Number of SCIs in France in 2026: 1,908,600 active in Insee's Sirene register

How many SCIs, depending on your question?#

The right answer therefore depends on the question. To know how many SCIs exist legally, the benchmark is 1,908,566. To know how many have assets to manage, insure or pass on, it is 1,352,109. To know how many large accounts exist, it is 89,166.

Why does the number of SCIs vary from one source to another?#

The register counts the SCIs that exist on paper: 1,908,566. Those that actually hold a property are fewer: 1,352,109 of the 1,850,684 active SCIs formed before 2026, in the cadastre of January 1, 2026. That gap is what matters for a prospecting list.

The other gaps come from what is being counted. Figures may count all SCIs that exist on a given date (the stock) or those formed during the year (the flow), use different filters (legal form or activity code), and refer to different dates. We found no Insee publication giving the total number of SCIs at a given date.

What other sources say

Publication	Figure	What it counts	Gap with 1,908,566
"More than 700,000 SCIs," attributed to Insee	more than 700,000	Scope not stated; no primary source found	Much lower figure, scope not stated
Le Revenu, April 2024	1.1 million	SCIs, out of 6.6 million companies in the commercial register; no source cited for this stock	Different scope or date
fiscalite-sci.com, 2024	about 1.4 million	Active SCIs in 2024, no source cited	Scope not stated
inSCI, May 2026	1,787,379	Active SCIs as of January 1, 2026; source cited: an online business database	Different date, scope not stated
nouvelles-entreprises.com, November 2, 2026	1,828,043	Active registered offices in the Sirene register, real estate sector page	Probably a different scope: our SCIs under activity codes 68.20A and 68.20B alone number 1,827,678, within 365
North Data, 2024	more than 2 million	Active SCIs in 2024	Different scope or date
Infogreffe, 2025 report	81,425	SCI registrations in 2025: a flow, not a stock	Different measure; within 15 of our count excluding Alsace-Moselle (three eastern départements, French county-level areas with their own local registry system) (81,440)
Transparency International France, 2023	1.3 million SCIs owning 2.89 million plots	SCIs that own property in the cadastre	Different measure and different date (end of 2022), consistent with ours: 1,420,074 SCIs in the file owning units or plots (including SCIs recorded as closed) and 2,796,627 plots

So there is no single "right" figure that invalidates the others. Each answers its own question: how many SCIs exist, how many are formed, how many own a property. Insee Première No. 2092 counts 1,165,800 businesses formed in 2025, including 301,300 companies, without breaking out SCIs.

How much revenue do SCIs generate?#

Almost no data exists: only 7,434 active SCIs, or 0.39%, have accounts in the public financial ratios dataset, and 1,937 of them report revenue for a fiscal year ending in 2023 or later. In this small group, half report revenue below €55,640, and the top 10% by revenue account for 84% of the €1.66 billion total. An SCI's true size lies in its property holdings, which we measure at level 4 by the number of properties held.

Which NAF or APE code for an SCI?#

The legal category gives the company's form. The NAF code (the French activity classification code), also called an APE code, identifies its main activity. An SCI has both, and they are not the same thing.

Two codes cover almost all active SCIs. Code 68.20B, "rental of land and other real estate," covers 1,619,359 SCIs, or 84.8%. Code 68.20A, "rental of housing," covers 208,319, or 10.9%.

The code recorded in Sirene does not guarantee what the SCI actually does. To choose the right code when forming an SCI, or to check yours, read our article on the NAF code of an SCI. It also gives the breakdown by formation period and by département.

A useful point for anyone prospecting: the code does not say whether the SCI holds a property. Among SCIs under 68.20B, 74.7% hold one in the cadastre. Among those under 68.20A, only 63.7%.

Market vocabulary, in plain terms#

Thirteen terms come up in this study: SCI, manager, unit, split ownership, IR or IS... The collapsed table defines them in plain terms.

The terms, defined simply

Term	Simple definition
SCI	Société civile immobilière: a company whose partners hold shares and pool one or more properties, to rent them out, manage them or pass them on.
SCCV	Société civile immobilière de construction-vente (build-to-sell SCI): a company formed to construct buildings and then sell them. It has its own code and is not in the SCI total.
Legal category	The four-digit Sirene code that describes the company's form. SCIs carry 6540.
Legal unit, SIREN number	The company as the law sees it, identified by a nine-digit number, the SIREN number (the French company ID). It is the unit counted here.
Manager	The person or company that runs the SCI and signs on its behalf. This is the contact to reach.
Partner	Whoever holds shares of the SCI. An SCI has at least two partners.
Unit (local)	As the cadastre counts it: a home, a store or an office, but also a garage, a parking space or a separate enclosed garage. A unit is therefore not necessarily a dwelling.
Plot (parcelle)	A unit of the cadastral map: a piece of land, or the ground on which a building stands.
Full ownership	The complete right to a property: use and ownership together.
Usufruct, bare ownership	Split ownership (démembrement) of a property: one party has the use and the rent (usufruct), the other owns the property without the use (bare ownership).
Building lease (bail à construction)	A long-term contract on land: one party rents out the land (the lessor), and the other builds on it (the lessee). An SCI can be either.
SCI taxed under IR or IS	An SCI taxed under IR is taxed through its partners' personal income tax; an SCI taxed under IS pays corporate income tax. This choice does not appear in the Sirene register.
Registered office	The company's official address. It is not necessarily where its properties are.

Level 1. The universe: 1,955,644 real estate and construction companies governed by French civil law#

Every company in the Sirene register carries a four-digit code that describes its legal form. Insee's list of legal categories reserves 6540 for the "Société civile immobilière." Our number counts this category only.

A family SCI has no code of its own. Insee's list has five categories of real estate and construction companies governed by French civil law (sociétés civiles), from 6540 to 6544, and none identifies family-owned companies separately. An SCI formed by members of the same family is therefore an SCI 6540 like any other: it is in the total.

Other types of SCI have their own code and stay out of the total. The table gives the figures for each scope, taken from the same file.

We count legal units, identified by their SIREN number. An SCI that has a secondary location (a place of business separate from its registered office) is therefore counted once.

Level 2. Active SCIs: 1,908,566#

"Active" has a precise meaning in Sirene. A dormant SCI that has not been deregistered remains active, and a dissolved SCI is counted until it is deregistered. In other words, the number measures SCIs that exist legally, not those with real economic activity. The next level measures exactly that activity.

An SCI almost never employs anyone: fewer than 4 in 1,000 report at least one employee in the Sirene register (6,877 as of November 1, 2026). To reach an SCI, you therefore go through its manager.

The cross-checks that follow use the stock of September 2026, which has a few thousand fewer SCIs; the Method section provides the details.

Level 3. Real activity: 1,352,109 SCIs hold a property#

This is the measure specific to this study. We matched each SCI, by its SIREN number, to the cadastre files that the DGFiP, the French tax administration, publishes for legal entities. The property records reflect the situation as of January 1, 2026.

Of the 1,850,684 active SCIs formed before 2026, 1,352,109 hold at least one unit or plot, or 73.1%. Among them, 1,297,871 have a built unit and 54,238 a plot only, with no unit. The other 498,575, or more than 1 in 4, have no property in their own name in the cadastre.

The figure depends heavily on the age of the SCI.

Chart data

Year formed	SCIs with no property	SCIs in the group	Share with no property
Before 2006	232,289	615,775	37.7%
2006 to 2015	113,870	460,487	24.7%
2016 to 2022	87,037	542,966	16.0%
2023 and 2024	28,210	145,995	19.3%
2025	37,169	85,461	43.5%

37.7% of the SCIs formed before 2006 no longer hold any property. These are probably dormant companies that were never dissolved: this cause is not measured. For SCIs formed between 2016 and 2022, the share drops to 16.0%.

It climbs back to 43.5% for SCIs formed in 2025. One possibility is that the purchase had not yet been recorded as of January 1, or that the project fell through. Here too, the cause is not measured.

Limit: an SCI can have assets with no property in its own name in the cadastre, for example a building under a finance lease or shares in another company; it counts here among the SCIs with no property.

In practice: if you sell a service related to real estate holdings (insurance, property management, advice or estate planning), first remove the SCIs with no property in their own name from your list. You drop more than 1 SCI in 4 before the first contact.

Level 4. Account size: how many properties per SCI?#

The number of properties held is the best indicator of an account's size. Half of the SCIs that own property hold 2 units or fewer, and 1 in 3 holds just one (438,752). On average, an SCI holds 3.9.

A unit here is a unit in the cadastre: a home, a store or an office, but also a garage, a parking space or a separate enclosed garage. The unit count is therefore not a count of dwellings.

Chart data

Units held	SCIs	Share of SCIs	Units	Share of units
1	438,752	33.8%	438,752	8.8%
2 to 4	581,361	44.8%	1,556,159	31.1%
5 to 9	188,592	14.5%	1,204,080	24.0%
10 to 49	86,009	6.6%	1,409,347	28.1%
50 or more	3,157	0.2%	399,390	8.0%

Large accounts are rare but account for a large share of the properties. 89,166 SCIs, or 6.9% of the SCIs that own a unit, hold 10 or more. Together they hold 1,808,737 units, or 36% of the units of active SCIs.

The same pattern appears among the largest SCIs: 1% of SCIs hold 14.5% of the units, and 10% hold 43%. The largest SCI holds 17,019.

Among households, Insee finds that the use of SCIs rises with wealth: 5% of owners of two dwellings hold at least one through an SCI, versus 70% of owners of 10 or more dwellings (Insee Première No. 2046, April 2025).

In practice: a high-value offer (wealth management, financing, insurance for a portfolio) targets the 89,166 SCIs with 10 or more units. A low-price, high-volume offer targets the 438,752 SCIs with a single unit.

Level 5. Who decides: managers, partners and companies that hold SCIs#

Declared managers and partners#

The national business register, kept by INPI (the French intellectual property office), names the declared managers and partners of each SCI. We reviewed its records for 1,874,689 active SCIs, or 98% of them, using manager and partner information collected mostly in September 2026. A little over half of these SCIs list 2 managers or partners, and more than 1 in 3 lists 3 or more. In nearly 1 in 6, at least one listed manager or partner is a company.

The same person often manages or holds a stake in several SCIs. At least 4 SCIs in 10 have a manager or partner who also appears in another active SCI in the same département (780,720 out of 1,850,149). Nearly 1 in 12 has a manager or partner in common with at least 4 other SCIs in that département. It is a minimum: we only count SCIs in the same département. In practice: a list of SCIs holds far fewer decision-makers than rows. Group it by manager before prospecting.

Some SCIs are managed by a company: 47,804 in all. Among these managing companies, 362 each manage at least 10 SCIs, or 8,274 SCIs in all.

The age of decision-makers#

These people are often older. Half are 53 or older, and nearly 1 in 5 is 70 or older. In 1 SCI in 10 (190,514), all declared individuals of known age are 70 or older. In practice: these are probably the SCIs where transfers of ownership will become an issue first, a matter for notaires (French legal professionals who handle property transactions and estate matters) and wealth management advisers.

SCI networks#

An SCI has no retail brand name. The "chains" of this market are companies that appear among the managers or partners of hundreds of SCIs. 2,342 of them each appear in 10 or more SCIs, including 84 in 50 or more SCIs.

The table lists the top six whose type is established by public evidence.

Among the top 15 companies, 9 remain classified as "type not established": they are holding companies whose group affiliations have not been publicly verified. We do not tie them to any group.

In practice: approach an operator that holds several hundred SCIs as a single account, rather than contacting each SCI separately.

Level 6. Specialties: use, rights and property type#

The first specialty is the use recorded in the NAF code: 68.20B, rental of land and other real estate, and 68.20A, rental of housing. They are described above.

The cadastre provides three further ways to segment the market.

Plots. 835,592 active SCIs also appear in the plots file (a piece of land, or the ground under their buildings), and 54,238 have plots only, with no unit.

Split ownership. 15,068 SCIs, or 1.2% of the SCIs that own a unit, hold a unit in usufruct or bare ownership: 14,163 have a unit in bare ownership and 971 in usufruct, and one SCI can have both. This is a narrowly defined target segment for notaires and wealth management advisers.

Building leases. 5,978 SCIs are parties to building leases, either as lessors or as lessees.

What we do not measure: the family SCI (it has no code), the IR or IS tax regime (it is absent from the Sirene register) and the nature of the unit, home or business premises (the file does not give it).

Level 7. Where are the SCIs, and where are their properties?#

The base is concentrated in Paris: 111,480 SCIs have their registered office there, or 53 per 1,000 residents, nearly twice the national level (27.7 per 1,000). Corse-du-Sud (42.2) and Alpes-Maritimes (41.8) follow. In metropolitan France (including Corsica), Cantal (16.7) and Seine-Saint-Denis (17.7) have the fewest SCIs per resident. After Paris, Bouches-du-Rhône (71,654) and Nord (61,364) have the most SCIs.

Chart data

Département	Active SCIs	Per 1,000 residents
Paris	111,480	53.0
Corse-du-Sud	7,103	42.2
Alpes-Maritimes	47,143	41.8
Hautes-Alpes	5,965	41.6
Pyrénées-Orientales	20,426	41.1
Var	44,414	39.7
Haute-Corse	7,385	39.5
Aude	14,358	37.8
Hérault	46,092	37.5
Drôme	19,008	36.3
All of France	—	27.7

Île-de-France has the most SCIs (329,765). Corsica is the region where they are densest, at 40.8 per 1,000 residents, ahead of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (37.2). The collapsed tables list every region and every département, with the number of SCIs, their density and the share that hold a property.

Your département: SCIs, density and share that hold a property

Département	Active SCIs (registered office, October 1, 2026)	Per 1,000 residents	Share that holds a property
Ain (01)	16,289	24.0	81.5%
Aisne (02)	10,115	19.3	77.5%
Allier (03)	7,400	22.2	74.5%
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (04)	5,389	32.1	82.8%
Hautes-Alpes (05)	5,965	41.6	77.3%
Alpes-Maritimes (06)	47,143	41.8	70.4%
Ardèche (07)	8,317	24.9	81.9%
Ardennes (08)	6,309	23.7	77.6%
Ariège (09)	4,999	32.1	77.5%
Aube (10)	7,750	25.0	75.9%
Aude (11)	14,358	37.8	69.9%
Aveyron (12)	7,901	28.3	81.8%
Bouches-du-Rhône (13)	71,654	34.3	73.8%
Calvados (14)	20,897	29.5	71.9%
Cantal (15)	2,415	16.7	77.6%
Charente (16)	8,396	23.8	83.8%
Charente-Maritime (17)	22,407	33.3	72.1%
Cher (18)	7,108	23.8	71.7%
Corrèze (19)	6,004	24.9	72.5%
Côte-d'Or (21)	16,073	29.8	74.0%
Côtes-d'Armor (22)	18,486	30.2	73.1%
Creuse (23)	2,488	21.5	72.8%
Dordogne (24)	13,005	31.1	69.9%
Doubs (25)	15,580	28.5	74.6%
Drôme (26)	19,008	36.3	72.8%
Eure (27)	14,202	23.6	69.2%
Eure-et-Loir (28)	10,245	23.7	69.4%
Finistère (29)	26,798	28.7	71.4%
Corse-du-Sud (2A)	7,103	42.2	68.2%
Haute-Corse (2B)	7,385	39.5	71.9%
Gard (30)	27,822	36.1	75.4%
Haute-Garonne (31)	36,421	24.8	75.0%
Gers (32)	6,678	34.7	75.2%
Gironde (33)	51,585	30.5	72.4%
Hérault (34)	46,092	37.5	68.9%
Ille-et-Vilaine (35)	33,121	29.6	77.0%
Indre (36)	5,072	23.5	76.3%
Indre-et-Loire (37)	16,875	27.2	74.0%
Isère (38)	35,203	27.1	74.2%
Jura (39)	6,869	26.6	77.3%
Landes (40)	13,355	30.8	74.9%
Loir-et-Cher (41)	9,264	28.2	73.2%
Loire (42)	18,946	24.5	78.8%
Haute-Loire (43)	4,361	19.1	84.2%
Loire-Atlantique (44)	37,219	25.0	74.9%
Loiret (45)	15,691	22.7	75.2%
Lot (46)	5,366	30.4	73.7%
Lot-et-Garonne (47)	11,625	34.8	75.1%
Lozère (48)	2,379	31.1	77.3%
Maine-et-Loire (49)	20,661	24.8	75.8%
Manche (50)	10,767	21.6	83.6%
Marne (51)	14,485	25.7	78.0%
Haute-Marne (52)	3,856	22.9	76.9%
Mayenne (53)	7,227	23.7	81.5%
Meurthe-et-Moselle (54)	17,771	24.3	80.1%
Meuse (55)	4,516	25.0	74.4%
Morbihan (56)	24,645	31.5	74.0%
Moselle (57)	31,457	29.9	65.9%
Nièvre (58)	4,969	24.7	70.1%
Nord (59)	61,364	23.5	72.3%
Oise (60)	20,690	24.9	68.7%
Orne (61)	5,712	20.8	72.2%
Pas-de-Calais (62)	33,691	23.1	70.2%
Puy-de-Dôme (63)	14,492	21.8	77.6%
Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64)	22,497	31.8	74.8%
Hautes-Pyrénées (65)	6,058	26.2	81.0%
Pyrénées-Orientales (66)	20,426	41.1	66.5%
Bas-Rhin (67)	39,432	33.9	68.3%
Haut-Rhin (68)	23,174	30.1	69.9%
Rhône (69)	55,324	28.9	73.8%
Haute-Saône (70)	6,932	29.7	69.5%
Saône-et-Loire (71)	14,125	25.7	76.8%
Sarthe (72)	10,723	18.9	79.6%
Savoie (73)	14,601	32.6	82.0%
Haute-Savoie (74)	29,216	33.9	74.0%
Paris (75)	111,480	53.0	70.1%
Seine-Maritime (76)	23,677	18.8	74.7%
Seine-et-Marne (77)	31,975	21.8	75.4%
Yvelines (78)	30,324	20.4	75.0%
Deux-Sèvres (79)	8,398	22.4	75.4%
Somme (80)	13,385	23.7	75.7%
Tarn (81)	9,327	23.5	76.4%
Tarn-et-Garonne (82)	7,623	28.7	74.2%
Var (83)	44,414	39.7	74.3%
Vaucluse (84)	19,775	34.6	77.2%
Vendée (85)	18,663	26.2	80.1%
Vienne (86)	10,805	24.6	79.1%
Haute-Vienne (87)	9,548	25.6	74.4%
Vosges (88)	12,070	33.8	72.1%
Yonne (89)	9,869	29.7	70.5%
Territoire de Belfort (90)	4,153	29.6	70.2%
Essonne (91)	24,345	18.2	72.1%
Hauts-de-Seine (92)	40,627	24.6	75.7%
Seine-Saint-Denis (93)	30,116	17.7	65.5%
Val-de-Marne (94)	33,022	23.1	72.9%
Val-d'Oise (95)	27,876	21.8	66.3%
Guadeloupe (971)	9,612	25.0	47.8%
Martinique (972)	10,973	30.4	56.9%
Guyane (973)	3,803	12.9	53.3%
La Réunion (974)	12,624	14.2	69.9%
Mayotte (976)	1,289	4.0	35.6%

The share that holds a property covers active SCIs formed before 2026 (stock of September 2026), matched to the cadastre of January 1, 2026; it is 73.1% for all of France.

The 18 regions

Region	Active SCIs (registered office)	Per 1,000 residents
Île-de-France	329,765	26.5
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes	225,572	27.5
Occitanie	195,450	31.9
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur	194,340	37.2
Nouvelle-Aquitaine	180,113	29.3
Grand Est	160,820	28.9
Hauts-de-France	139,245	23.2
Bretagne	103,050	29.9
Pays de la Loire	94,493	24.2
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté	78,570	28.0
Normandie	75,255	22.5
Centre-Val de Loire	64,255	24.8
Corsica	14,488	40.8
La Réunion	12,624	14.2
Martinique	10,973	30.4
Guadeloupe	9,612	25.0
Guyane	3,803	12.9
Mayotte	1,289	4.0

The registered office does not say where the assets are. Nearly 1 in 4 SCIs that own a unit (23.8%) hold at least one outside the département of their registered office. Among SCIs that own property and have a Paris registered office, 37.9% have units only outside Paris.

By property location, SCI units are concentrated in Paris (284,031), Bouches-du-Rhône (190,303) and Rhône (177,954).

In practice: a sales team that divides its territory by the SCIs' registered offices sees only part of the assets. For a service delivered on site (property management, inspections, insurance), the département of the property matters as much as that of the registered office.

Level 8. A changing market: formations and closures#

Stock and flow are two different numbers. In 2025, the Sirene register records 81,440 SCI formations, excluding Alsace-Moselle. This number includes SCIs closed since. Including Alsace-Moselle, the register counts 85,794.

Infogreffe, the website of the commercial court registries, reports 81,425 SCI registrations in 2025. Our count excluding Alsace-Moselle matches that figure to within 15. In Alsace-Moselle the register is kept by the judicial courts rather than by those registries, so Infogreffe's annual report apparently does not count these three départements.

Relative to the existing total, the number of new formations shows that the SCI population changes slowly. The 85,794 SCIs formed in 2025 represent 4.5% of active SCIs. The stock does not grow by as much: it also loses SCIs that are deregistered.

In 2025, 36,373 SCIs were recorded as closed, according to the register's history as of November 1, 2026: for every 100 SCIs formed in 2025, 42 others closed that year. The base grew by about 49,400 SCIs in one year.

The base is also old. Half of active SCIs are more than 13 years old, and more than 1 in 3 is more than 20 years old. Nearly 1 in 8 is less than 3 years old.

Data: SCIs formed each year from 2015 to 2025

Year formed	SCIs formed
2015	60,247
2016	67,889
2017	72,547
2018	74,832
2019	83,974
2020	80,222
2021	100,584
2022	92,557
2023	74,373
2024	74,017
2025	85,794

How do you use these numbers for a market study?#

Size an addressable market#

First, define which businesses your product or service can actually serve. An offer aimed at any real estate company can start from the 1,908,566 active SCIs. A service that requires the client to have real estate assets (insurance, property management, advice or estate planning) starts instead from the 1,352,109 SCIs that hold a property. An offer for large accounts starts from the 89,166 SCIs with 10 or more units.

The sub-markets of this study#

Each sub-market has its own count, and its own buyers:

Choosing an SCI's activity code has its own article: NAF code of an SCI.

Segment the market for sales#

Effective segmentation combines several criteria. Account size says how many properties are at stake. The managers' ages indicate where transfers of ownership will become an issue. Split ownership helps identify inheritance matters. The NAF code gives the declared use.

A 70-year-old manager who runs an SCI with 12 units does not have the same need as an SCI with a single unit formed in 2025. Combining these criteria keeps you from treating the two the same way.

Adapt your sales territory strategy#

Registered office locations provide an initial picture of the market's geographic distribution: Paris, Alpes-Maritimes and Corsica. The département of the property completes it, because 23.8% of SCIs that own a unit hold at least one outside the département of their registered office. Depending on the product or service, assign sales territories by registered office or by property location.

Track changes in the market#

An SCI can be formed, close, buy or sell. In 2025, 85,794 SCIs were formed and 36,373 closed. Keep each snapshot with its date and a definition of what it counts. Comparing successive editions that use the same scope reveals the actual changes.

How do you build an SCI prospecting list?#

An SCI is hard to reach through the usual channels. Of the 400 SCIs drawn at random, none has a website, an e-mail address or a public phone number in the sources Scalon brings together (public business listings, professional directories, websites), putting the share reachable through these channels at fewer than 1 in 100. So you reach an SCI through its registered office and its named manager, which the register gives for 98% of them.

To check an SCI by hand, search for its name or SIREN number on the Annuaire des entreprises (the French government's free business directory), which shows its managers. To find out whether it holds a property, download the file of units held by legal entities from data.economie.gouv.fr, one file per département, and search it for its SIREN number.

Follow these five rules to build a useful prospecting list.

1. Start with the right target population: the 1,352,109 SCIs with a property if your product or service requires the client to have real estate assets.
2. Drop the SCIs with no property in their own name, which are more than 1 in 4, keeping in mind that an SCI can hold a property under a finance lease or shares in another company.
3. Group by manager: at least 4 SCIs in 10 share a person with another SCI in the same département.
4. Target by size: 10 or more units for large accounts, one unit for volume.
5. Flag likely ownership transfers: in 1 SCI in 10, all listed individuals whose ages are known are 70 or older.

Frequently asked questions#

How many SCIs are there in France?#

France has 1,908,566 active SCIs as of November 1, 2026, according to the Sirene register. Including build-to-sell SCIs and the other construction company types, the total across all real estate and construction sociétés civiles is 1,955,644.

How many SCIs actually hold a property?#

1,352,109 active SCIs formed before 2026 hold at least one unit or plot in the cadastre as of January 1, 2026, or 73.1%. 498,575 have no property in their own name there, or more than 1 in 4.

How many family SCIs are there?#

The number is unknown. The family SCI has no code of its own: it is an SCI 6540 like any other. No public register identifies family SCIs separately.

How many SCIs are taxed under corporate income tax?#

It is not published in the Sirene register. The choice between income tax and corporate income tax does not appear in the Sirene register. An unsourced claim puts the share taxed under income tax at nearly 70%; we do not repeat it.

Why do some sources say "700,000 SCIs"?#

This figure is attributed to Insee in several articles, but we found no primary source for it. The active total in Sirene is nearly three times that figure.

How many dwellings do SCIs hold?#

It is not known. The cadastre counts units, not dwellings: a garage, a parking space or a separate enclosed garage counts as one unit. Active SCIs hold 5,007,728 units.

Where are there the most SCIs?#

In Paris: 111,480 SCIs have their registered office there, or 53 per 1,000 residents. By count, Bouches-du-Rhône (71,654) and Nord (61,364) follow. By region, Île-de-France has the most SCIs, and Corsica is the densest, at 40.8 per 1,000 residents, ahead of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (37.2).

How many SCIs are formed each year?#

In 2025, 85,794 SCIs were formed, including 81,440 excluding Alsace-Moselle. The same year, 36,373 closed.

Method#

The counts were produced by Scalon on November 2, 2026, using Insee's snapshot files published on data.gouv.fr: legal units of November 1, 2026 (status as of October 31) and their history, business locations of October 1, 2026. An SCI is a legal unit of legal category 6540, with active status. Properties come from the DGFiP cadastre files of legal entities, status as of January 1, 2026, matched to SCIs by their SIREN number on November 6, 2026. Managers and partners come from the national business register.

Method details and limits

Unit of count: the legal unit, identified by its SIREN number. An SCI with a secondary location is counted once; active SCIs have 35,350 open secondary locations (business locations file of October 1, 2026).

Universe: 1,908,566 active legal units of category 6540 in the file of November 1, 2026. The new cross-checks (properties, location of the property) use the stock of September 2026, which has 1,904,564 active SCIs, because the file of November 1 could not be reread on November 6 (data.gouv.fr unreachable from our server that day). The 1,850,684 SCIs formed before 2026 are the base for the shares: the cadastre describes the situation on January 1, 2026.

Cadastre matching: DGFiP files of units and plots held by legal entities, status as of January 1, 2026, published on data.economie.gouv.fr. An SCI is matched by its SIREN number. The files list 88,460 unit records and 101,009 plot records whose identifier is not the SIREN number of an SCI: these properties cannot be tied to any SCI in the register, so the result is a minimum. 46,626 SIREN numbers in the cadastre are not listed as category 6540 SCIs in the September register, and 21,267 SCIs already recorded as closed in the register still appear in the cadastre: the cadastre and the register are not updated at the same pace. A "unit" is any assessed unit in the cadastre: a home, a store, an office, but also a garage, a parking space or a separate enclosed garage.

Validation: all 22,840,518 unit records and 21,299,268 plot records were read, matching the row counts in the files.

Comparison with public sources: Transparency International France counts, in a 2023 report on end-2022 data, 1.3 million SCIs owning 2.89 million plots. Using the same scope, we count 1,420,074 in 2026 (owners of units or plots, all category 6540 SCIs in the file), owning 2,796,627 plots: the figures are of the same order of magnitude. The gap with Infogreffe on 2025 formations is 15 (81,425 versus 81,440 excluding Alsace-Moselle).

Published accounts: public financial ratios dataset (copy of September 25, 2026), one SIREN number counted once, latest fiscal year, revenue above zero. It covers only 1,937 SCIs, so the findings should not be generalized to all SCIs.

Formation and cessation: formation date of the legal unit, all category 6540 SCIs in the file, whether active or recorded as closed; département of the registered office read in the business locations file of October 1, 2026 (4,132 SCIs formed in 2025 in Alsace-Moselle, 222 with no registered office identifiable in the file). Closures: periods in the legal units' history when a category 6540 SCI's status changes to "closed," dated by the start of the period; a closure recorded later will still be added to 2025. Age: formation date compared with November 1, 2026; more than 20 years old: 652,672 SCIs; less than 3 years old: 236,517. Employees: headcount bracket of one employee or more.

Managers and partners: current manager and partner roles in INPI's national business register, mostly collected on September 24 and 25, 2026 through the API Recherche d'entreprises (the French government's company search API) (about 42,000 SCIs from the register's March 2026 stock file), for 1,874,689 active SCIs. A person counts once per SCI; statutory auditors, liquidators and interim administrators are excluded. An individual is identified by last name, first given name and year of birth (3,478,027 people with a known year); a company, by its SIREN number. Age: 2026 minus the year of birth; SCIs "whose people are all 70 or older" are based on individuals with a known year (175,048 if we also require that no company and no person of unknown age be declared). An SCI with a manager or partner who also appears in other SCIs: calculated on the 1,850,149 SCIs that declare an individual with a known year, requiring the same département for the registered office, to rule out namesakes born the same year. It is a minimum: without this condition, the share goes from 42% to 52%. A change of manager after September is not taken into account. Types of the companies that appear most: public evidence collected on November 6, 2026 (decision, company website, statute, official profile); without evidence, the type is "not established."

Public contacts: 400 registered offices chosen at random, read with the public data of those offices; none has a website, an e-mail address or a public phone number in the sources linked by Scalon, which caps the share of SCIs reachable that way at fewer than 1 in 100. The same sample shows that none of these offices shares a trade name, website or e-mail address with another: the market's structure therefore shows through its managers and the companies that hold SCIs, not through a brand.

Territory: registered office of active SCIs in the business locations file of October 1, 2026 (1,893,717 in the 101 départements), divided by the official 2023 population figures in force on January 1, 2026 (Insee; Mayotte: population on January 1, 2026). 12,263 active SCIs have no registered office in the October file; 2,565 have their registered office in Saint-Martin, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon or a Pacific overseas collectivity.

Rounding: shares are rounded to the nearest 0.1 percentage point; "more than 1 in 4" rounds 26.9% and "36%" rounds 36.1%. The title's total, 1,908,600, rounds 1,908,566 to the nearest hundred.

Limits: a unit is not a dwelling; the cadastre does not reflect an SCI's purchases or sales in 2026; namesakes may remain; revenue figures are available for only a small number of SCIs.

Key takeaways#

• France has 1,908,566 active SCIs as of November 1, 2026, and 85,794 SCIs were formed in 2025.
• 1,352,109 SCIs hold at least one property in the cadastre; more than 1 in 4 have no property in their own name there. Remove them from your list before contacting prospects about a service related to real estate holdings.
• 89,166 SCIs hold 10 or more units and together account for 36% of the units held by active SCIs: these are the large accounts.
• Decision-makers are fewer than SCIs: group a list by manager before prospecting.
• In 1 SCI in 10, all listed individuals whose ages are known are 70 or older: transfers of ownership will probably become an issue there first.
• The registered office does not say where the properties are: 23.8% of SCIs that own a unit hold one outside the département of their registered office.

Cite the study#

The full citation, with counts

Scalon Observatory, "Number of SCIs in France in 2026: 1,908,600 active in Insee's Sirene register," November 6, 2026: 1,908,566 SCIs (legal category 6540) active in the Sirene file of legal units of November 1, 2026; 1,352,109 SCIs holding a property in the cadastre as of January 1, 2026; 89,166 SCIs with 10 or more units; 85,794 SCIs formed in 2025 and 36,373 recorded as closed; declared manager and partner records reviewed for 1,874,689 SCIs. https://scalon.fr/en/observatory/number-of-sci-in-france

Sources#

• Catégories juridiques, Insee
• Base Sirene des entreprises et de leurs établissements (SIREN, SIRET), data.gouv.fr, fichiers du 1er octobre 2026 et du 1er novembre 2026
• Fichiers des locaux et des parcelles des personnes morales, DGFiP, data.economie.gouv.fr, situation au 1er janvier 2026
• Les propriétés bâties : local, PEV, bâtiment, documentation des Fichiers fonciers, Cerema
• Les créations d'entreprises en 2025, Insee Première n° 2092, janvier 2026
• Insee Première n° 2046, avril 2025
• 2025 : une année dominée par les difficultés des entreprises, Infogreffe, janvier 2026
• Face à un mur d'opacité, Transparency International France, juillet 2023
• In 2026, France has nearly 1.8 million SCIs, inSCI, May 2026
• Plus de deux millions de SCI actives en France, North Data, mai 2025
• Statistiques immobilier, nouvelles-entreprises.com, recalcul du 2 novembre 2026
• SCI : 5 erreurs qui peuvent coûter cher, Le Revenu, avril 2024
• Logiciel de comptabilité SCI, fiscalite-sci.com, 2025
• À propos, Océane Finances
• Qui sommes-nous, GiFi
• Autorité de la concurrence, décision 26-DCC-42 (ITM Entreprises) ; Code monétaire et financier, article L518-2 (Caisse des dépôts et consignations) ; ADEME, fiche de la société de gestion Pristine
• Jeu public des ratios financiers des entreprises, data.gouv.fr (copie du 25 septembre 2026)
• Registres du commerce dans les pays de l'UE : France, portail e-Justice de l'Union européenne
• Comment créer une société ?, Service Public Entreprendre
• Société civile immobilière (SCI) : ce qu'il faut savoir, Service Public Entreprendre
• Populations des départements en vigueur au 1er janvier 2026, Insee
• SCI NAF code, Scalon Observatory