Sourcing Off-Market Property in France With Public Data (DVF, Cadastre, Open Data)
An English brief on the French open-data stack for off-market sourcing: what DVF, the cadastre, Sirene, Sitadel permits, and BODACC actually give you, and what they do not (no bulk owner names, GDPR limits, beneficial-owner register closed since July 2024). Full playbook in the French edition.
Sourcing Off-Market Property in France With Public Data (DVF, Cadastre, Open Data)
The Short Answer
French open data will not hand you an owner's name and phone number. What it gives you, for free and at market scale, is a signal layer: transaction prices and dates (DVF), the parcel map (cadastre), the companies that hold property (Sirene, trade register), and movement signals (Sitadel permits, BODACC notices). Cross those layers and you know which properties to watch and why. Owner identification is a separate, more constrained step. This is the English brief; the full playbook is in the French edition.
The Five Open-Data Layers
DVF lists five rolling years of transactions (type, surface, price, date, parcel) with no personal data, open since 2019 (data.gouv.fr). The cadastre plan is open, but owner identity in the MAJIC matrix is personal data and not open for individuals (CADA). Sirene and the trade register expose the SCI holding company and its manager. Sitadel publishes planning permits since 2013; BODACC publishes company events including insolvency proceedings, both via free APIs. Add the local PLU for buildability and ADEME energy ratings for distressed assets.
What It Will Not Do
No bulk owner contacts. GDPR applies regardless of the open licence (CNIL). And manual cross-referencing does not scale. That is where a system earns its cost: continuous ingestion, parcel-level joins, compliance logged. For developers the same layers surface underused buildable land before it becomes a competitive process. Want this signal layer built on your markets? Talk to us. It runs deployed on your own infrastructure.
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