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Reading a price per m² without fooling yourself
Asking price or signed price, average or median, ten sales or six hundred: two figures in the same format may not measure the same thing.
3 min readChecked on 19 August 2026
In brief
- Communes with a published price
- 64 of the 127 in the perimeter
- Publication threshold
- Ten transactions over twelve months in Luxembourg
- Method
- Average in Luxembourg, median in France: the two do not react alike
- Price-to-rent
- Under 20 years, buying prices like renting; past 30, something else is being priced
What was signed, not what was asked
A property portal publishes asking prices; a sales register publishes transaction prices. The two track each other in a tight market and diverge as soon as it slows, because negotiation comes back. The figures on this site come from the registers — the Observatoire de l'Habitat in Luxembourg, DVF in France — for exactly that reason. A 10% gap between the listing down the road and the price shown here is not an error: it is the negotiating margin of the moment.
Average, median, and sample size
Luxembourg publishes an average, France a median. On a tight market the two converge; as soon as a commune has a few exceptional sales, the average rises and the median does not move. Add sample size: the Observatoire publishes nothing under ten transactions in twelve months, and a commune with twelve gives a figure that a single unusual sale can move by hundreds of euros. The number of sales sits next to every price on this site: it is the first thing to look at.
What the price per m² leaves out
A price per square metre divides an amount by a surface, and everything else disappears: the floor, the condition, the aspect, whether there is a garage or a cellar. The Observatoire publishes a "refined" series that strips out annexes, precisely because a flat sold with two parking spaces mechanically lifts the neighbourhood's per-m² figure. The range published beside the price — the bottom and top 5% removed — describes the local market better than the average does.
The price-to-rent ratio, and its limit
Dividing a home's price by its annual rent gives a number of years, shown on every commune page. Under twenty, the market prices buying roughly like renting; past thirty, it is pricing something else — an expected capital gain, land scarcity, or simply how hard it is to rent. The ratio combines two different sources and ignores acquisition costs, the cost of credit and service charges: it ranks communes against each other, it does not decide a purchase.
What to do
- Look at the number of sales before the price: twelve transactions do not make a market.
- Compare the range, not just the average — it shows the neighbourhood's real spread.
- Check whether the price includes annexes: parking and cellar move the per-m² figure without changing the home.
- Set the register figure against three listings in the same area to gauge the negotiating margin.
Common questions
Why do Thionville and Metz have no price here?
Moselle, Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin run the livre foncier rather than the cadastre, and are absent from DVF, the public property-sales base. It is neither an omission on our side nor a market without transactions — the data is simply not published in that form.
Average against median: how big is the gap in practice?
Small when properties are alike, noticeable as soon as a commune mixes small older flats with a few high-end sales. The average follows the extremes, the median ignores them. In a commune of 3,000 people, two exceptional sales are enough to open a gap of hundreds of euros per square metre.
Do these prices include acquisition costs?
No. These are property prices, before registration duties, notary fees and security costs — amounts paid in cash that differ sharply from one country to the next. That is the subject of the acquisition-costs guide.
Worth a look on this site
Official sources
- Observatoire de l'Habitat — registered sale prices
- DVF — French land-value explorer (Etalab)
- STATEC — housing statistics
The amounts, thresholds and rates quoted change regularly, sometimes mid-year. Check them against these official pages before deciding anything. Checked on: 19 August 2026.
