Rents will be regulated in Grenoble from this decline of a part of the territory, an experiment that will last until 2026. Rent control sets a maximum rent (in euros per m²) which cannot exceed 20% of a reference rent decided by prefectural decree. During a press conference, the private rental observatory of the Clameur rental market questions the territorial network on which the delimitation of the regulated and unregulated areas of the city is based. “The highest rents are found in the so-called cheapest and therefore unregulated area», declares Arnaud Simon, director of Clameur’s scientific committee. In the area where rents are considered higher, and have therefore been subsequently regulated, some rents would be expensive but others would be lower.
According to the network of the local rent observatory of Grenoble there are three zones of rent levels. A first zone at 12.1 euros per square meter, a second zone at 11.8 and a third at 10.7. According to Clameur, a large part of the city would be above the threshold of €12.10/m². The white zone or third zone (see map), the one where prices per square meter would be 10.7 euros is considered less expensive than the two areas to the north and is therefore not regulated. However, in the white part, in the neighborhoods of Eaux Claires-Painlevé and Teisseire, rents would be higher than 10.7 euros per square meter, according to Clameur. They would prefer to be around 16 euros per square meter. As many as 82% of IRIS (blocks grouped for statistical information, these neighborhoods used by INSEE for its statistics) have a rent higher than the average value of the respective area across all three zones, Clamor says. Reading the metropolis would therefore underestimate market returns.
«The rental map of the metropolis of Grenoble, which serves as the basis for the administration, is false. There is a wolf. The white zone (editor’s note: unsupervised zone) will become an Eldorado. There are other areas that will be infested», denounces the president of Clameur, Jean-Michel Camizon. Before asking yourself: “Is it a political will to indicate lower rents per square meter to regulate deliberately lower rents?» Regulating only part of a geographic area leads to higher rents in neighboring unregulated areas, Clameur says.
Could the data from the Urban Planning Agency of the Grenoble Region (AURG) be incorrect? Or are they based not on the amount of rent at any given time but on changes in rent from one year to the next? When contacted, AURG did not respond to our requests.