Faced with the housing crisis, Nathalie Appéré, the socialist mayor of Rennes, thinks she has found the right response. “This housing crisis is a social bomb. The market is not enough to respond, she said on the air of France Bleu Armorique. We need to regulate and make proposals that make housing affordable again. With the real solidarity lease, it is the promise of creating affordable housing. » What is the Real Solidarity Lease (BRS)? Still little known, it is a powerful weapon for lowering the price of new housing for low-income and middle-class households. It has attracted the mayors of large cities such as Rennes, Nantes and Paris, where major BRS housing construction programs have been launched.
As the weight of housing continues to increase in household budgets – at 26%, by far the largest item of expenditure – and as access to property becomes more and more difficult, this system is attracting a lot of attention. of hopes.
How does it work? The BRS dissociates the price of housing from that of the land on which it is built. Concretely, the owner only buys the property, with a traditional real estate loan and rents the land to a solidarity land organization (OFS) for a rent of between 1 and 3 euros per m² per month. “This rent makes it possible to repay the land purchased by the OFS over a period of eighty years, thanks to a loan from the Caisse des Dépôts”, explains Cécile Hagmann, general director of La Coop Foncière Francilienne. In addition, the BRS allows you to benefit from VAT at 5.5% instead of 20%. “By combining the reduced VAT and the land portage, the saving compared to the “normal” price is around 30%”, underlines Norbert Fanchon, chairman of the board of directors of the Gambetta Group.
Even more in tense areas, where the cost of land weighs the most in the price of housing: “Compared to free market prices, the discount for housing sold in BRS was on average 42% in 2023, ranging from 35% in Ile-de-France to 49% in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region or in Brittany”, calculates Tristan Ruiz, director of the social landlord and OFS market at Adabilité.
Launched in 2017, the system took time to gain momentum. But with 2,272 sales last year, it showed an increase of 71%, while over the same period sales of classic goods fell by 27%. In Ile-de-France, more than 2,000 housing units are available.
In return for this attractive price, accommodation in BRS is reserved for income-tested buyers, who must establish their main residence there. And the capital gain on resale is regulated, with the housing being resold at the purchase price revalued according to a fairly complex index. “This system is not always well understood by future buyers,” tempers Sylvain Massonneau, president of Tradimaisons. Like many professionals, he considers that this BRS is far from being THE solution to solving the housing crisis. But for modest and middle-class French people, it can provide a real breath of fresh air.
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