Social landlords · Housing and tertiary buildings

An estate where two regulations are not talking about the same buildings

A social housing landlord runs dwellings and tertiary buildings at once — head office, local branches, activity units, ground-floor retail. The two sets fall under different statutes, different deadlines and different data. This page separates them, cites the articles, and only then says what Softee can measure in each case.

For estate, development and energy teams inside a French social housing organisation. Statutes re-read on Légifrance on 20 August 2026.

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Two obligations, two perimeters

This is the distinction to settle before anything else, because it decides which data you need, on which buildings, and by when. A social housing estate usually shows the same three traits: it is multi-site, mixed in age and in performance, and monitored under budget pressure. Neither obligation below is handled well without per-building consumption data.

  • The dwellings you let fall under the minimum performance level of a logement décent — article 6 of the law of 6 July 1989, as rewritten by the Climat et Résilience act.
  • Your tertiary buildings — head office, branches, activity units — fall, above a floor-area threshold, under the Éco Énergie Tertiaire scheme and its annual declaration on OPERAT.

What the decency calendar actually says

Article 6 of law no. 89-462 of 6 July 1989, in the version in force since 1 January 2025, reads:

“Le niveau de performance d’un logement décent est compris, au sens de l’article L. 173-1-1 du code de la construction et de l’habitation : 1° À compter du 1er janvier 2025, entre la classe A et la classe F ; 2° À compter du 1er janvier 2028, entre la classe A et la classe E ; 3° À compter du 1er janvier 2034, entre la classe A et la classe D.” — the performance level of a decent dwelling falls between DPE class A and class F from 1 January 2025, between A and E from 1 January 2028, and between A and D from 1 January 2034.

The same article sets a later calendar for Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion and Mayotte: class A to F from 1 January 2028, class A to E from 1 January 2031.

Read the other way round, that is the calendar everyone knows: class G left the band on 1 January 2025, class F leaves it on 1 January 2028, class E on 1 January 2034. The calendar comes from article 160 of the Climat et Résilience act of 22 August 2021.

A distinction that is not pedantry. The statute pronounces no ban on letting. It sets the band a decent dwelling must fall within, and the first paragraph of the same article puts the delivery of a decent dwelling on the landlord. What a dwelling outside the band triggers is therefore not a fine: it is indecency, with the remedies a tenant draws from that finding.

We write what the statute says rather than the shorthand you read everywhere, for a plain reason: the consequence is not the same, and you do not need a software vendor to describe your own legal exposure to you inaccurately.

Whether this reaches social housing organisations is read through a detour. Article 40 of the same law lists the provisions that do not apply to dwellings owned by organismes d’habitations à loyer modéré; article 6 is not in that list. That is what we verified, and that is what we write — the absence of an article from a list of exclusions. The ordinary reading is that the decency obligation applies; it is reasonable, it is not a quotation, and on that point your legal department is better placed than we are.

Why the tertiary decree does not cover the same buildings

Article R. 174-22 of the French construction and housing code, in force since 1 July 2021, makes “owners and, where applicable, lessees” liable for three sets:

  1. Any building hosting exclusively tertiary activities over a floor area of 1,000 m² or more;
  2. All parts of a mixed-use building that host tertiary activities over a cumulative floor area of 1,000 m² or more;
  3. Any group of buildings on the same land parcel or the same site, once the cumulative tertiary floor area reaches 1,000 m².

It is the second point that matters to a landlord, and it is rarely quoted: in a mixed-use building, liability is calculated on the parts hosting tertiary activities alone. Ground-floor retail, an activity unit, a branch office on the ground floor all count towards that total; they count for their own floor area, not for the building’s.

What the statute does not contain. No sentence excludes housing. Paragraph III lists only three exclusions — temporary structures under a precarious building permit, places of worship, and operational defence, civil protection or internal security activities — and the ministry’s page on the scheme states no residential exclusion either.

Writing “housing is not covered” would therefore present an inference as a quotation. What the statute says, and what we repeat: liability is counted on the floor areas hosting tertiary activities. Sources consulted on 20 August 2026.

The detail of the scheme — reduction targets, the declaration deadline, what the penalty regime actually provides, and what Softee prepares for the declaration — is on the tertiary decree and OPERAT page. It applies to your tertiary buildings as it does to any other liable party.

What Softee measures on either side of that line

The capabilities below are not specific to social housing: they are the product’s, put back into the context of a mixed estate. That honesty is necessary — no Softee code is written for the social housing sector, and we do not pretend otherwise.

One estate read under two groupings

Two trees coexist, geographic and functional, with no imposed depth. The estate team navigates by territory and by scheme, the development team by programme or building type, over the same data.

The meter that ignores your grouping

The ordinary case in a block of flats: a distribution key splits one meter’s consumption across several locations by percentage, and a formula-calculated flux reconstructs by subtraction the sub-meter that does not exist — ground-floor retail derived from the main meter, for instance.

Sites with no remote reading

On a building nothing reads remotely, the invoice is the consumption data, ranking equal with a smart meter. An invoice covering several supply points is split into child invoices, and the split is undone if it was wrong.

The kWh/m² that makes buildings comparable

Floor area comes in as a site parameter you define, and a ratio-type indicator derives kWh/m² from it. That is what lets you rank the buildings of a mixed estate instead of comparing totals that do not compare.

An A–G banding that is not a diagnosis

The product can band a site from A to G on the thresholds of the 2021 DPE method, from measured values, in primary energy or in emissions. It is not a DPE: it bands real consumption on the same thresholds, and it replaces no statutory diagnosis.

What Softee does not do for a social housing landlord

This list is the necessary counterpart to the previous one, and on this segment it matters more than elsewhere: the subject touches obligations whose consequences are not ours.

  • Softee does not produce or update a DPE. The diagnosis is a statutory act carried out by an accredited surveyor. The product’s A–G banding applies to measured consumption, not to a surveyed dwelling, and it says nothing about whether a dwelling is decent under article 6.
  • Softee does not determine what you are liable for. Neither the 1,000 m² threshold, nor whether a floor area counts as a tertiary activity, nor whether article 6 reaches a given dwelling is computed by the product. This page is not legal advice, and it does not replace reading the statutes it cites.
  • Softee does not file on OPERAT. No code in the delivered product exchanges anything with an ADEME system. The declaration stays yours; we prepare the consumption data that goes into it.
  • Softee does not monitor consumption inside an occupied dwelling. What the product does starts at a measurement point or at an invoice. It ships with no hardware to install, and nothing in the repositories reads an individual dwelling any other way.

Regulatory sources

Frequently asked questions from social housing landlords

The statute does not say “banned”. Article 6 of law no. 89-462 of 6 July 1989, in the version in force since 1 January 2025, provides that the performance level of a decent dwelling falls between class A and class F from 1 January 2025, between A and E from 1 January 2028, and between A and D from 1 January 2034. A class G dwelling therefore left the band on 1 January 2025: it is no longer decent under that article, and the landlord is in breach of the obligation to deliver a decent dwelling that the same article places on them. The consequence is not a fine but indecency, with the remedies it opens to the tenant. The overseas calendar is later. Statute consulted on 20 August 2026.
Article 40 of the same law lists the provisions that do not apply to dwellings owned by organismes d’habitations à loyer modéré, and article 6 is not in that list. That is what we verified in the text: the absence of article 6 from the list of exclusions. The ordinary reading is that the decency obligation applies; that is an inference rather than a quotation, and it belongs to your legal department rather than to a software vendor.
For its tertiary buildings, yes, where the thresholds are met. Article R. 174-22 of the construction and housing code makes owners, and where applicable lessees, liable for any building hosting exclusively tertiary activities over a floor area of at least 1,000 m², for all parts of a mixed-use building hosting tertiary activities over a cumulative area of at least 1,000 m², and for any group of buildings on the same parcel or site reaching that total. The second case is the one that covers a residential block with tertiary units: only the tertiary parts enter the calculation. The statute contains no sentence excluding housing, and neither does the ministry's page: what it says is that liability is counted on tertiary floor areas. Statute consulted on 20 August 2026.
No. The diagnostic de performance énergétique is a statutory act carried out by an accredited surveyor, and Softee does not produce one. The product can band a site from A to G on the thresholds of the 2021 DPE method, from measured values, in primary energy or in emissions, taking the worse of the two. That is a banding of real consumption on the same thresholds: it replaces no diagnosis and says nothing about whether a dwelling is decent under article 6 of the law of 6 July 1989.
Through two mechanisms that combine. A distribution key splits one meter’s consumption across several locations by percentage, indicator by indicator. A formula-calculated flux reconstructs by subtraction a sub-meter that does not exist — ground-floor retail derived from the main meter, for instance. On a building nothing reads remotely, the invoice becomes the consumption data, and an invoice covering several supply points is split into child invoices, reversibly.

Let us split your estate in two, then look at the data

Bring the list of your buildings with their use, how their consumption reaches you, and the shared supply points. We will show you the matching model in the product, including where it would need a workaround, and what would remain on your side.

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