The average price per m² in Billère is 2 127 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 234 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Billère, in Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
The average price of apartments in Billère stands at 2 127 €/m². This average covers a stock made up mainly of apartments: according to INSEE, the French national statistics institute, apartments account for around 71 % of the homes in the municipality, on a territory of 4,57 km² built up almost entirely since the 1960s. The late 19th-century villas inherited from the British colony, the estate houses of the post-war years and the apartment developments close to the Pau boundary do not trade at the same level. The figures come from the DVF database, which records transactions actually registered with notaries.
Prices from the DVF file (Demandes de valeurs foncières, published by the DGFiP), transactions actually recorded at the notary at municipality level. Cross-referenced with the Notaires de France - INSEE indices. Learn more about our methodology.
The first driver of the market is the demography of the Pau conurbation, to which Billère is directly attached. The municipal population went from 12 804 inhabitants in 2017 to 14 384 in 2023, a rise of around 2 % a year driven by arrivals rather than by natural increase. Jobs in the conurbation, in energy, research and aerospace, sustain that demand. The make-up of households counts just as much: with 50,8 % single people and an average size of 1,8 people per household according to INSEE, searches focus mainly on studios and one- and two-bedroom flats.
The second factor is the land constraint. On 4,57 km² almost fully built up as early as the 1960s, no significant building reserve remains: new supply comes through occasional renewal schemes, and most sales involve existing stock. The consequence is an ageing stock, in which INSEE measures 8,3 % vacancy. The energy renovation of post-war blocks is therefore becoming a point of differentiation between properties, alongside closeness to the river, the golf course or the roads towards Pau.
Billère sits slightly below Pau, its immediate neighbour to which it is directly attached. The gap becomes considerable with the towns of the Basque coast, more than eighty kilometres away.
The name of the municipality appears in medieval texts in the forms Vilhere in 1385, Bilhere in 1457 and Vilhera in 1539, before the spelling Billere was settled on in 1793; the Béarn form is Vilhèra. The site was occupied long before, as shown by the protohistoric remains of Le Mohédan and Le Vignau. The Saint-Laurent church, built on the hillside overlooking the village, goes back in its oldest parts to the 13th century, at a time when Billère was only a village of some sixty inhabitants attached to the diocese of Lescar. The parish registers begin in 1692. Béarn barns with cobble walls and washhouses keep the memory of that farming past.
Until the Restoration, the municipality kept a markedly rural character: large farming estates to the north, and to the south a village of Béarn houses stretched along the Rue de la Marie, Rue Mauboulès and Rue du Mohédan. Everything changed with the arrival of the British in the Béarn, after the crossing of the Bidassoa in 1813 and the battle of Orthez in 1814: the physician Alexander Taylor praised the climate of Pau, and the English colony reached around 2 000 people by 1863, then 5 000 in the 1880s. The Pau golf course was created on the territory of Billère in 1856, the first course in continental Europe and the only French one for thirty years. Some fifty villas were built, of which twenty-seven survive.
The arrival of the railway in Pau in 1863 began the change, but it was the post-war years that gave Billère its present form: the population went from 1 200 inhabitants in 1901 to 7 289 in 1962, and doubled between 1954 and 1962. Hybrid maize, the working of the Lacq gas field and the aerospace industry fed that influx. Most of the urban fabric was built after 1950, through successive estates that led to almost complete urbanisation of the territory in the 1960s. The municipality then took in its business parks, Actitech and Actiparc, converted its former abattoirs into a contemporary art space, the Bel Ordinaire, and opened the Jeanne-Jugan botanical garden in 2012.
Billère has 14 384 inhabitants for 4,57 km², a density of close to 3 150 inhabitants per km². According to INSEE, the municipality counts around 8 660 homes, of which 70,8 % apartments and 28,6 % houses: the market is first of all a market of apartments. Again according to INSEE, 90,6 % of the homes are main residences, only 1,1 % second homes and 8,3 % are vacant. Owner-occupiers account for 43,8 % of main residences, against 55,1 % tenants, a high rental share that follows from the make-up of the stock. Single-person households make up 50,8 % of the total, which steers demand towards small and medium floor areas.
The average price of apartments in Billère is 2 127 €/m². This figure comes from the DVF database, which records transfers actually registered with notaries, and not from online listings. It is a municipality-wide average: between a 1960s development and an estate house close to the golf course, the gap can be wide. A valuation address by address remains necessary before setting a sale price.
The municipality reads from north to south. The hillside carries the Saint-Laurent church and the old streets of the village, from the Rue de la Marie to Le Mohédan. The golf course area, created in 1856, keeps some of the villas of the British period. The estates and apartment buildings of the 1950s to the 1970s occupy the centre of the territory, while the Actitech and Actiparc business parks and the banks of the Gave de Pau close the municipality to the south.
Apartments. According to INSEE, they account for 70,8 % of the homes in the municipality, against 28,6 % houses. The reference price therefore relates logically to apartments, which come mostly from the schemes built after 1950. Houses are concentrated in the estates of the 1950s and 1960s and in the old streets of the hillside, and their relative scarcity on an already built-up territory supports their value.
Billère shares a boundary with Pau, whose centre is about five kilometres away. The municipality is crossed by the former RN117 trunk road, now the D817, which links Toulouse to Bayonne. The Idelis network serves it with several lines, including lines T3 and T4. The Fébus bus rapid transit service, opened in 2019, serves only Pau: it is reached from Billère by connection.
Yes, it shapes the structure of the market. According to INSEE, 55,1 % of main residences are occupied by tenants, against 43,8 % by their owners. Some of the apartments put up for sale are therefore let or recently vacated properties, which affects timescales and the terms of a transaction. The vacancy rate, at 8,3 %, also makes it worth putting a property in good order before listing it.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).