Mathias Flattin in Le Revenu: leasing as an emerging asset class
In its February 2026 issue, Le Revenu published a piece by Mathias Flattin on property leasing: why rent-to-own is becoming an asset class of its own in Europe, and what it asks of an investor.
In its February 2026 issue, Le Revenu published a piece by Mathias Flattin under the heading Leasing immobilier : l'émergence d'une nouvelle classe d'actifs en Europe.
The starting point is the arithmetic. CBRE puts Europe short of 9.6 million homes, roughly 3.5% of the stock, with France, the United Kingdom and Germany adding a further 560,000 units a year to the gap. Public schemes no longer close it: the UK stopped Help to Buy, which had advanced up to 40% of the price to 387,000 households.
Meanwhile the desire has not moved. Seventy-seven per cent of 18 to 30 year olds in France still expect to own by 35. What moved is access: fourteen years of income to buy in Paris or London against six in the early 2000s, and homeownership among the under-35s down from 57% to 39% in the United Kingdom, 55% to 30% in Spain, 63% to 46% in Belgium.
The article then draws the parallel that gives the model its name. Leasing was built for company cars in the 1960s and now accounts for most new vehicle sales in Europe, on three mechanisms: pooled risk, managed residual value, and services attached. Transposed to housing the principle holds better, because a home does not depreciate like a car and its occupant behaves like an owner, spending their own money to look after it.
Two families of model are compared. Shared ownership, where the household buys a share and staircases up, which London has scaled to more than 270,000 homes. And rent-to-own, where the household rents its future home, converts part of the rent into a deposit and holds an option to buy within two to three years.
The piece is candid about what the second one demands. Product simplicity, because complexity kills both adoption and liquidity. Critical size, to spread risk across a portfolio and buy in block at a discount. And an operator who knows the ground, qualifies the household and stays with it, because that is where losses are avoided.
Published in Le Revenu, February 2026 (print edition, subscription).
