcoming patterns.
Unlike estate agencies that are warning of a new property market slump, Notaires de France instead sees a stabilising market that has seen growth slow in 2026 due to buyer caution, but not one on the brink of a collapse.
Changes “look more like a normalisation of activity than a reversal of the market direction,” it said, but highlight that “the market is suffering not so much from a lack of demand as from a lack of clarity regarding public policies and economic outlooks.”
Growth in northern cities
House prices across 2025 continued the trends seen in the previous notaire report (our article on the last set of data is available here), with steady growth across a number of areas.
Corsica remains a clear outlier, as it historically has been, with the north half of the island recording an increase of 18.3%, nearly 10% above any other city.
The other cities to see substantial increases in price, all located in the north and east, were:
Caen (Calvados), +9.6%
Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), +9.1%
Brest (Finistère), +8.6%
Metz (Moselle), +6.9%
Reims (Marne), +4.8%
Only a handful of cities saw prices decrease across the period, although a particularly sharp drop in Dijon (Côte d’Or) at -5.6% stands out.
Other drops include:
Poitiers (Vienne), -4.3%
Bordeaux (Gironde) -2.4%
Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), -2.3%
Nîmes (Gard), and Toulon (Var), -2.1%
Saint-Etienne (Loire), -1.5%
Most major cities saw relatively little change outside of Bordeaux.
This includes small drops in Lyon (Rhône, -0.4%) and Nantes (Loire-Atlantique, -0.3%), and increases in Marseille/Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône, +1.9%) and Toulouse (Haute-Garonne, +2.4%).
Cities such as Rennes and Nice are not included in this dataset, as there are relatively few houses in the area.
They are however covered in a corresponding dataset on flat prices, which we cover in our article here.
Paris is combined with the wider Île-de-France region, which saw a change of -0.4%.
The Mediterranean, Normandy and Brittany compared
Mediterranean cities remain the most expensive places to buy homes in mainland France, with Toulon recording the highest average price (€449,000), followed by Montpellier (€403,800) and Marseille/Aix-en-Provence (€390,200).
This was despite Toulon seeing a slight year-on-year drop in house prices of -2.1%, while Montpellier (+3.9%) and Marseille/Aix-en-Provence (+1.9%) both recorded modest increases.
In Normandy, Caen was the city with the biggest rise in house prices, at +9.6%. The city also had the highest prices in the region, at €274,000, followed by Le Havre (€210,600, +9.1%) and Rouen (€188,700, +3.6%).
Further along France’s northern coast, Brest saw house prices increase by +8.6% to €241,000, remaining a cheaper option than nearby Nantes, where prices fell marginally year on year, by -0.3%, to €310,000.
Little change to lowest-priced and most expensive areas
The relative stability of prices and general steady growth means that the cheapest and most expensive areas for house prices have not changed drastically in the last few months.
Many of the cities and areas previously ranked among the most expensive remain in the top five spots.
Generally, cities in the south remain more expensive than northern counterparts.
The most expensive areas in terms of average price were:
Corse-du-Sud, €484,900
Toulon (Var), €449,900
Montpellier (Hérault), €403,800
Marseille/Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), €390,200
Lyon (Rhône), €380,000
Grenoble (Isère), €351,400
In turn, the cheapest areas are:
Châteauroux (Indre), €125,000
Limoges (Haute-Vienne), €170,000
Amiens (Somme), €172,200
Troyes (Aube): €179,400
Poitiers (Vienne): €180,000
These are the exact same cheapest cities as in the previous dataset, just in a slightly different order.
Prices in other major cities include €323,000 in Bordeaux (Gironde), €303,000 in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), and €310,000 in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique).
A map of the full data can be seen below.
