Decree of extension of building permits: depoliticizing the production of housing

Free tribune

Just published, the decree extending the duration of the recently issued building permits decorbs them from the policy, one year from the municipal elections. The Minister of Housing was unable to take the country for the risk of gradual extinction of construction due to local political calculations, “explains Henry Buzy-Cazaux, founding president of the Institute of Real Estate Services.

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The Minister of Housing, Valérie Létard, had announced it during her visit to the Mipim in Cannes: she would extend the duration of all the building permits issued recently, to allow the promoters paralyzed by the crisis to restart their activity without delay as soon as the circumstances are more favorable. The promised decree has just been published, published in the Official Journal of May 26, 2025. In practice, it gives the urban planning authorizations obtained between May 28, 2022 and May 28, 2024 a validity of 5 years, instead of 3. As for the permits obtained between January 1, 2021 and May 27, 2021, they benefit from the right of more validity. This text seems to have only a technical scope, relating to the situation of private or public promoters -HLM organizations are of course also concerned. It actually goes much further.

The dimension that can be described as technique is present. Since 2021, the real estate market situation has deteriorated. The weakening of demand, then very quickly its brutal contraction under the effect of the inflation of interest rates and the general withdrawal of the purchasing power of households, the increase in the price of materials, the erosion of public aids created the conditions for a slow extinction of the production activity of new buildings. Added to an internal and geopolitical political instability which upset the spirits and private the French of any visibility in short and medium terms. Promotion companies have suffered as never in the history of the profession, with dismissals in large numbers and mortality of the order of a third of active companies.

Embarrassment spared to promoters

This context has obviously led professionals not to launch new programs and even return to launch decisions, by caution, some that their production would not meet sufficient solvent demand. It will also be recalled that a promoter can only obtain funding from a bank if he attests to a level of pre -produce required by the lender most often of 50% or even 60% of the operation … This mechanism, for brutal as it is, protects promoters from excessive optimism and keeps them of economic imperia, that the enthusiasm attached to a project would be forgotten.

Maitirized inflation, the long credits rates of new digestests for part of the population, a relative domestic political balance, of course, but for all that good to take, finally a state support plan which gives hope -in the expectation of a tax system likely to support rental investment -, the situation has changed and the promoters … which crossed the turmoil by keeping some forces are in a situation of relaunching operations. The decree dispenses them to reduce a building permit application because theirs is no longer valid. We only measure when we are at the heart of
The profession what hassle represents the only warming of an authorization already obtained. Many hazards affect the new request, which can be subject to appeal procedures as if no similar project had existed before. The town hall or state services are entitled to express additional requirements. Until the local urban plan that could be changed on the margins. All these embarrassments are spared the promoters by this simple decree and we will be grateful to the Minister, in the interest of the French and the residential offer.

Building authorizations decorrelated from politics

Above all, this legal gesture does what had never existed: it decrees the authorizations to build politics. Yes … The country is campaigning for the municipal elections, officially from September 1. In fact, candidates are already revealing themselves and entering. Traditionally, at least a year before the deadline, the mayors in place raise the pen on building permits, so as not to frighten their electorate, sensitive to the upheavals of urban balances. The promoters fear even more than in previous elections this reluctance, while the country is kneaded by political fears and that the candidates for their re -election will have to reassure more than ever.

Admittedly, one can legitimately think that for this edition of the Muncipals, the mayors who have brought in housing will have a bonus in relation to the Malthusians, but nothing is less certain … The Minister, by taking this decree today, unleashes the building permits of the political approach, necessarily political, of municipal elected officials. It takes a moral weight to them in passing, and undoubtedly saves thousands of dwellings that would not have seen the light of day before a long time. He is not
There is no question of deduction that urban planning authorizations must be removed from mayors, to definitively abstract them from politics. It’s just at the best time, when the country lacks a seat and reason, imposing a certain calm, a lull.

Impossible to run the risk of extinction of construction

On the other hand, this choice of method, authoritarian when we linger, of course justified by the urgency of the housing situation and incidentally of the production apparatus (nearly 200 jobs are destroyed per day in the building!), Could foreshadow a recovery in the state when the mayors make obstruction or have too many moods towards their electorate. In short, the principle of subsidiarity would governing town planning authorizations: everything that can be treated at the local level should not go beyond, the reciprocal being true when a building permit is not issued for bad reasons or without reasons.

The future mayors would also have to look at things in front of it: their inhabitants, everywhere in France, have a painful relationship to housing and them, they are waiting for them to promote strong responses, respecting the environmental transition -it does not soften to gain realism. This decree is a sign that in the territories everything does not happen in a fluid way and that the minister could not make the country run the risk of a progressive extinction of construction due to local political calculations, as understandable as they are.