Buying a House in France as a British Buyer: 6.32% and 90 Days

Brexit took away a British buyer's right to stay in their French house. It did not add a penny to the price of buying it.

France charges a British buyer what it charges a Belgian one. An existing home costs 5.81% to 6.32% in transfer duty depending on the département, which is less than an English second home costs the same person at home. What changed in 2021 was the calendar, not the bill.

Transfer tax on a 300,000 purchase, France against England

Where you buy	Rate (%)
England, only home		1.67%
France, département at 4.50%		5.81%
France, département at 5.00%		6.32%
England, second home		6.67%
England, second home, non-UK resident		8.67%

Why does France cost a British buyer less than England does?

The two surcharges England stacks on a second home are together worth more than the entire French duty. HM Revenue and Customs states on GOV.UK that Stamp Duty Land Tax runs in bands of 0%, 2%, 5%, 10% and 12%, that you usually pay 5% on top of those rates if the purchase means you will own more than one home, and a further 2% if you were not in the United Kingdom for at least 183 days in the 12 months before the purchase.

France does none of that. Nothing in the French duty keys off the buyer's nationality or where they live. A third country passport changes what you may do with the house, not what you pay for it.

What is actually inside frais de notaire?

Tax, mostly. The Direction générale des Finances publiques, the French public finances directorate, sets out on its page for buying an existing property that the droits de mutation à titre onéreux, the duties charged when a property changes hands, break into a departmental duty of between 1.20% and 4.50% of the price with 4.50% the most widespread, an additional 1.20% collected for the communes, and an assessment and collection charge for the state worth 2.37% of the departmental duty. It puts the maximum overall rate at 5.81% of the purchase price, plus a contribution de sécurité immobilière of 0.10%. 5.81% is the ceiling the tax administration publishes, calculated on a 4.50% departmental duty. Applying the same components to a 5.00% departmental duty gives 6.32%, which is arithmetic on those parts rather than a published figure.

On a 300,000 euro house that is 17,430 euro at 5.81% and 18,960 euro at 6.32%, a difference of 1,530 euro decided by which side of a departmental boundary the house sits on. That is arithmetic on the published rates. The notaire's own fee, the part British buyers assume they are paying, is the smallest line in the bundle.

What does the 90 day rule cost instead?

Time, and it is the real Brexit bill. The European Commission's Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs states in its Schengen visa policy that non-EU nationals may enter the Schengen area as many times as they want but may stay only 90 days in total in any 180 day period. Owning the house makes no difference to that count.

The purchase itself commits you far earlier than an English one. GOV.UK's conveyancing guidance says an English agreement becomes legally binding at exchange of contracts, which is why an accepted English offer can be trumped for weeks. In France the binding point is the compromis de vente. Service-Public.gouv.fr, the French government's public information service, states that a non-professional buyer of a home then has 10 calendar days to withdraw, running from the day after the signed document is first presented to them, that the seller has no equivalent right, and that the deposit is commonly 10% of the price.

Which département, and until when?

Any that voted for it, on a clock that ends in 2028. The French tax administration's official doctrine, BOFiP, records that départements may raise the rate set by article 1594 D of the Code général des impôts above 4.50% and up to 5%, for three years from 1 April 2025. Service-Public.gouv.fr puts the end date at 30 April 2028 and states each rise has to be voted by the conseil départemental. We covered that vote in our piece on French transfer duties.

Where the numbers stop

British buyers are the largest single group in a very small pool. The Notaires de France, using the BIEN and Perval databases their profession maintains, studied non-resident foreign buyers between 2005 and 2015 and found they accounted for about 2% of existing-home purchases on average across those years, 2.6% for 2005 to 2009 and 1.5% after that, roughly 8,380 a year. The British were nearly a third of that group over the period and 27% of it in 2015, heaviest in the Creuse at 15% of local transactions, the Alpes-Maritimes at 13% and the Dordogne at 12%. The study has not been repeated on the same basis since, so treat those shares as the last published picture rather than today's.

Ownership then puts a British buyer inside the Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière, the French wealth tax on property. The tax administration states that a person domiciled outside France is taxable on French property and property rights alone, above 1.3 million euro of net value at 1 January. The taxe foncière runs every year on top, and so does the taxe d'habitation on a second home.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here says whether a French house is worth owning. What the sources support is checkable: 5.81% to 6.32% in duty against roughly 8.67% for the equivalent English second home, a binding compromis ten days before an English buyer would be committed at all, 90 days in any 180 in the house you own, and a wealth tax that starts at 1.3 million euro. AiMYNDi reads the listing, the copropriété accounts and the diagnostics for a specific property so the surprises land before the compromis rather than after. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.