France House Price Index: Quarterly Existing-Home Prices Since 1996 (Notaires-INSEE)

The France house price index tracks the price of existing (second-hand) dwellings across France, quarterly, from the first quarter of 1996 onward. It is the Notaires-INSEE index — the official French repeat-sales-adjusted measure built from notarial deed databases and published by INSEE, and the reference used by the Banque de France, the IGEDD and the European Systemic Risk Board. This Eco3min dataset chains INSEE’s 2010 and 2015 index bases into a single continuous series rebased to 100 = 2015 average, covering 121 quarters through 2026 Q1.

Dataset: France Existing Home Price Index (1996–2026) · Updated 2026-01-01

Source: INSEE · Notaires-INSEE existing dwelling price indices, seasonally adjusted, base 100 = 2015

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV, Excel and JSON files contain the following columns.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full France house price index series is available in CSV and Excel formats.

Direct Data Access

The upstream index is published by INSEE in its time-series database (BDM) and is not available as a single chained CSV. The Eco3min structured dataset returns the continuous 1996–2026 series:

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/fr/fr-house-price-index.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool. JSON and XLSX are available at the same path with the corresponding extension.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/fr/fr-house-price-index.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df["house_price_index"].describe())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/fr/fr-house-price-index.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$house_price_index)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

The series is rebuilt by an Eco3min pipeline that pulls the Notaires-INSEE indices from INSEE’s BDM time-series database on a daily schedule. INSEE publishes the index quarterly, roughly two to three months after the end of the reference quarter, once notarial deeds have been registered and the hedonic model re-estimated. The seasonally adjusted, all-dwelling-types, France-excluding-Mayotte variant is used.

One processing step deserves stating explicitly, because it is the reason a continuous 1996–2026 series exists here and not upstream. INSEE republishes its indices under a new dataset at each rebasing, and each base covers only part of the history: the 2010 base runs from 1996 Q1 to 2018 Q1, the 2015 base from 2010 Q1 to the present. The Eco3min pipeline chains the two on their 33-quarter overlap using the mean ratio between them, then rebases the result to 100 = 2015 annual average. The chaining factor is recomputed at every run rather than frozen, so an upstream revision to either base propagates through the whole series.

Historical Regimes

• 1996–2000 — Post-correction floor. The index bottomed at 40.90 in 1997 Q1, the lowest reading in the series, closing the correction that followed the 1990–1991 Paris bubble. It had recovered only to 47.70 by 2000 Q1. Mortgage rates were still above 6% and lending volumes thin.
• 2000–2008 — The credit expansion. The index rose from 47.70 to 104.23 by 2008 Q2, a 118.5% gain in eight years. The full move from the 1996 Q1 starting point was 151.9%. Loan maturities lengthened from roughly 15 to close to 20 years and rates fell below 4%, mechanically expanding borrowing capacity.
• 2008–2009 — The only outright decline. The index fell 9.0% between 2008 Q2 and 2009 Q2, the sharpest year-over-year drop in the series. Transaction volumes collapsed faster than prices, the standard signature of a market where sellers withdraw rather than cut.
• 2009–2011 — The unfinished correction. Prices recovered 13.2% to 107.33 by 2011 Q3 as the ECB cut and French banks resumed lending. Unlike the United States, France never cleared its 2008 excess — a divergence visible against the US real house price index.
• 2011–2015 — Sideways drift. A slow 6.7% decline to 100.13 by 2015 Q1, spread over fourteen quarters. No forced-selling episode, no rate shock — simply a market where affordability had run ahead of income.
• 2015–2022 — The zero-rate ascent. From 100.13 to the series high of 133.77 in 2022 Q4, a 33.6% rise. Mortgage rates fell close to 1%, and the price gain tracked the increase in borrowing capacity almost one for one.
• 2022–2026 — Nominal resilience, real correction. The index fell to 125.86 by 2024 Q4 and has since recovered to 127.36, leaving it 4.8% below its peak. In inflation-adjusted terms the drawdown is 12.2% from the 2022 Q1 real peak — the gap between the two figures is the entire story of this cycle.

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Sources

• INSEE — Notaires-INSEE existing dwelling price indices (IPLA), all dwelling types, France excluding Mayotte, seasonally adjusted. Retrieved from the INSEE BDM time-series database.
• Underlying transaction data: French notarial deed databases, processed by INSEE under its hedonic index methodology.
• Reuse: INSEE public statistics may be reused, including commercially, subject to acknowledgement of the source and preservation of the integrity of the information.

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). France Existing Home Price Index — Notaires-INSEE (1996–2026). Source: INSEE.<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/france-house-price-index-dataset/