Anger is growing crescendo in the real estate sector. Some would even be tempted to join the revolt launched by the farmers in mid-January… In any case, this is what Pascal Boulanger, president of the Federation of Real Estate Developers (FPI) said this Wednesday, February 13 during a press briefing at the International Market for Real Estate Professionals (Mipim), the sector’s leading global trade fair.
Anger boosted by recent announcements from the government, forced to cut the 2024 budget by 10 billion euros. Caught up in this real budgetary headache, Bercy did not spare the Ministry of Housing, which therefore found itself cut by some 300 million euros. Enough to sign the death warrant of a certain number of construction support systems.
Plunged into an unprecedented crisis for more than ten years, the sector is asking questions. For the president of Medef, Patrick Martin, budgetary decisions simply amount to “making bad savings”.
A late government
The day before, the new Minister of Housing Guillaume Kasbarian arrived at Mipim with a bouquet of ten measures supposed to stem the housing supply crisis. Among which are several avenues for simplification with the promise of stimulating construction. In addition to appearing in the eyes of real estate professionals as insufficient, this plan presents another problem, and not the least: the minister is, according to Pascal Boulanger, more than a year late: “The measures taken […] largely on supply. However, since November 2022, our biggest problem is demand.”
Already at the beginning of January, the same had sounded the alarm for the first time in the columns of L’Express: “With the rise in interest rates and the criteria […] we arrive at a situation where an enormous need and non-existent demand coexist. In this context, what is the point of having supply? The real challenge, more than urgent, is to find households who want to buy and who will be financed.” And Pascal Boulanger sums up: “The diagnosis is bad, so the treatment will not cure the disease.”
Medef increases pressure on Bercy
In addition, the announcement of the elimination of the Pinel tax loophole has still not gone through and has remained stuck in the throats of many real estate players. Even more, his disappearance appears to them as almost incomprehensible. Firstly, it risks causing a shortfall in VAT twice as high for the State. Secondly, “investor demand has already collapsed”, reason why “it was absolutely not the time” to make such a decision, argued Pascal Boulanger to L’Express.
More generally, Patrick Martin criticizes the Ministry of the Economy for having “a too exclusively budgetary and fairly truncated reading of the situation”. The boss of the employers’ organization fears in particular a cascade of job destruction. And to translate, in case Bruno Le Maire did not understand the message: “So many fewer contributors and so many more compensations.”