Welcome to the first half results of Kaufman & Broad. Before we start, we would like to tell you that for the Q&A, we will first answer to the questions asked orally and then the questions in writing. If you want to ask a question in writing, we have a question tag on the webcast. I'll hand over to Nordine Hachemi , who's the CEO of the Kaufman & Broad Group, Mr. David Laurent, who is CEO, and Mr. Bruno Coche, who's the CFO. They will talk you through the business, the results, and the outlook of the company. Gents, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for being with us for the half-year results. As usual, the half year ends on the 30th of May of the year because we end the year in November, 30th of November. Page two of the document that you've all received that was sent when we sent the press release. As you can see, these are the usual indicators that we use. Should I use the remote control? Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Sorry about this. As I was saying, these are the usual indicators that we use each time we report on our results. This is a recap of the main parameters, that is for the short-term, mid-term, and the longer run. That's what we use to steer our business. The first one, which is mid- to long-term, is the housing land portfolio expressed in number of housing units or lots. This represents the volume of operations, the number of transactions that we've secured.
That is, these are promises to buy land, no permits yet necessarily, and that's what we're going to develop in the years to come. This is our housing land portfolio, which is relatively stable compared to our previous results or what we reported before. The number one topic for us is to develop this portfolio because this is how we secure our future growth.
The housing orders, that's the number of housing orders that we've sold over the period. In terms of values, the volumes, sorry, are increasing. A slight increase in volumes, there's a drop in values. David will tell us more about this and the reasons. It's half a year, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything given the order mix. There's another very important parameter to measure the dynamism of the company that is to sell our projects is the take-up period.
That is the number of months it takes us to sell what we have in our portfolio at a moment in time. If we were to stop having new development projects in a bit less than five months, we would have sold what we have in the portfolio. That's very important for us because that's the foundation of our model. We try and execute our programs quite quickly so that we are agile, so that we can adapt to the market evolutions in a constant manner.
Over past years, we've done that, and it's worked successfully. We've weathered the storms because we can sell these units on the market that are "fresh." That is, that take into account the new tax constraints, economic constraints, and regulatory constraints. Therefore, we have the best products to meet the needs of our customers and to meet market needs.
The overall backlog, that's order intake. The backlog is at more or less EUR 2 billion, that's for housing, and the backlog is decreasing due to the Austerlitz project. That's for commercial property. On the following slide, as you will see, mainly the first two curves, those are the most important ones. The one that's like a flight of stairs is different, but the curves, the yellow one and the green one, are quite interesting. As you can see, it covers quite a long spell of time, that's the number of construction permits that have been granted, then authorized housing, and the housing units that we've started working on. There's a big difference, as you can see, between the construction permits that we get and the programs that are rolled out. Look at the gap between the two curves.
It's a lot bigger now. The gap was narrower before. The other interesting thing is something that you can use to better understand the crisis, the deep crisis we're going through. We're crossing, if I can say, we're going through the crisis, but with fewer difficulties. As you can see, we have fewer projects that are starting today compared to the times of the health crisis. We had to work, I suppose we worked three months during the year when COVID hit. For the full year, setting aside the other constraints that is political risks and economic risks, but mainly political risks, this situation for us is the equivalent of the health global crisis, which was exceptional, as you know. Now, look at the two curves. That's quite interesting.
Please remember, when there was a lockdown, the whole country was shut down, at the time, we had more projects that were starting. You see, today the market is malfunctioning. It's not a crisis, though, because when we have good projects and housing units, when we can do our job correctly, when we can develop projects that are well packaged, we can sell them very quickly. Therefore, even though the rates are going up, that's okay, even though the regulation might change, we could do that, but it's a political will. Is there a will to give us the building permits, the construction permits? There's no point in trying to think about new scenarios or new models. We need the permits so that we can develop our projects. It's as simple as that. On the following page four, please.
I don't know if we should show the slides in any case, here are the average rates. As you can see, there's a sudden increase that was due to the European Central Bank, they blocked the market with a sharp increase. We reached a peak at the end of 2023, a progressive decrease with a slight pickup, as you can see at the end, the banks are trying to keep control of the increase, because for the banks, it's interesting so as to attract loyal customers, that's very important. We see that banks are making efforts to offset the increase in mortgage rates. As you can see, this is not a problem for those who want to buy a flat or a home. The rates are still interesting, attractive. Page five, that's an interesting slide.
Look at what our clients are doing. They're borrowing at rates that are rates below the French OAT. That is the French bonds, a bit above what we have in Germany, but below government papers. That's the virtue of the euro. That's what's good about the euro. That is, we're more or less hedged against these rate increases. On the following page, that's page six, there's nothing much I have to say except that, as you can see, we have more mortgages given, but of course, these bank loans cannot exceed the number of construction permits.
That's again, the same problem. That's what we wanted to talk about, as you can see on pages six and seven. What's important is not necessarily the bank financing conditions that matter, but mainly what matters is the number of construction permits that we get. Before I hand over to David, there's a bill called Simplification de relance du logement, simplification on the housing market, again, so that it picks up.
Okay, this is not a big revolution, and in any case, we don't need to change much, I think. There's one thing, though, which is interesting, which is the general framework for what we call the ABF, that is Architectes des Bâtiments de France. The architects on French buildings, sometimes their positions are very awkward or weird. We can't control them. They have too much power, these French architects. Otherwise, as you can see, this is a never-ending list, more or less, of all sorts of things. It's a mixed bag of things, and this is not going to be any revolution.
Our position at Kaufman & Broad is that we don't want the state to interfere on the market. Anything they do sets havoc. Of course, we want to have fewer constraints, which is the case in any industry, but we don't want yet another decision from the government that doesn't really make sense or that's too hasty. That's going to have an impact on the price of land that's going to go up, or they're going to set up standards that will be ridiculous, that we'll never be able to enforce, and that will be negative for our clients. Now, David will talk about our business.
Thank you very much, Nordine. Good morning, one and all. Now, the first elements that Nordine talked about with the first indicators on first page two. First, the orders. As you can see, for the first half of 2026, if you look at the housing orders, the level is the equivalent of the first half of 2025. At the same time, the market is down 23%. There are reasons for that. Well, probably because of some decisions made, and our strategy is to sell our units quickly.
We design and then we market our products very quickly. You can see this if you look at our take-up rate on the following page. That's page 11, please. Then on this page, as Nordine said, it's less than five months that it takes to sell all that we have in the portfolio. Whereas if you look at the other market peers, there's a drift, as you can see. The take-up rate for them to sell the market offer is 24 months, almost two years.
For us, the take-up rate is an essential indicator inasmuch as it reflects the quality of the projects. There's a good match between what we do and what the clients want, that means that our teams have found plots of land in places that are attractive, where there are not enough housing units, and it means that our teams have designed projects that meet the needs of the local prospects. We have this business model for our projects that's good enough.
We have prices that mirror purchasing power of our prospects and clients. The other important point that Nordine's mentioned that I'd like to come back to is that when we sell our units quickly, we can regularly renew our commercial offer. Therefore we have something that's well-packaged for the market players compared to the 24 months it takes for the peers.
We have an offering that's not been designed two years before. If you look at most operators, they usually market their projects quite late, once they get the final permit, whereas we get this once we immediately receive the building or construction permit. The time it takes between design of the units and the marketing, the selling is longer. When our clients have new needs, we have an offering which better corresponds to their needs because it's more "updated." If you look at the first half 2025 and 2026, you see a slight decrease. That's for housing orders. For those who buy a flat for the first time or second time, they were on a wait and see basis because of what's happening at international level and after the attacks in the Middle East between America and Iran.
We offset this partly because we have a recent offer, recent housing units in our portfolio. Therefore we managed to offset this with an increase of block sales. The consequence, however, in values is that block sales are sold at lower prices because usually this is social housing or intermediary housing. That's why we have a 6% drop with an interval of one year. These are more indicators that I'd like to perhaps explain again because they give us a good activity of the outlook, the future business. The first one is land portfolio. We have 32,600 lots or units at the end of May 2026. As you've seen, we're more selective when we choose the projects that we qualify for this land portfolio, since we did that in May 2022 when the macroeconomic conditions were changing.
We're going to adapt our projects to the new conditions in our housing portfolio. There was a drop during two and a half years or three years because we had to adapt our portfolio, our land portfolio. Now maybe there's going to be a certain turnaround. We'll see, because at the end of 2025, as you can see, there's a slight increase even though we're still very selective when we choose the projects we want to include in the portfolio. As you might have seen, we have tougher selection criteria that we started using in March 2026, given the international backdrop. The second indicator is the housing backlog. That is the order book. That's past sales. That is the projects that are being constructed.
Revenues corresponding to the orders, that is reservations for the projects that are being built, but for which all the final documents have not yet been signed. For instance, we're waiting for the clients to get their mortgages or the loans, then the firm orders during pre-marketing before we acquired the land. Last time, we talked about a more stable housing backlog. There's a slight increase, not much, but a slight increase. We are more or less at EUR 2 billion . This is the 10-year average. Thirdly, the commercial offering. Again, there's a slight increase. We reached a trough beginning of 2024 due to the adaptation I mentioned before. That is, we changed the projects and the criteria to select the projects in our land portfolio.
What we're doing today is that we're trying as quickly as we can to change the land portfolio so that we turn all that into what we call "the commercial offer" so that we can sell these housing units very quickly. 95% of what we have in this commercial offering is in areas where there aren't enough housing units. On the following page 16. You'll have to put your heads in your hands for that, but look at the Kaufman & Broad market seen from a different angle. If you look at the markets, you will see that operators now have less of what we could call the commercial offer, and the benchmark year is 2021.
You might think that the commercial offer is going down because there are fewer units being sold, but in fact it's stable because we have fewer orders than units that are for sale, which means that there's more maturity. The offering is getting older and not really the finest one, the best one. Look at the number of orders, the number of marketed products. That's what's important. I'll give you some examples of that. These are big-sized projects.
That we've developed recently. The first one is something you know very well, which is the transformation of the offices of GEFCO in the town of Courbevoie. It's housing units or offices. We have 462 lots. Several months ago, we launched the project, and we have more than 90% out of these 462 lots or units that are for sale. We've already marketed 74% of these lots or units. The second example is for a new residential area in the town of Houdan with 200 units.
Half of those are individual homes, detached homes, the rest is collective housing. Work started three months ago. We have already sold approximately 76% of the project. If you compare both projects, what you will see is that we have very different sites, very different markets. It's close to Paris, EUR 8,000 / sq m . The other project is further away, approximately EUR 4,400 per sq m .
Two very different markets, but nonetheless, our teams were able to define the criteria that needed to be met, the objectives that needed to be met in order to design projects that would be attractive and that our clients or our customers would want to buy. It's different in Corbeville and Houdan. The main objective is to make sure that both programs are sold rapidly. Obviously our brand, Kaufman & Broad, contributes to this successful marketing. There's another project, a bit different.
It's a new development project. This is a new neighborhood close to the train station at Entraigues-sur-la-Sorgue. It's a large project, 253 housing units. The works are going to begin in six months from now, and we have already sold 70% of the units. When we start work, we will have reached 85% of the units being sold. Let's move on to our last indicator. This is the share in our commercial offer at Kaufman & Broad and also completed units. What we see is that, in our case, this share remains rather low. It remains very stable. On the market, as soon as macroeconomic conditions worsen, which was the case in 2023, this share has increased a lot, and it now has reached approximately 12% of completed units.
This is totally in line with what we've shown you so far, because those units are not that attractive, and they are hard to sell. Regarding our development project, we were awarded three main projects recently, more than 20,000 sq m each. One is in Nanterre. It's a mixed-use project. I can't give you more details regarding the two other projects because it was still under a confidentiality agreement, and they were closed during the first half. With the three projects, we'll have EUR 300 million in revenues that will be recognized by 2030. Regarding our development operations, we have also identified a new area that would be interesting, would be the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Why do I think it would be interesting? The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg wants to increase its population.
It wants to attract a number of people who will be able to bring life to this city. With COVID, they realized that with the borders tightening up, some people were no longer coming to work in Luxembourg for health reasons, essential reasons, for all sorts of practical reasons, and the country wasn't able to function properly. They want those people now to live in Luxembourg, to be actual residents. The first threshold will be 100,000 inhabitants by 2035, + 300,000 by 2070. For the first threshold, this will require an additional 30,000 units by 2035. They use the euro, which is our currency also. They have land planning rules, and the average prices are quite high, which means that even though we might decide to have a limited size project, we are also going to have good revenues.
With those developments, what we're going to do, it's going to test. In March 2026, we signed an agreement with Agora, which is the Luxembourg developer. It is about the building up 33 apartments in the Belval district. It's going to be a completely new neighborhood. The land will be made available to us within a year, approximately, by the developer. They're going to demolish a brownfield. They're also going to make sure that we can build our units on this land. Regarding corporate real estate, the Austerlitz project is moving forward as planned. We're also in line with the forecast that we had at the beginning of the year. We have recognized 21% of our revenues. We're at 19% of guidance.
Also, you have here a picture of the first steps of the new office building that we are building for EDF in Marseille. This was sold under the sales before completion scheme. Regarding our extra financial indicators, our CSR policy, I will not go back to the ESG rating in detail, because we are very well positioned in our industry. Since the last presentation that we made, we were awarded, for the fifth consecutive year, the Best Managed Company award by Deloitte. Regarding our climate policies, we have two main pillars. Mitigation of global warming. Our trajectory was validated by independent NGO, SBTi, and the aim is to divide by two the carbon emissions by 2030. We also have an adaptation strategy in order to adapt to the global warming that is already on the way.
Here, there are two main solutions that are envisaged. Nature-based solutions first, such as planting trees in front of the facades facing south, in order to provide shade in the summer and also let the sun come through in the winter. The second aspect would be frugal solutions, such as having light-colored buildings in order to avoid our buildings to heat too much in the summer. Now I will hand over to Bruno Coche for the financial results.
Thank you. You were able to have a look at the main aggregates for the group during the first half. If we compare with the first half of 2025, you will see that things are extremely stable. Let's begin with our revenue, slightly over EUR 500 million. Slight increase compared with last year. In more detail, the housing activity, EUR 368 million. It's down versus last year, but this is what we had anticipated. It's being offset by the increase in our commercial property business, EUR 123 million. It's being offset almost at 100%, and this is mainly due to the Austerlitz project, as David mentioned.
The numbers being slightly higher than last year. We also have the Marseille Rabat project, the EDF site, and you saw a picture of this project. Regarding the gross margin, EUR 104.7 million. Similar to last year. I'd like to remind you that gross margin measures the difference between sales prices and direct costs, which is the cost of land and the cost of works. On the one hand, we have a good control on our sale prices, and I think the explanations have been provided to you.
We sell our project swiftly, there's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the final recognized revenue. low level of uncertainty when it comes to recognition of our revenues. We also have a good control over our land cost. We've always been very careful with the price that we pay for land. You have construction costs. Once the construction works have been launched, we have firm contracts and commitments made by companies that are solid, that have a financial strength. This means that we are able to have a foreseeable gross margin. You also have current operating expenses at EUR 64.9 million. This is slightly down versus last year. This is, here again, in line with the control we have over our marketing expenses, payroll, and also the commitments made for our new projects.
This allows us to save several million euro over a 12-month period. Our current operating income is slightly up, EUR 39.9 million, and the rate is 8% of sales. This is also in line with the guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year. On the next slide, you see how this current operating margin has been evolving. It's slightly up. It's been up over the past three years, and it shows, once more, that our model is sustainable. If we have a look at the P&L, you see the cost of our financial debt has changed, and you also have the share that is provided to non-controlling interest is also down. This contributes to a decrease in this activity on the housing side, and commitment rules are much stricter also.
This means that our attributable net income is stable, EUR 23.5 million over those 12 months. Let's have a look at our balance sheet. Our WCR is at EUR -146.5 million. In other words, minus 13% of our revenue. Last year we stood at EUR 214.7 million, and the difference can be explained by the low contribution of the Austerlitz project during the past six months. This is also in line with the advancement of the project.
The delivery date should take place in mid-2027. We'll have EUR 200 million in cash of our current cash that will be used for this project. Regarding depreciation for our housing activities, it's a bit more that of November, but I would say that this is due to seasonal factors and not structural ones. Equity, EUR 281 million after payout of a dividend in May.
The net cash, EUR 242.6 million, excluding IFRS 16, that was 300 and something million euros end of 2025. Even though it's down, this can be explained by the change in the WCR, and there are rather high variations. It was also impacted by the EUR 43 million dividend paid out. Our financial structure on the 31st of May, gross debt, that's non-cash, and active treasury is EUR 246 million, and we also have a RCF of EUR 200 million that hasn't been used so far, which means that our capacity is EUR 446 million total.
To conclude, for the first half, we can say that the company has proven that it is able to deliver sustainable results, long-lasting results with an operating income of a rate of ultimately 8%, a sound financial structure, and a total backlog of approximately EUR 2.3 billion and a housing backlog close to EUR 2 billion. This is stable. It's been the case for almost two years, and this provides us with great visibility for the upcoming quarters. It's also a very strong foundation for the business until the end of the year. We can confirm the guidance that we provided at the beginning of 2026. An EBIT close to 8% and net cash expected to remain positive. We're also going to have revenues that are comparable to those of 2025. That's for the main figures.
Thank you, Bruno. If you have questions, we are willing to answer them. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please dial star one on your phone. Our first question by Ibrahim Omani, CIC.
Good morning. I have three questions. First, regarding the guidance. You talked about an operating margin close to 8%, plus 30 basis points during H1. What do you foresee for H2? Second question, regarding the Jeanbrun scheme. Has this had any impact on your orders during Q2? Now, third question, Luxembourg. I think that the timing is a bit different from French sales before completion schemes. Do you think it's going to increase the share of revenues? Will it be 5% or more?
Regarding the 8% margin, we're provided with the guidance for the full year, and we're going to keep this guidance, 8%. We've reached 8% for the first half. Mathematically, we can hope that we're going to retain this 8% rate during the second half. David, do you want to answer on the Jeanbrun scheme issue?
Well, with Jeanbrun, we are not seeing any significant impact volume-wise. I think the latest figures that were released, approximately 50 lots that were ordered in the Ile-de-France region and approximately 100 in France. That's really a small number. Regarding Luxembourg, why are we interested in Luxembourg now, where many developers looked at the Luxembourg market a few years ago, and as always, the same thing happened, increase in prices, decrease in interest rates, further increase in prices, and we considered that there was no point in investing in that market simply in order to take part in that price increase exercise.
Many companies have given up, especially close to the main station, the train station there was completely abandoned. You have this big hole and then nothing has happened since. Local authorities are now quite suspicious towards all the stakeholders that have made all sorts of promises they were not able to keep. People, since COVID, have realized that Luxembourg needs more inhabitants to provide for essential services, for example. Because when all borders were closed during COVID, they had no doctors, no nurses.
The middle class cannot live in Luxembourg because there aren't enough housing units, so it's too expensive. They now have a great ambition regarding their population, and they want this population to increase sharply. We want to set foot in this market. We're going to be reasonable. Regarding sales before completion project, we haven't seen many changes. We can do this in Luxembourg also. The cash curves are slightly different from the one that we have in France, but it's not going to impact our economic model. Many developers in France also have decided to make decisions, but they were not well-managed. But it doesn't mean that this is something that applies to the market as a whole.
Thank you so much.
Next question, Marie-Line Fort , Bernstein.
Hello. I wanted to speak to the building permits, where it stands here. So municipal elections took place recently. Do you think that this will mean that there might be additional building permits that will be granted during the second half now that the elections have taken place? Second question, regarding the commercial offering during Q2, can we expect this to support housing orders during the third quarter? Obviously, demand will have to remain strong. Regarding the EUR 300 million projects that were mentioned, I can see that you cannot provide us with more details for the time being. Are they more residential projects or commercial projects, and when do you think that those 300 million EUR can be added to your revenues and to your P&L?
Well, I will answer the first two questions, then David will answer the question on the project portfolio. Regarding building permits, where as you could see, there's been an increase of building permits granted just before the elections, which was quite surprising. Now their numbers have decreased, but I'm not concerned really. I think that those permits are going to pick up again. But the main problem, the main issue for mayors is the fact that the housing tax has been removed. I think this was a huge mistake, the fact that this tax was removed without thinking about the consequences. Elected officials will all be faced with the same problems.
I'm building, I'm having new housing units, but this means I will have to provide more public services. How will I pay for this? Public transport, schools, et cetera." I'd like to remind you that schools are being paid for by the municipalities. I mean, the buildings and the maintenance of buildings. So if you have families with kids, how do you pay for those schools? So this removal of the housing tax was a huge mistake.
Really huge mistake. It's going to be back in the public debate at some point. At the national level, we don't know how things will be discussed yet. I think this is a major issue. The government had promised that they would offset this deletion, but no, the French government has no money, and we knew right from the outset that they wouldn't be able to offset this.
Regarding the demand, the demand is still there. What might lead people to wait a bit is that there might be many promises that will be made during the presidential campaign, and who will offer the best scheme in order to help the building sector to recover. They're going to make all sort of promises, tax incentives for everyone. This means that there might be this wait-and-see phenomenon, because we can see that housing is at the heart of everyone's concerns. When we talk about purchasing power and when we realize that because of the lack of housing solutions, people tend to spend a huge share of their income to pay for their rents or mortgages. I'm not sure that politicians will provide a smart answer to this problem. Laurent.
Well, regarding the three projects that I presented a few moments ago, three projects which was awarded to us, I didn't go into the details. One is a housing project. It's the refurbishment of a commercial area, two other projects are mixed-use projects. Let's say one is a commercial building being refurbished to lead to 110 units, and the rest will be offices. It is conversion of this commercial estate. We already have a buyer for the part of it.
The second last project is also a mixed-use project. We have managed residence, so high education, sports, and we still have to sell those projects, especially the high education part. This hasn't been completed yet. The project that is 100% housing unit project, is specific in the sense that we already have a building permit that is final, it's firm. We needed to ask for a modified building permit in order to adapt to current circumstances, we believe that the revenues could contribute to our revenues starting in 2027. As for each other project, will be in 2028 at the earliest.
If you want to ask a question, please dial star one on your phones. Next question, Emmanuel Parot, Invest Securities. The floor is yours.
Hello, can you hear me? I have three questions to ask. First question, the -23% on the market, I was a bit surprised by that. It's a big drop. If you look at the numbers from the ministry, it was flat during the first half. I know there's a one-month lag, but are we talking about the same when you're saying minus 23%? Question number two about commercial units.
I wanted to know if in your pipeline you have huge projects like the one in Marseille, EUR 100 million, EUR 150 million, that you would probably sign within 6 to 12 months. The third question, which is more forward-looking, there's an INSEE report that was out recently about the fact that people have few children in France. Have you factored in this aspect? It might be important in the future for people who need flats and homes. Thank you very much.
I'll answer the first question. That is, these numbers are based on reports coming from a company called Adéquation. These are the footnotes that we've always released in our press releases. They're quite reliable if you look at their track record, and this is the Kaufman period, that is end of February, end of May, whereas the numbers you're talking about is calendar half year. That's the lag effect. What we've seen since the beginning of the year is that the market is going down. There's a marked drop. Kaufman, yet, is more or less stable in the past 12 months. Now, for commercial buildings, what you have said is correct.
The three projects I've been talking about, for instance, the conversion of the commercial asset, there's part of that that's for offices, and we know who's going to take these offices. It could be good for the commercial business in 2028. When we get the building permit, we have other projects that we are about to sell, that we're currently selling, and they're in the slideshow. You have the surfaces, the floor area in the press release. Some of them are in logistics or the supply chain. We got the permits. Depending on when we sell them, these could also help us in revenues, on the revenue side. Of course, we're still working on our development with perhaps new cases soon. For the time being, there's nothing we can talk about that would be a major project.
The third question, the drop in the number of children that people have. Our clients usually are aged 30. The question is that these people are 30, in their 30s, they will live until they reach the age of 90. Can we find homes for them? No. There's a deficit in housing units. Everybody's saying that this is a problem, we should start with this generation. We have three constraints, you see. Of course, there's population growth, but it's not the only engine. The other engine which feeds into housing needs is sociological factors. People who live together, the fact that the population is aging, the older people live, the longer they keep their house or flats. Therefore, people get older in their flats and that means nobody can rent them, nobody can buy these units.
The third factor is that people now tend to split the families, break apart, and find other partners. When we had one flat for one family, now we need two flats for one family because people are together and then they break up. We need two flats. Different types of flats versus the ones that were built after the Second World War. These are flats for smaller families, and therefore, they're not necessarily available on the market. There's a fourth factor nowadays, which is that we need to adapt to climate change. Insulation will not suffice if you add Blocks of polystyrene, it will not be the best solution to global warming. What we need to do, and that's the best thing, is to rebuild. That's the best thing to do. Bertrand Eyraud is the CSR director.
He's shown that the CO2 impact, if you demolish and rebuild, is usually better when the works are on than sticking false walls of polystyrene on homes and flats. In doing that, we'll create new floor area or surfaces. We're quite serene when we look at population growth or degrowth. One of the reasons, by the way, the very first reason that we see when families say they don't want to have children, is that they say they can't find the proper housing for their children. That's why they don't want to have a kid. It's the chicken and egg type of question.
Jon Pérez . Kepler Cheuvreux.
Hello, I hope you can hear me. Thank you for this presentation. I have a couple of questions. A question on the office market. Can you give us a general overview on the market? Are there any opportunities? Is there going to be any type of recovery in the years to come? Question two, about the construction costs. BT01 is going up. I wanted to know what you can see on the ground. These contracts are being sold. I'd like to know more about the impact of all this on your margin in the years to come.
David, the office market to start with.
Well, H1 is ending at 750,000 sq m sold for the Greater Paris region. The average annual figures were at more or less 2.2 million, 2.3 million sq m sold before COVID, before interest rates increased in 2022. We were therefore at 1 million or 1.2 million for the first half square meters sold, which means that the market is really waiting to see what's going to happen. If we look at the values, in terms of values and transactions, at the end of 2025, we saw that again, there were some large transactions, big projects, because the rates were more stable and we had more visibility. With the crisis in the Middle East, the investors are waiting again.
That's why the volumes are low. It'll depend on a number of things. For instance, the ECB policy with their rates and also the economic situation in general. If there's no economic recovery, as you know, as far as offices are concerned, the floor area is usually reduced for each position, which means that the market is not going to be buoyant all of a sudden. The building costs. At the beginning of the crisis in the Middle East, with increase of the oil prices, we've seen that some suppliers have decided to increase their prices in a preventive way. We can't see any reflection of this in the prices for companies. Now that the oil prices decreased again, a little, if things stay as they are, there will be no major impact of all that.
Can I add something about the building costs? If you look at the projects that are being built, these contracts are fixed. The only risk for us would be if the company runs into default. We're quite careful again about the suppliers we work with. Usually, these are family-owned companies, regional companies. They're financially solid. That's proven. The risk is quite limited, and we have good track record.
For the other operations or transactions for which we've not yet bought the land, there's no commitment for us. If at a moment we see there's a big drift, the building costs go up very quickly. If there's any slippage, there's going to be an impact, but that means we're going to postpone the project so that we can do our maths again, and so that we can calculate the price of land and all that and adapt. If there's an increase in the price of works which would be booked, then we need to offset this increase because this project has to give us a better return on other factors.
This is what Kaufman & Broad has done in the past. This is what we mean when we say we adapt very quickly. With that, in the mid-term, in the short run, we'll be able to have more or less the same margin rates.
Thank you very much.
Next question by Marie-Line Fort , Bernstein.
Yes. Sorry, I have two more questions I forgot to ask them earlier. You said there is a strong decline in housing orders during the first half. Does this mean that competitors are faced with more difficulties? What about the competition, and what about possible opportunities for you? Second question, regarding block sales. As we see, the mix entails a large share of block sales. Do you have any guarantees that public authorities or public clients are going to maintain their orders at the end of the year?
Regarding our competition, there are two things here, where you have developers that are faced with financial difficulties. We've looked at many of them, unfortunately, the decision is too dire. We're not magicians, when they've paid their land at a price that is 30% or 40% higher than the actual value, then it's up to the banks now to do their job. They now have to complete their work. They shouldn't have issued their loans.
This was totally foreseeable. This didn't happen overnight, all of a sudden. With those developers, we can't really do much. What we can do is maybe see if we could get some of the project portfolios. Actually, we'd rather develop our own projects. Second thing is that some of the main stakeholders are now really becoming reasonable again. This really brings us to some of the approaches that David mentioned early on, some of them still being confidential.
We are being consulted quite often for large projects, because landowners would rather receive a solid offer, a firm offer that is reasonable, rather than an offer that wouldn't be reasonable, but that would still be up in the air four or five years down the road with no permit, et cetera. We were able to work on some of those large projects, and they consult us because they know that our company is solid, and this makes us attractive. Now, regarding block sales or block orders, I would say that our level is slightly lower than that of our competitors.
Social landlords, well, the problem is not that they do not want to buy new units. The problem is that a large share of the equity is used to refurbish their buildings and to insulate them. This doesn't provide them with more revenues, and they are consuming cash to do this, and they can only increase their debt by small amounts to do so. This is why they work with us. They think that we're solid. I must say that we don't really have any concerns regarding the end of 2026.
Thank you.
If you want to ask a question, please dial star one on your phone. No more questions.
Well, thank you. No recurring question either. Thank you so much, everyone, and we'll meet again for the nine-month presentation, the first week of October. In the meantime, I wish you all a very pleasant summer. Bye-bye.