French housing markets after the subprime crisis: from exuberance to resilience

The main topic addressed in this paper is the special attributes of the French system as regards both the house price upsurge in the precrisis decade and the resilience of the housing system since 2007. Why was the housing market so buoyant before 2007, and why did it stabilize so rapidly after 2008? Apart from the nature of the credit system, which is of course of great importance—especially with respect to resilience—answering this question leads to questions concerning recent trends in tenure, urban structures, income distribution and housing policies. A number of similarities can be observed with Nordic countries, especially with Sweden, which can explain why those countries were exuberant without generating the kind of fragility observed in Anglo-Saxon, southern or eastern European countries.