Real estate is a resourceful sector. That was the motto of this week's Simi trade show. Real estate is going to need resources.
Financial resources, first and foremost, to get through the interest-rate shock that has shaken the whole edifice built by investors in recent years, whether cautiously or boldly. Clearly, the market is already making a distinction between those in debt and those who are not. The first victims are falling, including historic names such as Réside études, which was placed under safeguard procedure this month.
Financial resources will be needed, all the more so as the industry has to overcome another hurdle, that of decarbonization. It's no longer a question of performance or value; it's now a question of asset liquidity, i.e. survival. And if the bill has yet to be quantified (or quantifiable), it will certainly be a hefty one.
All the more so as, to implement it, we'll need another resource - human capital. One of the real estate industry's main concerns is to retain talent and attract new talent in the face of what promises to be a long and deep crisis.
But real estate is also a resource. And not just a fiscal one, as Bercy sees it.
More than ever, commercial real estate (or rather, real estate for businesses) is a key tool for supporting the drive to reindustrialize France, which is being pursued at the highest level of government. As such, it deserves to be facilitated rather than drowned in a straitjacket of sometimes contradictory normative injunctions. Similarly, it cannot be a local adjustment variable, and should be a national cause in the name of the social contract that should unite rather than divide us.
And housing is at the heart of this social contract. The government's apathy has not only shocked professionals in the housing sector. It offends both economic forces and the common sense of households. Above all, real estate in its broadest sense remains a reassuring savings vehicle for the French.
These aspects have been somewhat overlooked by the French government in recent years, which has been all too quick to dismiss the sector as a rent-seeking business.
Fortunately, real estate players have another resource. This time, it's mental. This is what they did their utmost to demonstrate at a particularly lively Simi. We'll see who's still got it when 2024 rolls around.