Why France stopped building: rates, costs or land?

In 2024, 259,600 dwellings were started in France, according to the Sitadel database of the housing ministry as disseminated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). It is the lowest level since the series began in 2000, and almost half the 2006 peak (493,800). The year 2025 marks only a stabilisation, at 263,000.

The most widespread explanation fits in one word: rates. Mortgage credit became expensive in 2022-2023, households stopped buying, developers stopped building. This page checks the chronology — and it does not fit entirely.

From 2000 to 2019, France started on average 391,825 dwellings a year, with a peak of 493,800 in 2006 and a low of 336,800 in 2014. The last high point is 433,900 in 2017, in a context of historically cheap credit (1.60%).

Then the series falls in two stages. First −14.8% between 2017 and 2020, while the mortgage rate keeps falling to 1.26% and existing-home prices rise. Then, after a rebound to 414,200 in 2021, a fall of −37.3% between 2021 and 2024 — 296,300 in 2023, 259,600 in 2024 — this time while the mortgage rate goes from 1.15% to 3.39%.

The first decline, 2017-2020, happened without rising rates: it coincides with the end of tax schemes supporting rental investment and first-time buying, rising land prices and the entry into force of more demanding building standards. The 2020 health crisis adds a one-off halt to building sites. None of these causes is measured by a series served here; the chronology merely makes them compatible.

The second decline, 2022-2024, is the one rising rates explain best: credit triples in three years, solvent demand contracts, existing-home prices fall by −4.7% between 2022 and 2024, and new-build — more expensive — sells all the less. The easing of the rate in 2025 (3.02%) comes with a stabilisation of starts, not a rebound.

The mortgage rate acts on private demand. The Livret A rate acts on the other half of construction: social landlords borrow from the savings fund at a rate indexed on the Livret A. When that rate, as it applies at the start of the year, goes from 0.50% in 2021 to 2.00% in 2023 and 3.00% in 2024, the cost of social-housing debt rises accordingly, and operations become harder to balance. The rate in force since 1 August 2026, 1.70%, loosens that constraint compared with 2023-2024.

Prices play both ways. A rising existing-home price (+27.4% between 2017 and 2022) in principle supports new-build, by making it relatively cheaper; but land that appreciates at the same pace absorbs developers' margins. The series on this page do not allow these two effects to be separated.

Two crises echo each other. In 2008-2009, housing starts lose −29.3% in two years with the financial crisis, while the mortgage rate (5.01% in 2008) then falls quickly; recovery is immediate from 2010. In 2022-2024, the fall is deeper and longer, and credit does not become cheap again: recovery is slow to come.

The 2023 rise in the Livret A rate, decided to protect savings from inflation, had the side effect of making social-housing finance dearer just as private construction was already falling: both engines stalled together.

In 2025, 263,000 dwellings were started, while the average mortgage rate eased to 3.02% after 3.39% in 2024: the improvement in financing conditions did not revive construction. It has not lasted: the rate on new mortgage loans is rising again, from 2.99% in December 2025 to 3.18% in July 2026. The Livret A, which sets the cost of funding for social housing, has been 1.70% since 1 August 2026.