The viager market

The market for viager property is growing strongly, driven by several deep changes in our society.

France, like every European country, is seeing its population age. There are more older people and they live longer, which is a remarkable social and medical achievement. But longer life expectancy also brings new financial questions: maintaining a standard of living in retirement, paying for loss of independence, adapting the home, and protecting purchasing power against inflation.

Many retired people hold substantial property wealth but monthly income that is sometimes too small to fund their plans or to anticipate the costs of old age. By way of illustration, 70 % of older people own the home they live in, while their median income remains below €1,400 a month. Today’s retirees also want to make the most of this period of life: 44 % want to help those close to them and 52 % want to travel — even though 86 % of them fear running short of money.

In France, a large share of older people own their main residence. Yet that property wealth is often "locked up": they own something of significant value without necessarily having the cash to enjoy their retirement.

Selling in viager answers this concretely, by letting older owners turn part of the value of their property into immediate and regular income, while keeping — in an occupied viager — a right of use and occupancy or a usufruct, on the terms set out in the deed. According to an AFNOR survey, more than one retired person in two would like to be better informed about the modern forms of the viager, and 80 % of older people say they need more information about it.

Faced with volatile financial markets and falling returns on life-assurance savings, investors are turning increasingly to tangible investments that mean something. They want to diversify into property assets that work differently from traditional investment.

Investing in a viager has several features that appeal to buyers:

• it rests on a real asset: property;
• it allows an acquisition within a long-term estate strategy;
• in an occupied viager, the buyer generally has no day-to-day letting management during the period of occupancy;
• it answers a responsible-investment approach, creating a balanced economic exchange between a seller unlocking their wealth and a buyer building theirs.

Unlike a conventional buy-to-let, buying an occupied viager can avoid some of the burdens of running a let property: finding tenants, arrears, turnover between tenancies, everyday administration.

The viager has therefore become a genuine alternative estate solution, for investors looking for meaning, visibility and a different approach to property.