ECONOMY. After Century 21 in September and before the Owner's Agency in January, the real estate agency Square habitat will definitively lower the curtain on December 31. If Crédit Agricole Immobilier advances a new strategy, employees feel betrayed by the group.
Sense of timing. Two months after a regional team building, during which their management's speech was resolutely optimistic, the employees of Square Habitat, rue de la Commune-de-Paris, learned, on November 14, that their agency was going to close permanently on December 31 2024. With a hand-delivered letter with the subject “summons to prior interview with a view to possible dismissal for economic reasons”.
“They talk to us about values, solidarity…”
“The possibility”, gentle euphemism. The employees received confirmation on Thursday, November 28, that they would have to find a way out by December 16. “It’s very sudden, we didn’t expect it,” comments the majority of the team we met. If the economic context is complicated, the multidisciplinarity of the agency (transaction, trustee, rental management, etc.) did not suggest such an outcome. According to the employees, the activity is there, there is a lot of work. Except that Square habitat – the SBR company – is attached to Crédit Agricole Immobilier Bourgogne Champagne, which has decided to close the Bragarde agency. “I spent 25 years at Crédit Agricole, first in banking then in real estate. We are told about a large group, about values, about solidarity, when it is lies, lies. We don't close because things aren't going well, we close because it's the group that decides so,” complains an employee.
Contacted, the president of the regional CAI, Sébastien Reyes, confirms that there is activity. “It's not that it doesn't work, it's a strategy of the group to integrate the real estate activity into a bank agency. » Unlike Patrice Battistini, director of the Bragarde agency, who believes “to have reached the end of everything that we have put in place since I took this position (in May 2020). We did everything we could to try to keep the activity going. The real estate situation is catastrophic everywhere and the micro-economic context is unfavorable, all sectors are impacted, I understand the decision.”
Sébastien Reyes explains that “the group is continuing its development by integrating real estate into banking in several cities; putting the real estate transaction activity in the bank agency is best suited, this will be the case in Saint-Dizier.” The person concerned dodges the seven layoffs and speaks of a “job creation”, that of a real estate agent in charge of transaction activity in the bank. He mentions the possibility of reclassification around a hundred positions to be filled throughout France, in banks or real estate agencies, in different structures attached to the group. Mobility, even “by the sea”, will not be enough to alleviate the bitterness of the bragarde team, as a couple, as a family, with the activity of a spouse at the same time. The closest track offered, Troyes, is almost an hour and a half away. “And then, we start from scratch, redoing our CV, cover letter, etc. », adds a young employee.
If “each situation will have a position offer”, assures Sébastien Reyes, employees do not seem inclined to continue within a group which has disappointed them. Especially since they also feel betrayed by their director, who “did not fight for us or with us. The little Saint-Dizier team, we don't care. In Dijon or Troyes, we would never have let that happen. »
N. F.
The owner's agency, change of activity
Rue des Moulins, the owner's agency will also close its doors in mid-January. A closure which is not cyclical for its manager Romain Moreau, who is changing activities: the young entrepreneur will open Arcadia, a games space with around thirty arcade terminals, “in February or March”, rue Gambetta, in place of Beauty Success. His agency will turn into a law firm.
