Housing crisis: existing park is underutilized

A collective of 26 participants in the real estate sector calls in the tribune Le Monde for the facilitation of residential mobility, which today is hampered by fiscal, urban planning and technical rules. Published yesterday at 07:00 AM Reading time 4 min.

It's always good to be reminded

that the construction industry is responsible for almost half of energy consumption and a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in France. If the process of "greening" activities is already underway, with honest commitments and remarkable projects with real impact, there are still too many marketing speeches that reveal the resistance of the old world of real estate. It seems to us that this transformation is too slow and, most importantly, it''fails to address an important issue: the changing lifestyles and frustrated ambitions of those living in these dwellings in the face of a growing social crisis. Addressing this issue can help to drive the necessary savings in real estate.

The IPSOS survey for RTE

shows that 30% of households, i.e. nine million households representing almost 20 million people, plan to move to smaller dwellings to save money (this is the main argument mentioned by 50% of those surveyed) or to simplify the maintenance of a too large dwelling (Regimes of production, economy and energy efficiency: state of behavior and attitudes of the French, June 2023).

Residential mobility to change housing according to''change in everyone's life, is a basic expectation. However, that expectation is blocked today. Too many households find themselves prisoners, trapped in a system that, thanks to years of low interest rates and lots of government bailouts, has driven up real estate prices. While real estate wealth has only increased for many, access to property for the least well-off French people has been severely reduced and the rental market has also suffered. Residential mobility is now hampered by the decline of the new construction market, weakened by rising interest rates and exploding material costs. Amid predictions of an era of forced real estate austerity for the young and less well-off in'In the 'next decade, there is a moment to rethink the model! First of all, we need to realize that the existing housing stock is actually poorly occupied.

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