Intermediate housing has found its target audience: young people with "upper-middle" incomes

The tenants "are mainly employees at the beginning of their professional career, rather upwardly mobile, with decent and more than decent salary levels", explains Hélène Joinet, urban planner at IPR.

Within the 21.000 intermediate rental housing units (LLI) in the Île-de-France region, single people represent 36,5% of the inhabitants and couples without children 27%.

More than half of the tenants are under 35 years old (57%), compared to barely 40% in social housing.

Households in the intermediate housing sector earn on average 3.875 euros per month, 27% more than tenants who have recently moved into a property in the private sector (2.228 euros) and 48% more than those who have recently moved into social housing (1.914 euros).

A tenant in intermediate housing living alone earns on average 2.827 euros per month, according to these partial data, established on 4.000 housing units and excluding Paris, where there are few intermediate housing units.

This group of young people in employment corresponds to the target of this housing offer, subsidized by the State, and which is often associated with companies looking for housing solutions to provide to their employees.

Intermediate rental housing "allows households with average incomes to find accommodation with an acceptable level of effort; it is a different public than the social housing sector, with income levels higher than the occupants of the social housing sector," continues Hélène Joinet.

The housing cost burden, which is the share of income spent on housing, averages 21% for households in the intermediate housing stock, while it reaches an average of 25,6% in the rental housing stock.

The study, co-written with Philippe Pauquet, statistician at the Paris Region Institute, also notes that the establishment of LLI depends on real estate market prices: "Territories where purchase prices for operations are too high are often excluded because the economic viability of intermediate operations is constrained by the application of capped rents."

Thus, more than a quarter of the intermediate housing built is located in Seine-Saint-Denis and 60% in the inner suburbs.

Created in 2014, intermediate rental housing (LLI) is capped by the State between 15% and 20% below private rental market prices.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.