The average price per m² in Frasne is 1 826 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. For a house or villa, it is 2 466 €/m². About 12 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Frasne, on the peat bog plateau of the Haut-Doubs.
In Frasne, the benchmark price stands at 1 826 €/m² for an apartment, while a house comes out at 2 466 €/m². The gap, of roughly a third, comes from the nature of the two stocks: an older collective stock that accounts for close to 43 per cent of homes, against a market of Franche-Comté houses sought after by cross-border workers of the Haut-Doubs. These values come from DVF data, the transactions actually registered with notaries. The annual volume is low, which makes the average dependent on the condition and the insulation of each home.
House : 2 466 €/m²
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 Frasne market depends on three drivers. The first is cross-border employment in Switzerland, which structures the whole of the Haut-Doubs and gives a growing share of buyers their purchasing power. The second is the rail service, atypical for a municipality of this size and increasingly valued as travel costs weigh in household trade-offs. The third is the role of service town, which explains a share of apartments of 42,9 per cent, far above that of the farming villages of the plateau, and therefore a genuinely active market for collective housing.
The point to watch is the vacancy rate, at 8,3 per cent of the stock according to INSEE, higher than in municipalities under pressure. It signals a stock of older homes that are hard to let or to sell, often because of their energy performance in a climate where heating weighs heavily. The gap in value between renovated properties and energy-hungry ones should therefore keep widening, while moderate population growth, 2,0 per cent since 2017, creates no pressure able to absorb that stock quickly.
The municipality sits at the bottom of its area: its prices remain below those of Mouthe, Pontarlier and Métabief, held down by a market of plateau village rather than of ski resort.
The first written mentions of Frasne go back to the 12th century, with references appearing in church documents from 1090 onwards. The village grew under the lordships of La Rivière and Nozeroy, and the abbey of Sainte-Marie held land there documented as early as 1233. The territory occupies a plateau of the Haut-Doubs, between 810 and 882 metres of altitude, in a marked mountain climate: the annual average stands at around 7,1 degrees and rainfall comes close to 1 620 millimetres a year. These conditions shaped a livestock farming economy and a stocky Franche-Comté architecture.
The natural feature of the municipality lies in its peat bogs, today protected by the regional nature reserve of the Frasne-Bouverans peat bogs. These environments, formed since the last ice age, were long worked for peat before being recognised as a major ecological heritage of the Jura range. Several lakes complete this landscape of wet plateau. The built heritage includes the église Saint-Georges, chapels from the 17th century and the remains of former barns, witnesses of a farming economy organised around milk and timber.
The railway made Frasne a crossing point. The station is a junction where the routes towards Switzerland separate, heading for Bern on one side and Lausanne on the other, which gives a village of fewer than two thousand inhabitants a rail service out of all proportion to its size. The route nationale 471 also crosses the municipality. Frasne has 1 975 inhabitants in 2023, up 2,0 per cent since 2017, and works as a rural service town within the catchment area of Pontarlier.
According to INSEE, the French statistics institute, Frasne has 1 975 inhabitants, with 87,6 per cent main residences, 4,1 per cent second homes and 8,3 per cent vacant dwellings. The stock is split between 57,0 per cent houses and 42,9 per cent apartments, a share of collective housing that is unusual for a village of this size and linked to the role of service town held by the municipality. Owners occupy 68,8 per cent of main residences and have lived there for more than twenty years on average. Buyers are households of the Haut-Doubs, among them many people working in neighbouring Switzerland.
The benchmark price stands at 1 826 €/m² for an apartment and 2 466 €/m² for a house. These figures come from DVF data, the sales actually signed before notaries. They are averages: a recent home close to the station and an older, poorly insulated property sit on either side of these bases. The level remains clearly below that of Pontarlier, some twenty kilometres away.
It is the main asset of the municipality. The station is a rail junction where the routes towards Bern and towards Lausanne separate, an exceptional service for a village of fewer than two thousand inhabitants. It makes a daily commute towards Switzerland or towards Besançon possible without a car. Properties within walking distance of the station are among the most sought after on the local market.
Pontarlier is the main town of the Haut-Doubs, with its jobs and its services, and Métabief lives off the market of the ski resort and its second-home buyers. Frasne, for its part, is a plateau village lived in all year round: with only 4,1 per cent second homes according to INSEE, it escapes the premium that holiday use brings to the neighbouring upland municipalities.
Yes, as across the whole of the Haut-Doubs. The closeness of the border and the direct rail service towards Lausanne make the municipality accessible to people employed in Switzerland, whose incomes are measured against French prices. This demand supports values and shortens selling times on well-located properties, without having yet lifted the average level to that of the municipalities closer to the border.
The regional nature reserve of the Frasne-Bouverans peat bogs covers part of the territory and strictly governs land use within that perimeter. The mountain climate, with more than 1 600 millimetres of annual rainfall and harsh winters, makes energy performance and the condition of the roof decisive for the running cost of a home. The local planning document, the plan local d'urbanisme, can be consulted at the town hall.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).