The average price per m² in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois is 4 714 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 179 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, on the edge of Geneva in Haute-Savoie.
The average price recorded in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois stands at 4 714 €/m². This average covers a municipality where apartments account for close to 86 % of the homes according to INSEE, the French national statistics institute, with a high proportion of recent construction: more than a third of main residences date from the years 2006 to 2020. The old centre, the hamlets of Thairy, Cervonnex or Norcier and the apartment schemes around the station and the Avenue de Genève do not sit at the same level. The immediate closeness of the Geneva border weighs on all values. 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 demographic. The population gained close to 14 % between 2017 and 2023 according to INSEE, around two thousand additional inhabitants in six years, a pace rare for a town of this size. That growth comes from jobs in Geneva, which draw French households and expatriates looking for a home cheaper than in Switzerland while staying a few kilometres from their work. The town thus acts as a gateway to the French side of the Geneva area, with continuous pressure on the existing stock and a vacancy rate that stays moderate given that momentum.
The second driver is transport provision. The opening of the Léman Express in December 2019 connected the station to the cross-border network, and the extension of the Geneva tram, under way on the French side since 2022, plans around six kilometres of line, part of it on municipal territory, with several new stops. These works come with a transformation of the Avenue de Genève and property schemes around the station. This kind of development redistributes value within the municipality: properties close to a stop or to the interchange gradually stand apart from the areas that depend on the car.
Driven by jobs in Geneva, Saint-Julien-en-Genevois sits clearly above the towns on the shore of Lake Geneva such as Annemasse or Thonon-les-Bains. It remains, on the other hand, below the level of the department capital, Annecy.
The town appears in written sources of the 12th century under the name Posterla, the postern, in reference to the passage it commands between the Salève and the Vuache. Its name comes from Saint Julian of Brioude, a Christian martyr of the 3rd century. The place long belonged to the Genevois, a province of the duchy of Savoy, from which it keeps its suffix. On 21 July 1603, the treaty of Saint-Julien ended the wars between Geneva and the Savoy of Charles Emmanuel I, a few months after the failure of the Escalade. On 1 March 1814, a battle set French troops against the Austrian forces of the sixth coalition before the town.
The attachment of Savoy to France, approved by plebiscite in 1860, lastingly placed the municipality on the immediate border of Geneva. The official name Saint-Julien-en-Genevois was fixed by decree in 1893. A tramway linked Geneva to Saint-Julien from 1889 to 1938, the first regular connection between the two sides of the border. The railway, for its part, runs on the line from Longeray-Léaz to Le Bouveret, which skirts Geneva to the south and still serves the station today. The municipality absorbed in 1924 the hamlet of Cervonnex, detached from Feigères, then merged with Thairy on 16 February 1965. On 16 August 1944, it was the first municipality in Haute-Savoie liberated from occupation.
The present shape of the town took form from the 1960s, when jobs in Geneva drew a new population. Saint-Julien went from around 1 300 inhabitants at the start of the 20th century to 16 222 in 2023 according to INSEE, with a rise of close to 14 % since 2017 alone. The chief town of an arrondissement and the seat of a sub-prefecture, it built its housing stock through successive waves of apartment schemes around the centre and the Avenue de Genève. The Bardonnex motorway border post, on the A40, and the station on the Léman Express network opened in December 2019 now organise daily travel.
According to INSEE, the French national statistics institute, Saint-Julien-en-Genevois has 16 222 inhabitants for 9 148 homes, of which 7 675 are main residences, close to 84 % of the stock. Second homes account for only 5,7 %: the town is lived in all year round, which sets it apart from the tourist municipalities of Haute-Savoie. Apartments account for around 86 % of the homes and 43 % of households own their main residence, against 54,5 % tenants, of whom 14,5 % in social housing. Buyers are mainly working households, often cross-border workers employed in Geneva, along with first-time buyers looking for an alternative to the prices of the Geneva conurbation.
The average price recorded is 4 714 €/m², calculated from sales registered by notaries and published in the DVF database. It is a municipality-wide average that covers varied situations: an older apartment in the centre, a recent home near the station and a hamlet house are not valued in the same way. The year of construction, energy performance and distance to the border explain a good part of the differences.
The town combines a dense centre, organised around the Avenue de Genève and the Place du Crêt, with several hamlets that have stayed distinct: Thairy, joined in 1965, Cervonnex, Norcier, Lathoy, Crache and Ternier. The centre and the area around the station concentrate the apartment buildings and the developments of the last twenty years. The hamlets, on higher ground towards the Salève or out on the plateau, offer mainly detached houses and a looser fabric.
It depends on them heavily. The municipality lies about ten kilometres from the centre of Geneva and a majority of its working residents cross the border each day to work in Switzerland. Incomes received in Swiss francs support the borrowing capacity of households and keep demand at a high level for a town of this size. This dependence also makes the market sensitive to the exchange rate and to the state of employment in Geneva.
Three routes exist side by side. The station, served by the Léman Express network opened in December 2019, links the municipality to Annemasse and to the rest of the cross-border network. The A40 motorway and the Bardonnex border post provide road access, with queues at peak times. Cross-border bus lines round out the offer, and the extension of the Geneva tram to the town centre, under construction since 2022, is due to restore a link that disappeared in 1938.
The stock is overwhelmingly in apartment buildings: according to INSEE, around 86 % of the homes are apartments and fewer than 14 % are houses. The supply of houses is concentrated in the hamlets and in the estates built before the densification of the centre, which makes it narrow against demand. House searches often turn towards the neighbouring municipalities of the Geneva area, at the cost of moving a little further from the border and the station.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).