In France, whenever a villa is sold, the sale is published on an official government website (that is often referred to as DVF). The notaires are required to publish (with updates dumped every 6 months) the net price the property sold for, the exact location on a map, the m² size of the land, and the ‘approximate m² footprint’ of the house.
It looks like this:
This house is really 670 m²!
Insider tip: The website House Prices France has sales data going back much farther than DVF (10 years versus DVF’s 5 years — which is useful because the data from the Covid housing bubble years is not representative of the current market prices), and shows the data on a superior Satellite-view map, seen here:
Since the notaires make a % commission on each sale, they have a dishonest tactic to make the m² prices seem much higher than they really are, and mislead buyers. Agents then use this false data as justification for above-market asking prices, in an attempt to push housing prices up. This information then gets disseminated onto many other real estate websites.
