The Minister of Cities and Housing Vincent Jeanbrun launched a charter of rules of ethics, training and representation of the profession of real estate diagnosticians, often accused of fraud.
Faced with recurring criticism aimed at the profession and persistent mistrust around the energy performance diagnosis (DPE)THE Minister of Housing Vincent Jeanbrun intends to regain control and launch a national charter intended to strengthen the reliability of real estate diagnosticianswhile seeking to restore an image that has been largely damaged in recent years.
On the occasion of the Conference of the profession organized by his ministry, the executive displayed a clear desire: “stop diagnostic-bashing” and undertake in-depth work to “change the image of real estate diagnosticians“, in a context where the DPE has established itself as a central tool in the housing market, both for sales and rental, but also as a pillar of the State’s energy renovation objectives.
A charter to be built with the profession
The precise contours of this future charter remain to be defined and must be “co-constructed” in the coming weeks with professionals in the sector, who will also be involved in the reflection on the management tools to be put in place in order to further secure practices and limit abuses.
Among the avenues mentioned are the creation of an order of diagnosticians or the establishment of a professional card, two devices which would aim to structure the profession and better supervise practices in the field.
Asked by AFP about the reliability of the DPEVincent Jeanbrun believes that the answer must above all come from the professionals themselves, emphasizing that they “want to make the DPE more reliable, to fight against fraud, to fight against bad apples who are an extreme minority“, in a sector where the vast majority of players claim to seriously exercise their profession.
A tool that has become central but weakened by successive reforms
For his part, the DPE has gradually established itself as an essential instrument in the French real estate market while constituting a major lever in the national strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But successive reforms have contributed to weakening its readability, as underlines Renaissance MP Annaïg Le Meur, who mentions “continuous changess” having generated a feeling of loss of confidence and increasing complexity, even though the tool remains essential in the energy transition policy.
Latest development to date: the government’s desire to revise downwards the electricity conversion coefficient used in the calculation of the DPEwithin the broader framework of the country’s electrification plan. This coefficient, already increased from 2.3 to 1.9 on January 1, could be lowered to 1.7 – the minimum threshold provided for at European level – or even go down to 1 if France manages to change the regulatory framework.
A development which would have significant mechanical effects on the energy classification of housingthe first adjustment having already enabled nearly 895,000 goods to be move out of the “thermal strainer” categoryand a further drop to 1.7 which could exclude around 382,000 additional people, according to a study by the start-up KRNO.
For Vincent Jeanbrun, this orientation is part of an assumed political strategy aimed at supporting the electrification of uses, while reminding that these developments “are not the fault of either the diagnosticians or the DPE”. A reading that does not share the Real Estate Diagnostic Alliance, which denounces a decision perceived as purely political and contrary to the recommendations of a technical building committee, according to its vice-president Samir Zanoun, thus reviving tensions around a tool that has become as strategic as it is controversial. © Magnific
