Housing too small, out-of-the-way location, rent too high… A large majority of tenants make access to property their priority, but their criteria are confronted with the availability of the real estate market. According to an OpinionWay survey, commissioned by the real estate developer Altaréa, among the purchase criteria, the location of the desired accommodation is the most cited element, taking into account, among other things, proximity to shops, the workplace , transport, services, nature.
The layout and access to the outside are two criteria which divide the tenants interviewed. Having a balcony is considered a need for 50% of them, a terrace for 52% and a garden for 46%. But 46% would be ready to make concessions by accepting a shared garden or a small balcony. Single-parent families, 79%, consider a single room per child to be essential. We fall to 56% positive responses on this point for blended families.
In town or in the countryside
Motivated by a desire for “material and psychological security”, accession to property is reassuring. It represents the possibility of building up wealth, and of being able to pass it on to one's children, but it is also a way of being “protected in the event of an unforeseen event”, according to a study for which 2 502 French tenants were surveyed in November.
“When we ask the French “Ideally, where would you like to live?” France is completely split in two: 50% ideally want to live in the city and 50% in the countryside,” commented Gilles Finchelstein, housing expert from the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, during the congress of the National Real Estate Federation (FNAIM).
The individual house is popular
Between new or old housing, there too? “It’s 50/50: 46% of French people say they want to live in old buildings”, ideally. “The imagination of the individual house is extremely powerful” and is favored by “88% of French people: an individual house with not too many people around, quiet, with a garden, a doctor not far away. It’s the civilization of the cocoon,” concluded Gilles Finchelstein.
Faced with this observation, local elected officials face major challenges. “Today, we are not able to define the housing needs in our territory. On the one hand, we are told that the need is around 250,000; when we listen to housing stakeholders, we talk about figures between 350,000 and 520,000,” said Dominique Estrosi Sassone, Les Républicains MP, during a conference at the SIMI trade fair for real estate industry stakeholders. We must also define “what type of housing we must continue to produce, and we are not talking about luxury housing but rather housing that our fellow citizens can buy that meets their needs, their uses and their way of life”, she continued.
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