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This paper highlights the links between the property market and metropolisation. In particular, it shows how the office property market fosters metropolisation, urban hierarchisation and the functional dualisation of the urban economy. A historical analysis of office property production in Toulouse and Bordeaux shows that the trend in the property market is related to a speculative process based on a quasi-performative marketing discourse. We realise that the business property sector can create market trends that are disconnected from the local economic realities of a metropolis. In this sense, it represents a formidable economic power, able to create positive or negative territorial discrimination, depending on whether the market is in euphoria or crisis.