The political conditions of the rise of real-estate developers in French housing policies

Julie Pollard

Environment and Planning C, 2023, vol. 41, issue 2, 274-291

Abstract: Over the last two decades, real estate developers have become key players in the housing sector in France. This evolution has several dimensions: developers’ share of the housing construction market has increased, their geographical areas of intervention have expanded and their weight in social housing construction has soared. Since privatization and financialization are not adequate frameworks to account for the rise of these actors in the French housing context, other explanations are here explored. This article shows that the rise of real estate developers is mostly the result of changes led by national and local governments to gain capacity for action in a constrained budgetary context. More precisely, it investigates two policy instruments that have favored the developers’ expansion. First, tax expenditures for rental investment and, second, VEFA-HLM – a regulatory tool enabling the construction of social housing by real estate developers. Both instruments seek to enroll real estate developers in implementation, while political actors try to maintain control over decisions, and more broadly over the main orientations of housing policies. This article thus contributes to analyzing how, i.e. by which instruments, public actors can foster the rise of private economic actors in the development of urban policies.

Keywords: Real-estate developers; housing policies; France; social housing; tax expenditures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:41:y:2023:i:2:p:274-291

DOI: 10.1177/23996544221129125

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