We had become accustomed to the State being wiser than those involved in real estate and housing. We ended up thinking that without the control and moderation of public authorities the sector would drift and would no longer play its role with the necessary equity and efficiency. Today it is the opposite that is observed: entrepreneurs and associations demonstrate an astonishing spirit of responsibility and commitment, which we must see in the field to measure how much the subsidiary carries the hope of a revival of real estate. How much also, more than ever, it is united, from the development and production professions to those of services, real estate agents, property managers, notaries or even expert surveyors… and bankers, while corporate interests could prevail in such a difficult period and crack the front. Even the identity bickering is silent.
Solidarity for higher purposes, for innovateFor lower prices and make housing affordableFor win the environmental transition. An illustration of a territory that we talk too little about, Auvergne, a discreet land and a land of conviction: the local FNAIM Chamber held its annual general meeting near Clermont-Ferrand, in Royat, and no profession in the sector was missing. Not a single speech of despondency, and an impetus without weakness to redress the housing situation, in a territory as sick as the others of the lack of rental supply and a dangerous slowdown in transactions, even though lenders are there more than elsewhere in history, to finance the accession, investment and renovation of co-ownership buildings. No complaints, but an expectation: that the parliament and the government are mature enough so that in the end France’s budget is voted oncomprising the few favorable housing provisions. The sector is the weapon at hand.
Special law? Prescriptions? “This is where our public decision-makers will have to show responsibility”
What measures? Those that the National Assembly imagined, before the Senate voted on them in their most powerful form, without the numerous alterations made by amendments without logic and most often ideological. An even better zero-interest loan compared to that of the previous budget, which is extended to buyers of real joint leases and with increased reference prices -they have not been seen for ten years-, a depreciation (voted on Sunday) of purchases of new and old rental housing at correct rates -3.5% for the first and 3% for the second, with increases of 1% or even 2% in the case of social or very social rents in new buildings and 0.5% or 1% in old buildings, and a allocation envelope for land deficit deficits on overall income doubled compared to what it is – i.e. €21,400 tomorrow -, a exemption from gift tax up to €100,000 extended to the purchase of existing housingA shortening of the holding period of assets for exemption from capital gains tax on sale, the exclusion of rental housing from the real estate wealth tax (provision voted on November 29 by the High Assembly) and a sufficient envelope for MaPrimeRénov.
It will remain that these provisions, if they are indeed all voted on by the Senate, will have to survive two stages, the passage in a joint committee, with seven deputies and seven senators who agree on the measures not having been voted on in the same terms between the two Chambers, then the final reading by the deputies, who have the last word. Perhaps even, in the event of rejection by the National Assembly, the government will have to release joker of the special law or ordinances. This is whereour public decision-makers will have to demonstrate responsibility. If they did not do so, the French would not forgive them and the sanction would be unprecedented at the ballot box, with abstention constituting the most violent protest. We need a surge of conscience among our elected officials and our ministers.
Housing: Towards “a recovery plan which could well be one of the most powerful designed in a long time”?
Finally, innovation must be encouragedand civil texts, not budgetary, must release energies. In this regard, Vincent Jeanbrun, Minister of Cities and Housing, speaks gold when he mentions a special law inspired by that which was promulgated to accelerate the construction of the Olympic Village in Saint-Denis or promises a boost of simplification, or even considers that it is necessary to relax the energy renovation schedule for rental housing threatened with a rental ban. We also hear that the government would be open to obtaining from the High Financial Stability Council that it adjust its criteria for granting real estate loans, in particular so that future rents are taken into account in the calculation of investors’ solvency. He would also be willing to work at a better balance of rental relationsby reopening the file for the revision of recoverable charges – frozen by a decree of… 1987! – and by providing better security for owners against unpaid rent.
We can clearly see that housing is the most consensual subject, or the least divisive if we want to be more moderate, and that it may give rise to a recovery plan which could well be one of the most powerful designed in a long time. This a vital result for social peace and for the tax revenues of a bloodless country depends on one thing: the newfound wisdom of our political elites. Undoubtedly, the chaos that France is experiencing must prompt it to wonder how women and men to whom the reins of a country are entrusted can take on such a sense of the nation’s best interests… One reason: the end of the accumulation of mandates and the arrival in office, parliament and government – which recruits its members most often from the Assembly and the Senate – of women and men above ground, too far from reality. Reversing the ban on a national mandate and a local mandate is for France a question of life or death of politics and the country, especially for housing, which accommodates pragmatism better than metaphysics.
