Open data, a silent revolution
Ten years ago, getting reliable data on property prices for a given municipality meant paying for expensive services or relying on estate-agent chatter. Today, the French government makes millions of data points available for free that let anyone objectively analyse every single municipality.
The three sources that change everything
DVF: the real sale prices
Since 2019, the Demandes de Valeurs Foncieres (DVF) database publishes every real-estate transaction in France. For each sale: price, surface area, property type, municipality, date.
It is the most reliable source for the true per-sqm price in any city, far more accurate than the rough estimates shown on property portals.
ADEME: the energy map
The Energy Performance Certificate (DPE/EPC) database contains millions of diagnostics. It reveals the energy-rating breakdown of each municipality's housing stock: how many homes are rated A, B, C... down to G.
With the progressive ban on energy sieves, this data has become strategic for any investor.
INSEE: the socio-economic portrait
INSEE publishes each year the Base Permanente des Equipements (BPE), demographic data, median income and dozens of indicators that together measure a city's attractiveness and dynamism.
And also: safety, water, fibre, hazards...
Beyond the three main sources, other datasets enrich the picture:
- SSMSI — crime statistics per municipality
- Hub'Eau — real-time drinking water quality
- ARCEP — fibre and mobile coverage
- Georisques — natural hazard exposure (flood, earthquake, radon)
- DGFIP (REI) — property tax rates per municipality
How ScorCity uses this data
ScorCity gathers and cross-references these 9 sources to compute a composite score from 0 to 100 for every municipality. The process:
- Automated ingestion — scripts pull data at the publication cadence of each source
- Normalisation — each indicator is rescaled on a 0-100 percentile ranking
- Aggregation — indicators are grouped into 6 pillars (yield, price, EPC, safety, quality of life, dynamism) then combined into a final score
- Publication — city pages and rankings are regenerated automatically
The limits of open data
Open data is powerful, but not all-knowing:
- Time lag — DVF data is 3 to 6 months behind, INSEE is annual
- Granularity — some datasets are only available at city level, not at neighbourhood level
- Missing data — very small municipalities sometimes lack enough transactions to be statistically reliable
- Non-measurable factors — tourist appeal, future urban projects or architectural quality are not in the databases
Open data does not replace an on-site visit or a professional's advice. But it offers a first objective, free screen that every investor should use before travelling.