#REAL ESTATE
Between 2015 and 2025, French house prices rose 27.3% and consumer prices 24.4%. Rents actually paid rose 9.7%. Buy-to-let is sold as inflation protection; over this decade, the rent did not keep up.
Published on September 4, 2026 · to be rechecked on July 1, 2027
Two separate official series, same decade, same country. Eurostat's house price index moves from 100 to 127.26 between the 2015 and 2025 annual averages, up 27.3%. The index of rents actually paid, item CP041 of the harmonised consumer price index, moves from 100 to 109.72, up 9.7%. Over the same period the overall consumer price index rises 24.4%. Mechanically, the gross rental yield on the same property falls 13.8% in relative terms: for every euro invested, the rent brings in 0.862 times what it brought in ten years earlier. In constant euros, the rent collected has lost 11.8% of its purchasing power.
Do rents track inflation?
In France over 2015-2025, no: rents paid rose 9.7% against 24.4% inflation and 27.3% for house prices. The gross rental yield fell 13.8% in relative terms.
In other words: buy-to-let protected the capital, but not the income.
Six caveats that belong with the number
- The legal rent reference index, which caps lease revisions, rose 17.1% between Q2 2015 and Q2 2025 (125.25 to 146.68) — nearly double the rents actually collected. The gap measures what landlords do not, or cannot, index.
- Part of the decade sits under a legal cap: the rent shield has limited the reference index to a 3.5% change since Q4 2022.
- The house price index is national: it adds up markets that did not move together. Paris fell over the period while other regions rose sharply.
- These are gross yields. Charges, vacancy, works, tax and purchase costs are not deducted: the real net yield is lower still.
- A falling rental yield is not a loss for the owner: the price rise is banked as an unrealised capital gain. The two legs only offset if the property is sold.
- Both indices come from the same statistical system (Insee, reported to Eurostat). This is not a cross-check by two independent measures, but a reproducible calculation on two distinct official series.
Why it still matters: an asset can protect the value of the capital without protecting the income it produces — those are not the same figures, nor the same years.
For you
- When buy-to-let is sold to you as inflation protection, is the claim about the price of the property or about the rent?
- Over the past ten years, has your rent been revised by the full legal maximum every year?
Sources: Eurostat, house price index (prc_hpi_a, France, total, annual average index 2015 = 100: 127.26 in 2025); Eurostat, harmonised index of consumer prices (prc_hicp_aind, France, item CP041 actual rentals for housing: 109.72 in 2025; item CP00 overall: 124.43 in 2025); Insee, rent reference index, BDM series 001515333.
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