The State wants to better manage its real estate assets of 73 billion euros with a real estate company

Prime Minister François Bayrou announced on Tuesday, during the presentation of his budget guidelines for 2026, the creation of a state-owned real estate company, in order to "manage and make useful" "unproductive assets."

The State "must take care of its heritage, renovate it, manage it well, understand it well, sometimes sell it, sometimes buy it, build it, and also enhance its value," the Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, reminded us on Wednesday.

But "we see that we can do much, much better," she said after the cabinet meeting.

The state occupies 96,7 million square meters, 2% of which it owns. The rest are local authority buildings or leased to private individuals, Alain Resplandy-Bernard, director of state real estate, told AFP.

Nearly 24% of this space is office space, 21% is educational, and 19% is residential. But the state also owns historical monuments, military camps, prisons, and barracks.

In government offices, a workstation has an average surface area of 25,2 m2, while a 2023 circular recommends 16 m2 per person. "The stock is under-populated," confirms Alain Resplandy-Bernard, who uses "lower ratios among our foreign counterparts, such as 9 m2 per employee in Canada or 14 m2 in Denmark" as a comparison.

In addition, there are "real estate assets from which more income can be generated," by subletting part of the property or finding additional income, such as solar panels on a roof, according to the state's director of real estate.

In Montpellier, the State has "reorganized the entire real estate footprint of the General Directorate of Public Finances, and the more than seven different locations (in this city) will now be reorganized into two sites (...) adapted to needs," cited the Minister of Public Accounts as an example.

Separate owner and occupant

The idea of a state-owned land company had already made its way into political circles, and four deputies from the central bloc (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons) submitted, before François Bayrou's announcements, a bill to create a state-owned land company, with the aim of separating the state as owner from the occupying state.

They argue that by "fully exercising the responsibilities of an owner over a portfolio of real estate assets", this property company will ensure more efficient management of the assets.

Currently, it is the State Real Estate Directorate (DIE), and its armed wing, the State Real Estate Management Agency (Agile), which "manages, modernizes and enhances" the 195.745 buildings and more than 31.000 plots of land belonging to the State.

But the actual management of this heritage "is extremely fragmented between all the ministries and operators, there are real estate expenditures in 47 different budget programs," asserts Alain Resplandy-Bernard.

So much so that knowledge of this real estate stock presents gaps, especially regarding "the condition of the buildings and occupancy rates," he reports.

In December 2023, the Court of Auditors estimated in a report that "the DIE has little authority vis-à-vis the occupying ministries to assert the interests of the State-owner."

She added that the current organization of state heritage management "explains the lack of maintenance of buildings, which de facto favors major emblematic projects, as well as the delays in bringing them up to standard and rationalizing surface areas."

MP François Jolivet (Horizons), who is one of the sponsors of the text to create a real estate company, and his colleague Kévin Mauvieux (RN) stressed in a report published in 2024 that "the DIE is confined to a role of consultative expertise" and in a "position of functional facilitator rather than that of a decision-maker".

"Total real estate spending is around €10 billion" per year, including taxes, rents, insurance, etc., according to Alain Resplandy-Bernard. But he adds that "the cost of decarbonizing and adapting the real estate stock would be €140 billion by 2050," a "colossal sum" that raises "the imperative to reduce the size of the stock to invest in preserved assets."