The average price per m² in Les Belleville is 8 463 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 266 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Les Belleville, Tarentaise valley in Savoie.
The average price recorded in Les Belleville stands at 8 463 €/m². This average covers a territory of more than 220 km² running from the main village, Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, at 1 450 metres of altitude, up to Val Thorens, at 2 300 metres. More than 85 % of the stock is apartments, mostly resort homes delivered since the 1960s. A studio at La Croisette in Les Menuires, an old hamlet chalet and a recent ski-in ski-out apartment in Val Thorens are not at the same level. The figures come from the DVF database (the French record of notarised property 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 Les Belleville market is almost entirely driven by winter tourism. The municipality houses around 60 000 tourist beds for 3 498 permanent residents, a ratio that shows the weight of the stay-over clientele. Membership of the 3 Vallées area and the altitude of Val Thorens, where the season runs from November to May, sustain strong demand from French, British and Northern European buyers. The resident population, for its part, has been broadly stable since 2017 according to INSEE: it is not local demography that makes the market, but visitor numbers.
New supply remains regulated. In a mountain zone, extending development and creating tourist units go through specific procedures, which limits large schemes and shifts the focus to renewing what exists. Recent projects mainly involve the refurbishment or rebuilding of blocks from the first generations of resorts, along with bringing back to market homes taken out of letting. In parallel, housing for seasonal workers remains a local concern, which absorbs part of the valley-floor stock and weighs on the supply available for sale.
A high-mountain municipality whose stock is almost entirely geared to holiday stays, Les Belleville sits far above Savoyard lowland towns such as Chambéry or Annecy. The gap narrows against another resort municipality such as Le Grand-Bornand, without disappearing.
The Belleville valley appears in the records as early as 1170, with the mention of the two parishes of Saint-Jean and Saint-Martin. Until the middle of the 20th century, it lived off mountain farming and livestock, organised in some twenty hamlets tiered along the Doron de Belleville. The baroque sanctuary of Notre-Dame-de-la-Vie, built between 1650 and 1750, and the parish church of Saint-Martin, rebuilt in the 17th century, bear witness to that period. Emigration then gradually emptied the valley: the population fell from around 3 000 inhabitants to close to 800 in the 1950s. It was this demographic decline that pushed local officials to look for another economic resource.
Nicolas Jay, mayor of Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, launched a tourism development study at the start of the 1960s, supported by the Savoyard politician Joseph Fontanet. Work on Les Menuires began in 1964 and the resort opened in 1967, at 1 850 metres, around the Croisette area. Val Thorens followed from 1973, at 2 300 metres, and became the highest resort in Europe. Saint-Martin-de-Belleville in turn acquired tourist facilities in 1983, on a less dense village-resort model. The three sites are linked to the 3 Vallées area, which explains the present shape of the municipality: older housing on the valley floor, blocks of flats at altitude.
The administrative organisation, for its part, is recent. On 1 January 2016, Saint-Martin-de-Belleville and Villarlurin merged to form the new municipality of Les Belleville. Saint-Jean-de-Belleville joined on 1 January 2019, bringing the territory to around 227 km², between 509 and 3 564 metres of altitude, one of the largest municipalities in France. The three resorts and all the hamlets now come under a single planning authority. This unity explains why the local market is read at a single municipal scale, when it in fact covers very different situations, from the year-round village to the high-altitude tourist residence.
According to INSEE (France's national statistics institute), the municipality of Les Belleville has 3 498 inhabitants for around 15 000 dwellings, of which only 1 645 are main residences: close to 88 % of the stock is second homes or occasional dwellings. Apartments account for more than 85 % of dwellings and 63 % of households in main residences are owner-occupiers. Buyers are therefore overwhelmingly non-residents: French families and European clients looking for a ski base, owners who let by the week during the season, investors in tourist residences. Permanent residents, often employed by the resorts and their services, tend to buy in the valley-floor hamlets.
The average price recorded is 8 463 €/m², calculated from transactions registered by notaries and published in the DVF database. It is a municipal average bringing together three distinct markets: Val Thorens, Les Menuires and Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, plus the hamlets at the bottom of the valley. A ski-in ski-out apartment at altitude and an older home several kilometres from the lifts are not comparable. Aspect, access to the ski area and the condition of the property weigh heavily in the gap.
The three sites do not sell in the same way. Val Thorens, at 2 300 metres, relies on a long season and reliable snow cover, with a stock that is almost entirely flats and compact floor areas. Les Menuires, at 1 850 metres, offers more volume and a wide range, from the refurbished 1970s studio to the recent developments of Reberty or Preyerand. Saint-Martin-de-Belleville keeps the fabric of a village lived in year-round, with chalets and older buildings, and a clientele looking for something other than a purpose-built resort.
It is possible, but supply is narrow. According to INSEE, houses account for about 14 % of the municipality's housing stock, against more than 85 % apartments. They are concentrated in the valley hamlets and around Saint-Martin-de-Belleville and Saint-Jean-de-Belleville, rather than in the high-altitude resorts. The number of sales remains low each year, which makes price references fewer, lengthens search times and makes valuation more dependent on the individual features of the property.
Access is through Moûtiers, whose station takes in direct seasonal trains from Paris, London and several European cities, then by the departmental road that climbs the valley to Saint-Martin, Les Menuires and Val Thorens. The quality of these links weighs on foreign demand, very present in the area. A property easily reached from the station, or served by the resort shuttles, gains more in value than an isolated home during the busy winter period.
Three points come up often. Many homes are bound by a commercial lease with a tourist residence operator, which limits personal use and governs resale. High-altitude co-ownerships bear heavy charges, linked to heating, snow clearance and maintenance in a high-mountain climate. Finally, a large share of the stock dates from the 1960s and 1970s and is subject to refurbishment programmes: check the state of the common parts and the works voted before committing.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).