In a bill tabled in the National Assembly, MP Stéphane Viry points out the vacant housing stock that is preventing the revitalisation of rural areas. He suggests setting up a simplified expropriation procedure to allow municipalities to put these properties back on the real estate market.
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– “Rural elected officials need simple solutions to put vacant properties back on the market that their owners do not want to sell,” says Stéphane Viry.
The famous post-Covid urban exodus is probably more myth than reality. The fact remains that every year, families want to settle in rural areas but give up. unable to find a house or apartment in the town centre. “However, these villages often have buildings empty of any occupants”observes MP Stéphane Viry (Vosges, Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories). “The abandonment of these buildings limits the possibility of welcoming new homes, rural elected officials need simple solutions to put back on the market these properties that their owners do not wish to sell”believes the parliamentarian.
He therefore submitted a bill to the National Assembly on 17 September aimed at “allowing municipalities to carry out simplified expropriations of vacant housing in order to put them back on the real estate market”. The current system requires municipalities to carry out a declaration of public utilityon the basis of a public consultation, to carry out an expropriation. A process “disproportionate from a practical and financial point of view”judges Stéphane Viry.
Real estate: map of vacant housing in France, by department
Resale or rehabilitation of housing
If his bill were adopted, each municipal council could expropriate the owner of a vacant dwelling if it was not put up for sale within a period ofone year after the start of the vacancy. Stéphane Viry’s text also authorises municipal councils to expropriate the owners of degraded and unused properties, not previously used for housing, but which have the potential to be transformed into housing. Finally, the bill allows municipal councils to expropriate the owners of properties subject to a danger arrest.
It is then up to the municipalities, in these different scenarios, to resell the goods in a maximum period of three months. Or to rehabilitate them at their own expense in order to create rental housing. With what money, for a village? “The municipalities will benefit from a pre-financing funds set up by the State, which they will reimburse within one year after signing the first lease”explains Stéphane Viry. His bill still needs to be examined and then adopted. All the same, if you have been putting off renovating the village house you inherited from your grandmother for years, you have been warned.
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