Buying a House in France as a Finnish Buyer: 1.5% Becomes 6%

A Finn who has bought a flat at home has never owned a flat. They owned shares in a company that owned the building.

France sells the thing itself. A French apartment is real property held inside a copropriété, so every habit built on the Finnish share model has to be rebuilt. Verohallinto charges 1.5% on housing company shares and 3% on real property; the French duty reaches a published maximum of 5.81%, or about 6.32% after a departmental vote.

Transfer duty by what is being transferred

What changes hands	Rate (%)
France, higher departmental vote		6.32%
France, published maximum		5.81%
Finland, kiinteistö (real property)		3.00%
Finland, asunto-osake (shares)		1.50%

What does a Finn actually own after signing in France?

The lot itself, with no company in between. Under the asunto-osake model the buyer acquires shares in a taloyhtiö, a housing company that owns the building, and those shares carry the right to occupy one flat. France has no such layer: an apartment is owned outright, and the copropriété is a body of co-owners administering the shared parts and levying charges de copropriété, not a company holding the building for them.

That removes a line Finnish buyers are trained to hunt for. Verohallinto sets the varainsiirtovero base at the velaton kauppahinta, the debt free price, which for shares includes the flat's portion of the housing company's own borrowing. The Finnish tax base therefore already swallows the building's debt, and the headline asking price is only half the story.

No company borrowing sits inside a French price, since there is no company to carry it. What a buyer weighs here lives in the copropriété's own records instead, which is a different place to look and an easy one to miss.

Who files the tax, and who holds the money?

In Finland the buyer does both. Verohallinto has the purchaser file and pay varainsiirtovero on their own initiative through OmaVero, its online service, rather than waiting to be assessed. France routes the whole transaction through an office instead: Service-Public, the French government's public information service, describes the notaire, a public officer, drawing up the acte authentique, the final deed, and holding the buyer's funds in a compte séquestre, an escrow account, until completion.

The same page gives a French buyer 10 days to withdraw from the preliminary contract, counted from the day after the registered letter notifying it is first presented, and states that in principle the acquirer does not have to hand money to the seller when signing the compromis de vente, though a deposit of around 10% is usual in practice.

Finland ended its ensiasunto relief in the same period France created one

The two countries moved in opposite directions inside about eighteen months. Verohallinto states that the ensiasunto exemption, the first home exemption from varainsiirtovero, was abolished on 1 January 2024. The Bulletin officiel des finances publiques, the tax administration's official bulletin, records the opposite move in France: the departmental increase authorised by the 2025 finance law, running three years from 1 April 2025, does not apply where the property is a first property for the buyer and is intended as their main residence.

Neither relief reaches the same person. Finland's no longer exists, and the French carve out needs both conditions at once, so a Finn buying a French second home sits outside it on the second condition even before the first is tested.

What is the French duty actually made of?

Three charges stacked on the price, with a local vote setting the top of the range. Droits de mutation à titre onéreux, abbreviated DMTO, is what France levies when a property is transferred for consideration. The Direction générale des Finances publiques puts the departmental share at 1.20% to 4.50% of the price, most commonly 4.50%, adds 1.20% for the commune and 2.37% of the departmental share for the state, and publishes a maximum of 5.81%. Where a département voted the 5% the 2025 finance law permits, the same stack comes to about 6.32% by arithmetic.

On a 400,000 euro flat that is 23,240 euro to 25,280 euro, against 6,000 euro at the Finnish 1.5% or 12,000 euro at 3%. Ownership then runs its own meter. Taxe foncière falls on whoever holds the flat on 1 January, taxe d'habitation still reaches a second home, letting it triggers a 20% minimum rate on French source income, and net French property over 1,300,000 euro brings the IFI, the impôt sur la fortune immobilière.

Is there a published count of Finnish buyers in France?

None at all, not even inside a group. Notaires de France publishes non resident foreigners at roughly 2% of existing home purchases on average over 2005 to 2015, with a nationality breakdown underneath. That breakdown carries a Scandinaves line covering Denmark, Sweden and Norway together, worth 5% of non resident foreign buyers in 2015. Finland is not in it, and appears nowhere else in the study.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here is a view on French property. Each claim here is traceable to a cited page: 1.5% on shares and 3% on real property in Finland against a published French maximum of 5.81%, no company debt inside a French price, the ensiasunto exemption gone since 1 January 2024, and a French first buyer carve out that also demands a main residence. Our piece on how a département sets your transfer bill covers the local vote, and the Swedish version runs the comparison into another market.

AiMYNDi reads the listing, the copropriété accounts and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so a charge or a voted works programme shows up before the compromis rather than after it. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.