Rental housing in France is both heavily regulated and supported through dedicated public funds. Here’s a high-level overview of what that means (via this 2021 Brookings case study by Arthur Acolin):

• Homeownership rates in France went from 35% in 1954 to 56% in 2001
• As of 2018, 58% of French households own, 40% rent, and the remaining 2% supposedly get free housing from either their employer or a family member
• Not surprisingly, younger households are most likely to rent (the figure is > 60% for people aged 18-29)
• Household size seems to play a major factor in how likely people are to live in public housing

• France has some 4.5 million public housing units and 17% of all households live in them (which represents about 43% of all renter households)
• Within the unsubsidized rental market, 93.5% of households live in homes owned by individual investors (this is as of 2013) and only about 3.5% live in homes owned by institutional investors
• This is pretty typical of Europe, where multi-family isn’t an established real estate asset class like it is in North America; so for those of you who like to hate on individual condo investors, check out France
• In the decade between 2010 and 2020, 28 metro regions in France adopted some form of rent control and, in a few markets, like Paris and Lille, there are also maximum rents that can be charged for specific housing types

If you’re interested in rental housing, Brookings also has articles covering the US, Germany, Spain, Japan, and the UK. They can be found here.