Montpellier Facing the Financialization of Real Estate

In Montpellier, as in many large French cities, a contradiction is obvious:
offices continue to be built while housing is sorely lacking.
Behind this apparent incoherence lies a profound transformation of the city: the shift from housing as a fundamental right to housing as a financial asset.

Understanding this dynamic is essential to grasping what is really at stake in the 2026 municipal elections.

An Attractive Metropolis… for Capital

Montpellier is regularly presented as a "dynamic", "attractive", and "growing" city. This attractiveness is reflected in particular by sustained activity in the office market.

In 2024, more than 115,000 m² of office space were marketed in the metropolis, placing Montpellier among the most active regional tertiary markets (BNP Paribas Real Estate). Districts like Cambacérès, around the Sud de France station, concentrate emblematic projects combining offices, shops, and services (La Tribune).

This production is not solely dictated by local employment needs. It also responds to a well-known logic:
commercial real estate is an attractive financial product, bought, sold, or rented for its profitability.

At the Same Time, a Structural Housing Shortage

While office space is multiplying, the housing situation is deteriorating.

In Montpellier:

• nearly 75% of residents are eligible for social housing,
• but the production of new housing is in freefall: about 2,100 homes built in 2023, far from the initial targets of more than 5,000 per year (Le Point).

The tension on the rental market is such that the Metropolis had to launch a 100 million euro emergency housing plan, implicitly acknowledging the failure of the current model.

This situation is not accidental. It results from political and economic choices where land is primarily thought of as a source of financial value, and not as a support for the right to housing.

Developers, Property Companies, and Investors: Who Makes the City?

In Montpellier, the making of the city relies largely on private actors:

• local developers like FDI Promotion or M&A Promotion, very present in the territory (FDI);
• national groups linked to major construction and real estate players, like Sogeprom / Vinci Immobilier (Vinci Immobilier).

These actors do not just build:
they choose the uses, arbitrate between offices and housing, set price levels, and lastingly influence urban morphology.

In a context of land scarcity, affordable housing often becomes less profitable than:

• offices,
• investment residences,
• or housing intended for solvent audiences.

The city then becomes an investment vehicle, much more than a living space.

Housing as a Financial Asset

Nationally, this logic is widely documented. As Le Monde points out, the financialization of real estate leads to producing surfaces (especially offices) disconnected from real social needs, while allowing the housing crisis to persist (Le Monde).

Housing becomes:

• an investment,
• a tax exemption product,
• an asset to be valued.

This paradigm shift has a direct consequence: living becomes a privilege conditioned on solvency, and not a guaranteed right.

Other Models Exist: Taking Land Out of the Market

Faced with this logic, alternatives exist — including in Montpellier.

Dissociating Land and Buildings: The Real Solidarity Lease

The Real Solidarity Lease (Bail Réel Solidaire - BRS) allows separating the ownership of the land from that of the housing. The land is held by a non-profit Land Solidarity Organization (OFS), which prevents speculation and keeps housing affordable over time (BRS – Wikipédia).

Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole has established a local OFS, associating public actors and social landlords (Montpellier.fr).

Housing Commons: Inspired by Elinor Ostrom

Political scientist Elinor Ostrom showed that there is a third way between the market and the State:
that of the commons, resources managed collectively by the users themselves (OpenEdition).

Applied to housing, this results in:

• Community Land Trusts (CLT), where land is held in trust for a community (Community Land Trust);
• residents' cooperatives or participatory housing, where the goal is to live together rather than maximize market value (Habitat participatif).

These models treat housing as a good for use, not as a speculative asset.

A Central Issue of the 2026 Municipal Elections

The question is therefore not only technical or urbanistic. It is profoundly political.

In the 2026 municipal elections, a question runs through all debates:

should the city be governed for investors or for its inhabitants?

Choosing to produce offices rather than housing,
letting land follow market logics,
or on the contrary strengthening tools for pooling land,
these are clear political choices.

Voting in the municipal elections is also deciding whether Montpellier remains a financial product or becomes a place to live again.