Market Analysis
Q2 2026 Riviera Hinterland Market Report
Sales volume, median prices and year-on-year trajectory across eight communes — Valbonne, Mougins, Biot, Grasse, Opio, Châteauneuf-de-Grasse, Le Rouret and Roquefort-les-Pins — sourced from the latest DVF release by the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques.
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Q2 2026 in five numbers
The eight communes covered by this report represent the entire premium villa belt of the Alpes-Maritimes hinterland: Valbonne, Mougins, Biot, Grasse, Opio, Châteauneuf-de-Grasse, Le Rouret and Roquefort-les-Pins. Together they recorded 2,764 house sales (built surface ≥ 100 m²) in the official DVF database between January 2020 and June 2025 — the latest period for which DGFiP has fully published transaction records.
Five headline numbers frame this quarter's market:
- 91 villa sales recorded in the last twelve months across all eight communes — roughly 11 per commune per year, consistent with the long-run rate.
- Mougins remains the price ceiling at a €1,145,000 overall median sale price and €6,625/m². Year-to-date 2025 figures put it at €7,111/m² — flat versus 2024's €7,100/m².
- Grasse is the value anchor at €630,000 median price and €4,347/m² overall. Even after a +27% five-year run, it sits at roughly two-thirds the Mougins ceiling.
- Five of eight towns posted positive year-on-year in the latest cycle (2023 to 2024 median €/m²); three posted small declines, all between -1% and -4%.
- Châteauneuf-de-Grasse is the year-to-date 2025 surprise at €1,333,000 median sale price (10 transactions), the highest of any commune in the sample — driven by larger plots transacting in the upper bracket.
The rest of this report unpacks the data commune by commune, then closes with practical implications for buyers and sellers heading into Q3 and Q4 2026.
Methodology and data sources
All transaction figures in this report come from DVF (Demandes de Valeurs Foncières), the official French real estate transactions database published twice a year by the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques (DGFiP) under the Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab). DVF records every property transaction lodged at notarial completion, including the sale price, surface, date and commune. The data used in this report comes from the April 2026 DVF release; the latest fully-recorded transaction date in the source dataset is 27 June 2025.
The figures are filtered to isolate the villa market: detached houses only, built surface ≥ 100 m², sale transactions only (excludes exchanges, gifts, and most apartments and commercial property). DVF does not cover Alsace-Moselle or Mayotte, which is not relevant to the Riviera coverage area.
What DVF prices include and exclude matters for interpretation. They include any seller-side agency fees built into the agreed price and VAT where applicable, but they exclude buyer-side agency fees and notaire fees (typically 7-8% on resale property and 2-3% on new build). A €1,000,000 DVF figure is therefore not what a buyer wrote a cheque for at the notaire — the all-in cost is closer to €1,075,000 after buyer-side acquisition costs.
Median prices are used throughout rather than averages. In a small-sample, high-variance market like Riviera villas, a single trophy sale can pull an average up by 15-20% in a quarter; the median is far more resilient to outliers and gives a truer reading of what the typical buyer is paying for the typical property.
Five-year change refers to the percentage change in median €/m² between 2020 and 2025; year-on-year change refers to the change between 2023 and 2024 medians, the most recent full-calendar pair available. The next DGFiP release in October 2026 will allow us to publish a 2024→2025 YoY figure once the second half of 2025 is fully recorded.
Five-year context: who moved most, and why
The five-year picture (2020 to 2025) is what gives Q2 2026 its frame of reference. Across the eight communes, ranked by change in median €/m²:
- Mougins +40% — from €5,074/m² in 2020 to €7,111/m² in 2025
- Châteauneuf-de-Grasse +38%
- Grasse +27% — value market caught up
- Valbonne +25% — strong but no longer leading the pack
- Le Rouret +25%
- Opio +23%
- Roquefort-les-Pins +17%
- Biot +6% — the supply-constrained outlier
Two patterns explain most of this dispersion. The first is the supply story: communes with broad land available for villa construction (Mougins, Châteauneuf, Valbonne) ran with demand because the pipeline could keep absorbing transactions; communes where the village core dominates and the PLU is restrictive (Biot, in particular) saw demand outstrip supply but couldn't translate that into more transacted units, so the per-m² premium tightened without a major price escalation. The second pattern is the value-chasing flow: as Mougins crossed the €6,000/m² then €7,000/m² thresholds in 2022 and 2023, a meaningful share of relocating buyers redirected to Grasse and Roquefort-les-Pins, which is why those markets posted strong five-year gains from a much lower base.
Biot deserves its own footnote. The +6% headline understates what is actually happening: median €/m² in Biot for the last twelve months sits at €7,222, ahead of Mougins on a like-for-like basis. The five-year median is dragged down by the high transaction volume of 2020-2022 at lower price points. In other words, Biot's recent transactions are smaller, higher-quality houses inside the village walls or on protected hillsides — the buyer cohort has shifted toward heritage-led purchases at the top of the curve.
Valbonne
Valbonne posted 266 villa transactions over 2020-2025, the third-highest count in the sample after Mougins (747) and Grasse (648). Median sale price stands at €914,255 with median €/m² at €6,142. The 2023→2024 YoY change was +12% on €/m², the strongest of any commune that year, and five-year change runs at +25%.
2025 year-to-date data shows the heat coming off. The €/m² has eased to €6,131 (-0.2% versus 2024's €6,800), and median price has dropped to €780,000 across 14 recorded transactions. This is not a market falling — it is a market that ran +12% in a year, hit a ceiling on what international buyers were willing to commit at the Valbonne premium, and is now consolidating before the next cycle. The composition of recent sales matters: the 14 year-to-date 2025 transactions skew toward smaller properties (median size shifted down ~10 m²), pulling the median price lower even as €/m² holds.
For buyers, Valbonne in Q2 2026 sits in a rare window. The 2024 €/m² peak (€6,800) is unlikely to be matched in 2025; the 2025 partial-year median (€6,131) is roughly where 2022 closed. Anyone who has been priced out at the top of the previous cycle has a brief opportunity to enter at 2022 levels with five years of subsequent infrastructure investment (Sophia Antipolis expansion, the new tram extension feasibility study, the Valbonne-Mouans-Sartoux bus link upgrades) already in the price.
Mougins
Mougins is the largest market in the sample at 747 villa transactions over 2020-2025, the highest median sale price at €1,145,000, and the highest five-year gain at +40% on €/m². It is also the only commune where the last-12-month €/m² (€8,200) sits materially above the five-year median (€6,625) — though that figure rests on just 22 transactions and is heavily influenced by a small cluster of high-end sales in the Bréguières and Roquefort-les-Pins-adjacent estates.
The 2023→2024 YoY change was -3% on €/m², the second-largest decline in the sample. Year-to-date 2025 is essentially flat at €7,111/m² (40 transactions) versus 2024's €7,100/m². The takeaway: Mougins broke the €7,000/m² ceiling in 2023 (€7,335/m²), then settled into a holding pattern. The market is digesting the +40% it ran from 2020-2023 rather than continuing the climb.
What is happening underneath the headline number is more interesting than the number itself. The Mougins market is now segmenting: top-end Bréguières and Saint-Martin estates routinely transact above €10,000/m², while the village periphery and Mougins-le-Haut apartments-and-small-house segment sits closer to €5,000/m². Buyers who frame Mougins as a single market will miss this. For a commune with the strongest cumulative five-year gain, the next twelve months are likely about sector mix rather than absolute price movement.
Biot
Biot is the most interesting commune in the eight-town sample, and the easiest to misread from the headline number alone. 262 transactions over 2020-2025, median sale price €847,500, median €/m² €5,804, five-year change just +6%. On paper, Biot looks like the laggard.
The last-12-month picture tells the opposite story: median price €1,069,144 across 12 transactions, median €/m² €7,222 — ahead of Mougins on per-m² basis. Year-to-date 2025 has 19 transactions at €1,140,000 median price and €7,182/m². What is happening is a clear segmentation: Biot's transaction volume in 2020-2022 was dominated by mid-range properties (median €/m² in 2020 was €5,474), while 2024 and 2025 are dominated by smaller, higher-quality village houses and protected-hillside estates that transact at a much higher €/m².
The structural reason is the PLU. Biot's land-use plan severely restricts new villa construction within the historic perimeter and on protected agricultural land, which limits supply growth. Buyers who want a Biot postcode increasingly compete for a fixed pool of village houses and discreet hillside parcels, pushing the per-m² premium for that subset well above the long-run average. The Biot of 2026 is two markets stitched together: a thin, expensive top tier and a thinning mid-market that is steadily being absorbed.
Grasse
Grasse is the value anchor of the hinterland. 648 villa transactions over 2020-2025 (second-highest count after Mougins), median sale price €630,000, median €/m² €4,347, five-year change +27%. The 2025 partial-year figures put the market at €4,753/m² across 46 transactions — essentially flat versus 2024 (€4,571/m², +4% YoY).
Two things to understand about Grasse. First, the commune is geographically vast and includes radically different sub-markets. The old town and Plascassier sit at one extreme (small village houses, limited supply, premium per m²); the hillside hamlets of Magagnosc and Saint-Jacques sit at the high end (panoramic villas, more land); and the rural plateau toward Cabris and Saint-Vallier sits at the other extreme (large parcels, lower €/m², longer commute). The €630,000 median spans all of this and should never be used to estimate a specific property.
Second, Grasse has been the beneficiary of value-flight from Mougins and Valbonne over the past three years. Buyers who set out wanting a Mougins postcode and recoiled at €7,000/m² often end up viewing in Magagnosc or Plascassier and finding €4,500-5,500/m² for comparable build quality and equivalent commute time to Sophia Antipolis. The +27% five-year gain is largely this redirected demand catching up with the value gap. Where Grasse goes next depends on whether that arbitrage keeps drawing buyers — current volumes suggest it does.
Opio
Opio is the smallest market by transaction count in the sample (135 villa sales over 2020-2025, roughly 23 per year on average). Median sale price stands at €1,030,000 and median €/m² at €6,171 — almost identical to Valbonne despite the much smaller transaction base. Five-year change runs at +23%.
The 2023→2024 YoY change was -4% on €/m², the largest of any commune in the sample. The 2024 partial picture is unusual: 38 transactions at €6,800/m² and €971,800 median, then the last-12-month window shows only 3 transactions at €4,250/m² and €708,000 median — figures that should not be over-interpreted given the tiny sample. 2025 year-to-date returns to more typical territory at €6,497/m² across 9 transactions.
Opio's market is dominated by a small number of high-quality estates clustered around the Opio Golf Club and the rural lanes south of the village. The thin transaction volume means a single estate sale moves the median sharply, and the last-12-month outlier most likely reflects two or three sub-€800k sales of smaller properties on the village edge rather than a structural market shift. For buyers, Opio is the prototypical reminder that DVF medians on small samples need triangulation against active listings and ground-level intel — a single quarter rarely tells the full story.
Châteauneuf-de-Grasse
Châteauneuf-de-Grasse is the Q2 2026 surprise. 175 transactions over 2020-2025, median sale price €1,100,000, median €/m² €5,759, five-year change +38% — the second-highest in the sample. The 2023→2024 YoY change was +10% on €/m², and 2025 year-to-date shows the strongest median sale price of any commune at €1,333,000 across 10 transactions, with €/m² at €5,745.
That €1,333,000 figure deserves scrutiny. It is consistent with what the agency is seeing on the ground: the recent transactions are concentrated on larger plots (>2,000 m² land) with proper villa construction, often with pools and at the upper end of the commune's housing stock. The €/m² staying flat while median price jumps confirms this read — buyers are paying more in absolute terms for larger properties, not paying more per square metre for the same property.
Châteauneuf benefits from a combination that is hard to replicate elsewhere in the hinterland: village authenticity (the historic centre is genuinely lived-in), elevated views over the Loup valley, proximity to both Sophia Antipolis (15 minutes) and the coast (25 minutes), and a residential mix that has not been overrun by holiday rentals. For buyers seeking a primary or part-time residence with serious land, Châteauneuf at €5,700-6,000/m² in 2025 is one of the better quality-to-price plays in the sample, and the data suggests the market has caught up to that.
Le Rouret
Le Rouret has 147 transactions over 2020-2025, median sale price €760,000, median €/m² €5,209, five-year change +25%. The 2023→2024 YoY was +5%; the 2025 partial picture is unusual at €3,893/m² across 12 transactions, with median sale price holding at €645,130.
The drop in 2025 €/m² is a sample-composition effect rather than a market crash. The 12 transactions year-to-date include several larger-than-average plot sales (Le Rouret is a relatively rural commune with substantial plots being normal), and the per-m² figure is heavily influenced by the land-to-built-surface ratio. The median sale price holding above €645,000 confirms the market is not falling — it is just that the recent sample tilts toward properties where land dominates the value calculation.
Le Rouret's appeal is straightforward: village authenticity without the Mougins or Valbonne brand premium, generous plots, schools that serve a stable family demographic, and a fifteen-minute drive to both Sophia and the autoroute. It is the commune that quietly attracts buyers who looked at Châteauneuf or Opio and wanted slightly more for slightly less. The five-year +25% gain is in line with the broader hinterland average, suggesting the market is fairly priced rather than over- or under-reacting.
Roquefort-les-Pins
Roquefort-les-Pins has 384 transactions over 2020-2025 — the fourth-highest count after Mougins, Grasse and Valbonne. Median sale price €867,385, median €/m² €5,624, five-year change +17% (the lowest in the sample after Biot's supply-constrained +6%). The 2023→2024 YoY change was -1%, essentially flat.
The 2025 year-to-date data is encouraging: 27 transactions at €6,199/m² (+9% versus 2024's €5,710/m²) and median sale price of €920,000. The market is not following the 2024 retrenchment that Mougins and Opio experienced — instead, it is quietly catching back up after lagging the broader hinterland through the +40%/+38% boom of Mougins and Châteauneuf.
Roquefort-les-Pins is geographically central — it sits roughly equidistant from Sophia Antipolis, Mougins, Valbonne and the coast — which makes it the default fallback for buyers whose first-choice commune got too expensive. The +9% 2025 partial-year suggests that fallback flow is starting to translate into measurable price growth. Roquefort in 2026 looks like Valbonne in 2022: still affordable, still under-the-radar, and structurally positioned for further appreciation as the surrounding markets stabilise at higher levels.
What this means for Q3 and Q4 2026
Three patterns from the data are worth carrying into the back half of 2026.
The premium tier is digesting. Mougins, Valbonne, Opio and Châteauneuf all ran hard from 2020 to 2024 and are now in consolidation phases of varying intensity. Mougins essentially flat year-on-year, Valbonne consolidating after a +12% 2024, Opio looking thin on volume. None of these are markets in decline; all are markets where the next 12 months are unlikely to repeat the previous 24. Buyers who held out during the run-up have a window. Sellers who price as if 2023 conditions still hold will find their listings ageing.
The value tier is catching up. Grasse, Roquefort-les-Pins and the value sub-markets of Le Rouret have absorbed the displacement from the premium tier and continue to show measurable growth. The €/m² gap between Mougins and Grasse has narrowed less than the absolute price gap might suggest — Grasse buyers are paying meaningfully more per m² than they were in 2020, just from a lower base. This catching-up is not yet exhausted; Roquefort's +9% partial-2025 €/m² is the data point most likely to recur.
Biot is its own market. The +6% five-year figure and the €7,222 last-12-month €/m² cannot both be true unless the market is segmenting hard between a thin top tier and a thinning middle. That is exactly what is happening. For buyers, this means Biot prices are not "behind" the hinterland — the affordable Biot of 2020 is largely gone, and the Biot transacting in 2025 is the heritage-led top end. Frame expectations accordingly.
One caveat worth restating: DVF is a six-month-lagged dataset, and the second half of 2025 is not yet fully recorded. The October 2026 DGFiP release will refine these figures — particularly the 2024→2025 YoY which is currently calculated against only partial 2025 data. We will publish a Q4 2026 update in late October 2026 once those numbers land.
Sources
- DVF (Demandes de Valeurs Foncières) — Direction Générale des Finances Publiques, April 2026 release. files.data.gouv.fr/geo-dvf/latest/csv/. Licence Ouverte 2.0 (Etalab). Latest fully-recorded transaction date in the source dataset: 27 June 2025.
- Per-commune DVF detail pages: Valbonne · Mougins · Biot · Grasse · Opio · Châteauneuf-de-Grasse · Le Rouret · Roquefort-les-Pins
- Methodology and corrections policy: La Reserve | Riviera editorial standards
- Glossary of French real estate terms used in this report: DVF, PLU, frais de notaire, surface bâtie and more
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