French News Archive

Property Market

Rural House and Land Prices in France

Tuesday 04 May 2021

The French rural land agency SAFER have opened up their rural property price register to the public.

As regular readers will be aware, SAFER are an important body in the French rural property market, with a power of pre-emption over the sale of most rural property, both land and houses.

Anyone buying or selling is obliged to give them two months to decide if they wish to pre-empt. There are few ways to get around their pre-emption rights, although we do provide some ways that are possible in our article SAFER Right of Pre-emption.

As a result, they are informed of the sale price of the properties by notaires and over the years have become an important source of information on the market.

They have now decided to provide improved access to their database of information, which can be found on-line at Prix de Terres. The information currently on the website is for the year 2019.

Unfortunately, those seeking a treasure trove of information on house prices at a communal level will be disappointed, as the price information is a single average figure for each department for the year, and the movement in price from the previous year. It will, therefore, only be of value to those who are new to the French property market, who seek a view of the general level of prices across the country.

The information provided for land and vineyard sales is more detailed, with prices below departmental level, within designated zones. There is also information on the number of sales over the past 5 years. Although prices at a communal level are not available, you can drill down to obtain the number of sales.

For those seeking more detailed information, since 2019 it has been possible for members of the public to obtain access to French land registry records, which we covered in our article Access to French Property Sale Prices.

As we point out in the article, that also has some limitations, but it makes for a good read.

Related Reading:

For the latest in-depth analysis, subscribe to our news service at France Insider.

France Insider is a subscription-based offer which has replaced our previous free Newsletter.

Thank you for showing an interest in our News section.

Our News section is no longer active. If you found our previous Newsletters useful, please have a look at our authoritative Guides to France.