In Paris, the housing crisis won't be solved by taxes: it requires a coherent economic strategy

To address the housing crisis, the new mayor of Paris has announced plans to nearly double the tax on vacant properties: from 17% to 30% after one year, and from 34% to 60% after two years. The stated objective is clear: to encourage owners to put tens of thousands of properties considered unoccupied back on the market, at the risk of exacerbating the crisis.

Because this measure is based on a flawed diagnosis. The problem in Paris is not actually just vacancy, but a largely insufficient production of new housing and a massive decline in private rental investment.

Blaming landlords for the crisis is a simplistic, even counterproductive, interpretation. Contrary to some caricatures, there is no economic logic in "keeping" a property empty for pleasure, like a treasure one might jealously hoard. Real estate is a costly asset: if it was acquired, it was in the vast majority of cases to be lived in or rented out.

Therefore, the real question is not: why are the properties vacant? But rather: why can't they be rented out anymore?

The situations are numerous: costly and lengthy energy compliance work to initiate in co-owned properties, properties used as secondary residences, regulatory uncertainties… So many complex realities to which a punitive tax does not respond at all.

Worse still: by massively increasing taxes on vacant properties, we risk increasing investor distrust and accelerating their withdrawal from the Parisian rental market. And let's not forget, private landlords provide nearly 60% of rental housing.

The housing crisis in Paris will not be resolved by artificially pitting landlords against tenants. It requires a clear-sighted, balanced, and incentive-based economic approach, founded on a simple objective: to create the conditions to attract private landlords back to the city.

This first requires reducing the constraints on landlords. Rent control, if not abolished, must be adjusted to better reflect the reality of properties, by taking their specific characteristics into account more fully, and by, for example, rewarding the most energy-efficient dwellings. A more precise modulation, at the building level, would also help avoid the detrimental effects of averages.

Next, investor confidence must be restored. And, since the Jeanbrun scheme does not appear to offer any benefit to landlords in the existing housing market as it stands, this implies clear local incentive measures: for example, a temporary tax exemption for new landlords, for two years in the existing housing market and three years in the new housing market.

Finally, it is urgent to revive construction. In September 2025, only 3.200 housing units were authorized in Paris, representing a 2,9% decrease over twelve months*. This is a dramatically insufficient level to meet the needs of a metropolis like ours. Paris must rediscover its ambition in terms of housing production: adding floors to existing buildings, developing green spaces, reclaiming brownfield sites… The solutions exist, provided we commit to them!

Doubling the tax on vacant housing may give the illusion of swift action. In reality, it's a simplistic response to a structural problem. And above all, it's a counterproductive measure that diverts attention from the real levers for exiting the crisis.

In Paris, the challenge is not to punish, but to rebuild.

* Data and Statistical Studies Department (SDES)

Opinion piece by Olivier Princivalle, president of FNAIM Greater Paris (LinkedIn).