This week, an observation from the field. Since 1 January 2026, the collective DPE (energy rating) obligation extends to nearly every Paris co-ownership. Our hunters now encounter this document on every file, and a pattern repeats itself: buyers sign a preliminary contract on an apartment without having read the trajectory of the building that contains it.

Yet that trajectory can be read. It rests on three documents, all accessible before signing, and together they tell the next decade of a co-ownership: what it will pay for, what it will not, and what it is deferring. In a Paris housing stock where more than half of principal residences were rated E, F or G according to the latest available Insee data, this reading now conditions any clear-eyed acquisition.

Today's article sets out the method our hunters apply, the recent pitfalls of the new electricity coefficient, and the negotiating lever these documents open up when read together.

Before signing: the three documents that reveal a co-ownership's trajectory

A preliminary contract is signed on an apartment. It ought to be signed on a co-ownership. Here are the three documents that allow one to read its ten-year trajectory, and the negotiating lever they open to the attentive buyer.

The first document is the collective DPE. Since 1 January 2026, the obligation applies to co-ownerships of fifty lots or fewer in metropolitan France, provided the building permit was filed before 1 January 2013. The timetable rolled out in three stages: 2024 for co-ownerships of more than two hundred lots, 2025 for those between fifty-one and two hundred, 2026 for the smallest. In Paris, where half of all dwellings predate 1946, almost the entire older stock now falls within the scope. The document is valid for ten years and must be voted at a general meeting by the simple majority of article 24 of the 1965 Act. Its cost, borne by the co-ownership, ranges from one thousand to five thousand euros according to ADEME.

The second document is the draft multi-year works plan, or PPPT. Since 1 January 2025, every residential co-ownership over fifteen years old must have one. It is built from the collective DPE or an energy audit, and schedules over ten years the necessary works, their costing and their calendar. When the PPPT becomes a PPT voted at a general meeting, it triggers a contribution to the works fund that cannot fall below 2.5% of the planned works budget, nor below 5% of the annual operating budget. For the buyer, this is the clearest indicator of what lies ahead in calls for funds.

The third document, the most telling, is the minutes of the last three general meetings. Here the numbers take on a political reality. One reads what was voted, what was deferred, what was rejected for want of a majority. A co-ownership may display an exemplary PPPT and refuse, year after year, to undertake the works it provides for. Conversely, some co-ownerships have anticipated: façade restoration, external insulation, replacement of the boiler. The snapshot of votes often counts for more than the snapshot of energy labels.

Our hunters' method consists in cross-reading these three documents. The collective DPE gives the rating and the recommendations. The PPPT costs and schedules. The minutes reveal the collective will to execute. When all three converge, the buyer knows what they are buying: not merely an apartment, but a dynamic. When they diverge, it is a warning. A co-ownership rated F whose PPPT provides for one hundred and twenty thousand euros of works over five years and whose last three sets of minutes defer every decision is a file we handle quite differently from a co-ownership rated E that has already voted its renovation programme.

A point of vigilance for 2026: the decree of 13 August 2025, published in the Journal officiel on 26 August, modified the coefficient converting electricity into primary energy in the DPE, moving it from 2.3 to 1.9. The consequence: roughly 850,000 dwellings exit the energy-sieve category without any works. The label displayed therefore no longer says quite the same thing as a year ago. Reading a 2026 DPE requires understanding this shift in the grid, and refraining from any hasty conclusion drawn from a G that has become an F, or an F that has become an E by mechanical effect. The actual performance of the building has not changed.

Then there is the lever. In Paris, in 2026, an apartment rated F or G suffers an observed discount of ten to twenty per cent against a comparable property rated C or D. This discount is not negotiated on instinct. It is negotiated with documents in hand: the PPPT estimates, the vote or absence of vote at general meeting, the calendar of rental bans for investors (G since 1 January 2025, F on 1 January 2028, E in 2034). On a Paris apartment at €9,500 per square metre, the average price in the first quarter of 2026 according to the Chambre des Notaires, a well-argued discount represents tens of thousands of euros. Provided it can be substantiated, document in hand.

Buyer due diligence is no longer optional. It conditions any clear-eyed acquisition in a market where the energy rules of the game are shifting quickly, where calls for funds are tightening, and where the gap between a good and a bad co-ownership is now measured in years of patrimonial peace.

Ask for the minutes before the preliminary contract, not after

The minutes of the last three general meetings can be obtained on simple request to the seller. Securing them before signing the preliminary contract, rather than at the stage of the pre-state-of-affairs annexe, allows one to read the deferred votes and adjust the offer accordingly. That is ten days gained on the negotiation.

In the meantime, if a project is taking shape, we remain at your disposal for an initial conversation. We assess your brief against the market and deliver an unvarnished reading.