I just read about …under 1% of the population owning half of England…and thought a swift bit of googling would tell equivalent data for France. But…no…Can anyone tell me, please??
I don’t know, and love my sleep too much to google the night away. However I image that France has a slightly more balanced ownership as the succession laws and rural practices have kept much more land in normal family ownership.
As an example, forestry cover is much higher than the UK - around 30% rather than 10%. And well over half of that is forests managed by the ONF but owned by the communes.
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I think it’s something to do with the concept of ‘ground rent’ in the UK. Many ‘owners’ of property in England (not Scotland) own only the leasehold to their property and pay a ground rent to the freeholder - usually on a 99-year lease. These freeholders are often large trusts or landed gentry (I believe the Duke of Westminster owns 50% of London - ie, the freehold). This will obviously falsify the results of such a survey.
This is not the case in France.