Diagnosticians and real estate agents: esteem and indifference – Political and Parliamentary Review

These are two contrary stories, one happy and one unhappy, both concerning real estate professions. The first is that of technical diagnosticians. This young profession appeared at the end of the 1990s, when the law imposed a measurement of surface area for collective housing for sale. This obligation resulted from the proposed law of the deputy mayor of Perreux, Gilles Carrez, thus passed into posterity thanks to this popular text in favor of transparency. The succession of around ten obligations arising from legislative initiatives led to the creation of a fully-fledged professional body, with a short training system allowing retraining in three months, accompanied by a certification system. This profession, which has somehow broken into the housing value chain, has from the outset annoyed the owners, sellers or lessors… to the point of worrying to the highest degree when it was responsible for defining the energy performance of housing. The diagnosticians have both acquired a status in public opinion and have been more criticized than ever when the Climate Resilience law of 2021 established a regime prohibiting the rental of energy-intensive housing… The diagnostician has acquired the status of censor, certainly respected but whose skills and credit are being watched.

 

Several political episodes have made diagnosticians major players in real estate. We will cite in chronological order the report on the diagnostician sector and the DPE commissioned by Lionel Causse, then president of the National Housing Council, from an ad hoc working group, then a report from this same deputy signed in his name in July 2025 to improve the functioning of the profession. A few months earlier, in March 2025, Minister Valérie Létard worked on a plan to make energy performance diagnostics and more broadly the work of diagnosticians more reliable. On this occasion, she entrusted two missions, one to MP Daniel Labaronne to examine the relevance and feasibility of a professional order for diagnosticians and the other with a view to creating post-baccalaureate higher education training cycles leading to the profession of diagnostician and to improve existing short training courses. This second report was written by the author of these lines, in particular for his knowledge of professional training in real estate.

 

Finally, and this was a proposal from the Labaronne report, the Minister of Cities and Housing called for the holding of the first National Conference on Technical Diagnostics on Thursday, May 21. Before the end of the year, it will lead to the signing of a commitment by the diagnosticians’ unions, undoubtedly for adherence to a common ethics charter, to a common umbrella organization, and to the creation of one or two common training courses, several levels being desirable.

 

Clearly, diagnosticians have moved from the shadows or opprobrium to the light. The same cannot be said of real estate agents and property managers. They have been waiting since 2014 and the ALUR law for an implementing decree which will allow the entry into force of the minimum training obligation before someone can carry out transaction and management. The FNAIM ended up condemning the State at the beginning of 2025: the Council of State ordered the government to issue the decree within six months… Nothing a year later. The reason is the political upheavals of the country, which has multiplied governments. It nonetheless remains true that this is urgent: the safety of households is at stake, faced with negotiators or managers lacking guidance and insufficiently trained to advise households.

 

Why is this text, written, rewritten, on which all the competent central administrations have looked and pronounced, not yet referred to the Council of State? Two subjects and an oversight that block everything. Should we first require training, the duration of which has been consensually set at 42 hours, which is provided face-to-face, unconditionally distance learning or synchronous distance learning, with a trainer and learners meeting at the same time remotely? Let’s be clear: the profession is ready to find itself in the medium term of synchronous distancing. No more subject therefore and the Minister of Cities and Housing must take action. Then, can an establishment that trains future professionals pass the tests attesting that the knowledge has been acquired? Yes of course. There is no need to mobilize the CCIs at great expense, as was mentioned for the competency check. Training organizations will themselves be monitored for the integrity and objectivity of controls.

 

Finally, an oversight, the employees, dismissed for incomprehensible reasons, must be reintegrated into the text, which the first version prepared by Valérie Létard had mentioned. Some 3,000 negotiators per year choose to negotiate under the status of employee carried by a social engineering company and carrying out missions for an agency or a network of agents. These people work within the limits set by the law on portage: they receive a mission when the staff of an agency or a network is not sufficient to cope with market activity or when specific skills are lacking, for example for a given local market – unknown to the employees of the team formed – or a particular market segment, such as commercial or industrial premises. In the name of what is the decree going to forget them, that is to say exclude them by its silence from the future training obligation? Here again, the Minister of the City and Housing emphasizes his demand for skills for all and does not allow distinctions metaphysics.

 

In any case, we can clearly see that esteem is circulating. Real estate agents and property managers felt attacked by the ALUR law: in reality the legislator had shown his consideration towards these professions. Obviously they are no longer seen as a priority when it comes to helping them rise higher. It’s sad.

 

This is how political life goes, and so goes the esteem it has for the professions in the sector. As always, it is also up to the professions themselves to ask themselves why they do not enjoy more consideration. Certainly, unlike diagnosticians, the public can do without them and act directly to sell or rent. This point is major. It may also be that their added value is not visible enough. Exactly: that the State helps them grow, in the interest of households.