The Court of Auditors criticizes the lack of effectiveness of the fight against vacant housing

In 2022, 3,1 million homes were vacant in France, including one million for at least two years, most of them located outside areas with tight housing supply.

The structural vacancy of housing for more than two years has multiple causes, linked to the characteristics of the housing, as well as to the choices and situations of the owners, notes the Court of Auditors, which therefore deduces that "the tax tool alone cannot respond to the challenges of combating vacancy which differ depending on the territory".

The Court notes that taxes on vacant housing, collected by the State and local authorities, exploded between 2017 and 2024, rising from 116 to 378 million euros.

"However, the effective increase in this tax has in no way curbed the phenomenon of structural vacancy," the Sages of Rue Cambon examine, suggesting "rethinking these levers and in particular their articulation with the housing tax on secondary residences (THRS)."

In addition, the government launched a "national plan to combat vacant housing" in 2020, in response to an increase in structural vacancy since 2005, but it is limited to "a tool to raise awareness and support local authorities in identifying vacant housing" without any "regulatory or budgetary" measures.

"Local authorities have several mechanisms in place to support landlords and encourage them to put their properties back on the rental market," but there is a lack of impact indicators.

The two recommendations in the report also concern the evaluation of systems implemented within the framework of the national plan.

For example, rental intermediation, which consists of entrusting the management of a property to a third party who takes care of renting it with social criteria while guaranteeing the payment of rent to the owner, would have "made it possible to remobilize 40.000 homes between 2017 and 2022".

The Court of Auditors calls for "distinguishing between the issues specific to tense and relaxed areas" in policies to combat vacancy and believes that "it is mainly the local authorities (...) that will be able to act most effectively."

What role do multi-owners play in housing vacancy?

Multi-home owners are increasingly accumulating more homes, which is one of the many factors contributing to the difficulty of accessing affordable housing, according to a researcher, although the link with the increase in the number of vacant homes has not been proven.

"In Paris, 60% of the private sector is owned by people who own at least five properties. They have plenty of homes and millions of euros in assets, so they don't care about rents," accuses Jacques Baudrier, PCF deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing.

On the homeowner side, the Paris City Hall's figure of 20% vacant housing is refuted. Sylvain Grataloup, president of the National Union of Property Owners (UNPI), asserts, based on feedback from his members, that "very few homeowners leave their homes vacant, or they leave them vacant for renovations."

Direct links between timeshares, increased vacancy rates and a reduction in the number of primary residences are difficult to establish, according to researcher Laure Casanova Enault, due to a lack of specific studies on the subject.

However, she explained to AFP that since the early 2000s there has been "a dynamic of housing accumulation through a variety of uses, whether second homes, rentals, or inherited properties", while at the same time the number of owner-occupiers has stabilized.

This increase in the number of multi-owners, who "have purchasing power", leaves "less room for home ownership, for other categories of households, particularly young people and those on the lowest incomes who have declined among owner-occupiers", explains the lecturer in geography and planning at the University of Avignon.

According to the INSEE, the 9,6 million multiple owners, who represent a third of owners, will account for two-thirds of private housing in France in 2022.

Of these 19,1 million homes owned by at least one multi-owner, 2,1 million are vacant, or 68% of the 3,1 million vacant homes in France in 2022. The vacancy rate is higher in rural areas.

"It's inexpensive to store real estate" and "it's a low-risk investment, even if it's not always the most profitable," explains Laure Casanova Enault, also coordinator of a research program on timeshare.

She analyses that "some multi-owners will be less interested in the rental yield rate than in the potential capital gain they can make on resale of their properties or in the capitalization linked to the ownership of a property." This is a factor that may therefore encourage them to leave a property vacant while waiting for property prices to rise.

Among people over the age of 25 who own two homes, 14,8% have at least one vacant home. This proportion rises to 53,7% among owners of 5 to 9 homes and to 82,7% among those who own more than 10 homes.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.