Rental managers: the guarantors of the energy transition

Free tribune

A third of the private rental fleet is managed by property administrators who are responsible for it by mandate given by the landlords. The state must make this professional body an asset in the deployment of public policies and among all of the ecological transition, estimates Henry Buzy-Cazaux, president of the Institute of Management of Real Estate Services.

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The public authorities do not measure what is happening, and how much they do not master the success of the environmental conversion of rental housing, thermal colanders by priority. The energy transition from the residential park is their obsession and it is not wrong. We can criticize, and the real estate sector does not hesitate, the Oukases of the law and the method. Was it necessary to assimilate to the punishable indecency of renting a bad ranking in the scale of the diagnosis of energy performance? Should we impose this calendar? All this is questionable, but in no case the imperative need to fight against climate change, which brings direct damage to
Our buildings, their integrity and insurability, at least for insurance premiums for those who remain assurable.

On the other hand, decision -makers, within the State as local communities, lack lucidity on
The chances of success of this ambitious business. They pretend that in the end the environmental mutation was going to be done. They are not aware of having really taken only on a third of the private rental stock, by difference with the HLM park. Indeed, this second park is the property of a homogeneous body of social landlords, guided in their management by a structuring heritage approach, with technical teams at the technical level, experienced in financial engineering and having access to circuits privileged financing (the resource of the booklet A mainly). What is more, their public service mission makes it impossible to escape the application of public policies. They even have the reflex to be exemplary. Moreover, the social union for housing, which brings together all the HLM organizations, did not hide that its rental fleet of just under 6 million dwellings was on average better maintained and more ecologically efficient than the Private park of 6.5 million units.

It is important that the State and the communities rely on this fabric of professionals

A third of the private rental fleet is indeed comparable to the HLM park by the professionalization of its management, since they are administrators of goods who have the responsibility by the mandate given by the landlords. Still the comparison it ends there in more than one way. First, the dispersion of added value is obvious: some 10,000 firms everywhere in France engage in the activity of rental and rental management, supplemented by hundreds of real estate agencies which rent housing that They don’t manage. It is thus estimated that only a rental in two, on the 1.5 million which will be concluded in 2024, went through a professional agent, partly produced by the managers of said goods and partly by
Professionals only specialists in the act of renting. Thanks to these actors, the
Ecological performance of the private park are straightened and the resilience climate law of August 22, 2021 is not a dead letter.

It is important that the State and the communities are based on this fabric of professionals, and it is not the
case for the moment. Everything happens as if the entire private rental stock, the third party intermediated, or even the 15% more rented by real estate agents without its management being done by professionals, and two thirds self-managed by individuals had the Same chance of contributing to the energy transition. We are far from it! The messages of what is agreed to call the small owners are only cries of gold. Admittedly, associations advise them … but they struggle to train them and even succumb to Stockholm syndrome. It can be understood as the challenge is complex, with the need to see clearly in the work to be started, the companies to be mission and the financial tools to mobilize, out of the reach of many donors if they are not accompanied.

Managers, only ramparts against the risk of attrition of the rental park

If the property administrators deserve to be seen as trusted third parties, it is today, and it is now that the government must show them consideration. Without that, even they will abdicate. How to show them that their role is cardinal? In several ways. No budget guarantee, no, and the main thing is already done: their fees are deductible from property income and this tax neutralization is what the State can concede better. On the other hand, several gestures would be welcome. It is therefore important that their representatives are associated with the highest point with the construction of the economic and legal status of the owner investor, of which Minister Valérie Létard opens the site. Another subject: while the ALUR law of March 24, 2014 capped the rental fees and provided for an annual review clause to update them, never a government respected the law.

We are at the crossroads: managers are the only ramparts against the risk of attrition of the rental park by the sale of goods by exasperated donors. They alone offer unaccompanied housing that meets the requirements of the law of 2021, when individuals, very little controlled by the administration, will undoubtedly exempt too many decency obligations, especially in the tense markets. Professional managers will spare a market for transparent rentals when the risk of a gray market next to it is considerable, which will not safeguard the energy purchasing power of the French or their life of life.

The park rented by professionals has a superior quality

It is also the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that will be compromised, and the effective fight against climate change. More generally, the park rented by professionals has an upper average quality and the deductions on the deposit of the warranty give rise to repairs, whose headlines managing live are excessively frequently. Beyond that, managers carry out other cardinal missions, such as bringing to light domestic violence or sleep merchants-whether they are required to denounce or resist the danger of discrimination in rentals. Finally, the observance of the caption of rents where it is in force, even if it is to perfect, is resolutely on the side of professionals.

The state must make this professional body an asset in the deployment of public policies and among all of the ecological transition. Even if it means requiring them in return an orthodoxy of practices still increased.