The average price per m² in Croix is 2 571 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 123 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Croix, a residential municipality of the Lille metropolitan area, in the Nord department.
The average price recorded in Croix stands at 2 571 €/m². This average covers a composite housing stock: large bourgeois houses inherited from the golden age of textiles, comfortable villas around the parc Barbieux, but also more recent apartment blocks near the centre and the metro stations. Houses, numerous and often spacious, trade at a level close to that of apartments, which sets Croix apart from the more tightly built neighbouring municipalities. The figures come from the DVF database, the French record of notarised sales, which lists the 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 Croix market rests on lasting demand for high-end detached housing, rare in the Roubaix conurbation. The municipality attracts families and managers looking for a house with a garden without moving away from Lille, Roubaix or the employment hub of Villeneuve-d'Ascq. The closeness of the parc Barbieux, the metro service and the residential reputation of the town keep up this pressure, in particular on the large bourgeois houses and on the properties of the avenues bordering the park, where supply remains limited.
Faced with this demand, the supply of new building land is reduced in a municipality that is already largely built up, which supports values in the second-hand market. Energy performance is establishing itself as a negotiating criterion, the large brick residences being harder to heat and exposed to renovation work. The centre and the surroundings of the metro stations, more turned towards apartment blocks and town houses, offer more affordable entry points to the Croix market, while the park area remains in an upper segment.
Backing onto Roubaix and the parc Barbieux, Croix sits in the upper range of its part of the metropolitan area: above Roubaix, close to Villeneuve-d'Ascq, and below a residential municipality such as La Madeleine.
The name of Croix appears as early as 1066 in the founding charter of the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre in Lille. Long a farming village of the Weppes, the municipality passed definitively to France in 1668, under the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Set about 8 kilometres north-east of Lille, between Roubaix and Wasquehal, it moved into the textile industry in the 19th century. The British industrialist Isaac Holden set up a vast wool-combing works there, topped by a chimney 105 metres high, for a time the tallest in the world before it was cut down and then destroyed during the Second World War.
The industrial fortune left Croix a rare architectural heritage. The villa Cavrois, built in 1932 by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens for the Roubaix textile manufacturer Paul Cavrois, is a manifesto of the modernist style; restored by the French state, it is open to visitors today. Not far away, the villa Pollet recalls the family that founded La Redoute, the mail-order company born in neighbouring Roubaix. A whole neighbourhood of bourgeois residences and private mansions grew up along the avenues that border the park.
That park is Barbieux, shared with Roubaix. Born of the abandonment in 1858 of a plan for an underground canal, whose galleries were collapsing beneath the mont de Croix, it was laid out from 1878 onwards as an English-style garden of 34 hectares, nicknamed the Beau Jardin. Its lawns, its ornamental ponds and its notable trees give the municipality part of its green setting. Known for the wealth of its residents, Croix is today linked to Lille and to Roubaix by line 2 of the metro, which serves it at Croix-Centre and at Mairie de Croix.
Croix has around 20 566 inhabitants and shows a marked residential profile, inherited from the industrial textile bourgeoisie. Its housing stock is more given over to detached property than the rest of the Roubaix conurbation: brick town houses, large residences and villas sit alongside apartment blocks concentrated around the centre and the metro stations. Buyers are mainly families from the Lille metropolitan area looking for a house with a garden within reasonable distance of Lille, managers working in Roubaix or in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, and households drawn by the immediate closeness of the parc Barbieux. This sustained demand for detached housing explains why the Croix market holds above that of several neighbouring municipalities.
The average recorded in Croix comes out at 2 571 €/m², drawn from the sales registered with notaries and published in the DVF database, the French record of notarised sales. It is a municipal average, which adds together an apartment near the metro and a large bourgeois house near the parc Barbieux. The address, the size of the plot, the condition, the year of construction and the energy performance assessment weigh heavily in the gap between two properties. For a reliable value, it is better to rely on comparable sales than on the average alone.
The municipality reads in several moods. The avenues running alongside the parc Barbieux concentrate the large villas and the bourgeois residences, in the most sought-after area. The centre, around the town hall and the metro stations, mixes town houses and small apartment blocks, more affordable. The fringes towards Wasquehal and Roubaix offer a more mixed housing stock. These areas do not sell at the same level, the setting and the closeness of the park making part of the difference.
Line 2 of the metro serves Croix at two stations, Croix-Centre and Mairie de Croix, and links directly to Roubaix, Tourcoing and central Lille. The municipality also has two railway halts, Croix-Wasquehal and Croix-l'Allumette, on the Lille-Tourcoing regional line, as well as a tram service towards Roubaix. This good public transport connection weighs in the appeal of the municipality and supports demand for properties close to the stops.
Croix stands out for the strong presence of detached housing, a legacy of its bourgeois past: brick town houses, large residences and villas are numerous there. Apartments exist mainly in the centre and around the metro stations, in buildings that are often more recent. This large share of houses directs much of the demand towards detached property, with family buyers looking for a garden. Valuing a house depends a great deal on its plot, on its condition and on its situation.
As in the rest of the Métropole européenne de Lille, the metropolitan authority, letting a furnished tourist rental is regulated and calls for steps with the town hall, to be checked before any short-term letting plan. The energy performance assessment has become decisive, in particular on the large old brick houses that are expensive to heat. It is also useful to consult the planning documents and the statutory risk statement before a purchase, notably for properties set in the protected areas near the parc Barbieux.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).