French housing developers’ expectations deteriorate

INSEE’s 23 October release shows the seasonally adjusted balance of French housing developers’ expectations for housing starts falling from −20 in July to −27 in October. For Hungarian suppliers serving France, this may signal demand risk, but their own order books need to be compared separately with the survey.

Using the rounded values in the official table, the deterioration is seven percentage points. The indicator is the difference between favourable and unfavourable response shares, rather than the percentage change in the number of homes started. Expectations and actual construction output therefore belong on separate lines of the analysis.

Three measures play different roles in a supplier’s own comparison: enquiries indicate potential demand, signed contracts show committed work, and paid invoices show realised cash inflows. The survey replaces none of these. A national average also cannot directly yield the revenue change for a particular region, product category or Hungarian company.

Our European construction-output article discusses a different type of data, while our cross-border property investment report provides background on another market segment. INSEE’s next release is expected on 26 January 2027; meanwhile, new French order and construction figures can help assess whether activity followed the worsening sentiment. We calculate from published rounded balances, so the precision of our result reflects those inputs.