It is a peaceful, green and upscale suburb to the west of Paris. In La Celle-Saint-Cloud, on the edge of Bougival (Yvelines), thirty-five minutes from Saint-Lazare station, houses with flowered enclosures are lined up. Behind the well-trimmed hedges, an unsuspected real estate construction activity breaks the calm of this residential area. Here, many building permit signs are displayed on the gates and buildings are growing at the end of the gardens. “200 meters around the station, we have just seen around ten projects. In a wealthy and stylish city, we therefore see that gentle densification was accepted by the neighborhood when it was done correctly”estimates the president of the French Federation of Individual House Builders, Damien Hereng.
In recent years, La Celle-Saint-Cloud has favored Bimby, the acronym of “Build in my Back Yard” (“build in my garden”), a practice which amounts to dividing one’s land and selling part of it for the construction of new housing. “Soft”, horizontal densification, as opposed to the vertical construction of tall buildings.
The owners are not on top of each other, but next to each other, and the financial windfall of selling a piece of land at a very high price allows them to agree to tighten up a little. Although plot divisions have existed for a long time, the surge in land prices over the past fifteen years makes these opportunities much more interesting. “What you didn’t do for 50,000 euros, when it’s worth 250,000 euros, you think differently”continues Mr. Hereng.
Ahead
When the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, announced last February that he wanted to rehabilitate the pavilion by encouraging gentle densification to create housing, the builders responded that the practice was already widespread in many municipalities. Hexaôm, the French number one in the construction of individual houses, carries out 60% of its construction through plot division.
La Celle-Saint-Cloud is one of the towns which have taken a head start in this area. Its town planning regulations have until now offered considerable flexibility to those who wish to divide their plot. “It is possible to build on the property line, that is to say against the fence. This sends the message to the contractor that building on a small plot is not necessarily a problemdeciphers Damien Hereng. The adjoining commune of Louveciennes, on the other hand, made the opposite choice: the local town planning plan sets rules for separation to be respected, it is a limiting factor. »
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