The average price per m² in Voiron is 2 449 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. For a house or villa, it is 3 419 €/m². About 233 transactions are recorded each year.
Mood illustration of Voiron, in the Isère.
The average price for apartments in Voiron stands at 2 449 €/m². That average covers a largely collective stock: according to INSEE, the French national statistics institute, about 76 % of the dwellings in the municipality are apartments. The bourgeois stone blocks of the town centre and of Sermorens, inherited from the golden age of silk, do not trade at the same level as the large estates of the Brunetière sector or as the recent developments built towards the plain of the Morge. Houses, fewer in number, come out around 3 419 €/m². The amounts come from the DVF database, the French notarised sales database, which lists the transactions actually registered before notaries.
House : 3 419 €/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 first driver of the Voiron market is the demographic pressure coming from the Grenoble conurbation. The population of the municipality rose by about 8,6 % between 2017 and 2023 according to INSEE, a brisk pace for a medium-sized town. Voiron offers larger floor areas and a valley setting some thirty kilometres from Grenoble, with frequent regional services from a station that is the second busiest rail interchange of the department, and direct access to the A48 motorway. That combination feeds steady demand from families who work in the metropolitan area without wanting to live there.
The second driver lies in the structure of the stock and in local activity. Voiron is the seat of the Pays voironnais conurbation authority and concentrates the administrative, retail and school functions of the area, which supports a wide rental market, with 54 % tenants among main residences according to INSEE. Against that, the older stock born of the industrial period shows about 10 % vacant dwellings. The energy renovation of the town blocks and new building in the plain of the Morge are the two variables that will make the difference between properties in the coming years.
Voiron sits a little below Grenoble, clearly above Échirolles, and behind Chambéry. The municipality holds a middle position between the core of the Grenoble conurbation and the towns of the Alpine corridor.
The name of Voiron is thought to come from the Latin Voronis, the rocky summit, in reference to the hill of la Vouise that overlooks the town. The area was long a march disputed between the Dauphiné and Savoy: the town of Sermorens, today a mere district of the municipality, was the seat of a county and hosted an assembly in 853. Voiron was not definitively attached to the Dauphiné, and therefore to France, until 1355, at the end of a long territorial division. The local economy then rested on hemp, grown on the spot and turned into cloth sold at the fairs. King Louis XII confirmed in 1511 the tax privileges granted by the counts of Savoy, which lastingly established the cloth trade.
From the Second Empire, hemp cloth gave way to silk, worked on behalf of the Lyon merchants: on the eve of the First World War, weaving in Voiron kept close to 3 000 looms running. The gorges of the Morge, whose gradient supplied water power, took in forges, wire mills, tanneries and paper mills. Papermaking, born in the area around 1560 from linen and hemp rags, was industrialised at the end of the nineteenth century; in 1901, the industrialist André Navarre settled in Voiron and joined forces with the Paviot mill. The arrival of the railway in 1863, on the Lyon to Grenoble line, anchored the town in the regional industrial network. The chocolate maker Bonnat was founded there in 1884.
The church of Saint-Bruno, built to the plans of the diocesan architect Alfred Berruyer and opened for worship in 1872, gives the town its outline: its two neo-Gothic spires rise to 67 metres, the very length of the building. A few hundred metres away, the Chartreuse cellars, dug in 1860 and lengthened in 1866 to 164 metres, became the ageing place of the liqueur after the Carthusian fathers settled in Voiron in 1936, following the landslide that destroyed the Fourvoirie distillery in December 1935. Production was moved to Aiguenoire in 2018, but the cellars reopened to the public in 2022. From the 1960s, the town spread towards the plain, where the recent districts were built.
Voiron has 21 847 inhabitants and acts as the main town of the Pays voironnais, of which it is the seat. According to INSEE, the municipality counts about 12 500 dwellings, of which 88 % are main residences, 1,5 % second homes and 10 % vacant: the market is residential, with no tourist dimension. Again according to INSEE, owner-occupiers account for only 45 % of main residences, against 54 % tenants, a high rental proportion for a medium-sized town. Buyers are mainly households from the Voiron employment area and working people employed in Grenoble, who find here larger floor areas than in the Grenoble conurbation.
The average price for apartments in Voiron is 2 449 €/m². That figure comes from the DVF database, which lists the transfers actually registered before notaries, and not from online listings. It is a municipal average: between a town-centre apartment in the old core and a recent development built towards the plain, the gap can be marked. A valuation address by address remains necessary before setting a selling price.
The municipality reads as a few clearly identified wholes. The town centre and Sermorens, on either side of the church of Saint-Bruno, concentrate the stone town houses and the three- to four-storey blocks inherited from the silk trade. The Grand Brunetière-Criel sector, to the north, mixes blocks of the 1960s and 1970s, part of it classed as a priority district, with more recent detached houses. The extensions towards the plain of the Morge bring together the most recent developments.
Yes, and the gap is clear. The benchmark price of 2 449 €/m² applies to apartments, which form the bulk of the market since INSEE counts only about 22 % houses in the municipality. The house segment comes out around 3 419 €/m², or about 40 % higher. The relief explains part of that gap: building land is limited between the hill of la Vouise and the valley of the Morge.
Voiron lies some thirty kilometres north-west of Grenoble. The station, opened in 1863 on the Lyon to Grenoble line, is the second busiest rail interchange of the Isère and offers frequent regional services towards both metropolitan areas. The A48 motorway doubles that service, with the Champfeuillet and Moirans junctions. An urban bus network completes the internal service, backed up by the regional coaches.
The production workshop left Voiron for Aiguenoire, at Entre-Deux-Guiers, in 2018, after more than eighty years of presence. The town cellars, 164 metres long, were refurbished and reopened to the public in 2022 with a museum and a tasting space. The local economy does not depend on a single establishment: the Bonnat chocolate works, weaving, services and the main-town functions of the Pays voironnais keep up activity and demand for housing.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).