Housing crisis: Are multi-owners responsible for the number of vacant homes?

"In Paris, 60% of the private sector is owned by people who own at least five properties. They have plenty of homes, millions of euros in assets, so they don't care about rents," accuses Jacques Baudrier, PCF deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing.

On the homeowner side, the Paris City Hall's figure of 20% vacant housing is refuted. Sylvain Grataloup, president of the National Union of Property Owners (UNPI), asserts, based on feedback from his members, that "very few homeowners leave their homes vacant, or they leave them vacant for renovations."

Connections are difficult to establish

Direct links between timeshares, increased vacancy rates and a reduction in the number of primary residences are difficult to establish, according to Laure Casanova Enault, due to the lack of specific studies on the subject.

However, she explains that since the beginning of the 2000s there has been "a dynamic of accumulation of housing through a diversity of uses, whether second homes, rentals, inherited properties", while at the same time the number of owner-occupiers has stabilized.

This increase in the number of multi-owners, who "have purchasing power", leaves "less room for home ownership, for other categories of households, particularly young people and those on the lowest incomes who have declined among owner-occupiers", explains Laure Casanova Enault, lecturer in geography and planning at the University of Avignon.

9.6 million multi-owners in France

According to INSEE, the 9.6 million multiple-owners, who represent a third of owners, account for two-thirds of private housing in France in 2022. Of these 19.1 million homes owned by at least one multiple-owner, 2.1 million are vacant, representing 68% of the 3.1 million vacant homes in France in 2022.

The vacancy rate is higher in rural areas. "It's inexpensive to store real estate," and "it's a low-risk investment, even if it's not always the most profitable," explains Laure Casanova Enault, who also coordinates a research program on timeshare.

She analyses that "some multi-owners will be less interested in the rental yield rate than in the potential capital gain they can make on resale of their properties or in the capitalization linked to the ownership of a property." This is a factor that may therefore encourage them to leave a property vacant while waiting for property prices to rise.