France (FR) — civil law.
Nothing on this page describes United States or Argentine practice.
DVF — Demandes de valeurs foncières
France publishes actual recorded sale prices, nationally, as open data. For anyone underwriting property this is an unusually strong asset: not an assessed value, not an estimate — the price in the deed.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Publisher | DGFiP |
| Legal basis | décret n° 2018-1350 of 28 December 2018 |
| Open since | May 2019 |
| Coverage window | the last five years |
| Built from | actes notariés + cadastral data |
| Contents | property type, surface, sale price, parcel, commune |
| Portals | data.gouv.fr, cadastre.data.gouv.fr/dvf, app.dvf.etalab.gouv.fr, and an enriched build at datafoncier.cerema.fr (DVF+) |
| Access | download-based; no official REST API on the cadastre portal |
The exclusions, and why they are not incidental
DVF excludes Alsace, Moselle and Mayotte.
That is not a data-quality gap to be patched. It follows from the legal
structure: DVF is assembled from the publicity system those territories do not
use. Alsace-Moselle records title in a court-held livre foncier
(alsace-moselle); Mayotte’s land situation is its own
(outre-mer).
What this means for a comparables model
There are no open transaction comparables for Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Moselle or Mayotte. A national valuation model trained on DVF is silently blind in four départements. It will not error — it will extrapolate, which is worse. Any such model must carve them out explicitly.
Why this beats the Argentine equivalent
Worth stating because the contrast is instructive rather than decorative: Argentina publishes assessed values through provincial cadastres and no national transaction register at all. France publishes transaction prices nationally. For valuation these are not comparable in quality — recorded prices are the thing assessed values are a proxy for.
The trade runs the other way on ownership: see publicite-fonciere.