Buying a House in France as a Swedish Buyer: 1.5% to 6.32%

Registering a Swedish house transfer costs 1.5% of the price plus 825 kronor. The same transfer in France costs about four times that.

An existing French home carries 5.81% to 6.32% in transfer duty depending on the département, against the 1.5% stämpelskatt Lantmäteriet charges on a lagfart. What a Swedish buyer gets for the difference is ten calendar days to walk away after signing, a window French law writes into the process itself.

Cost to transfer ownership, Sweden against France

Where you buy	Rate (%)
Sweden, stämpelskatt		1.50%
France, département at 4.50%		5.81%
France, département at 5.00%		6.32%

Why does the French bill land four times higher?

The two countries charge for different things at the same moment. Lantmäteriet, the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority, states that stämpelskatt for a private person is 1.5%, plus an expedition fee of 825 kronor for the lagfart, and that the tax is calculated on whichever is higher of the purchase price or the taxeringsvärde from the year before the registration date, rounded down to whole thousands of kronor. That is a charge for putting the new owner in the register.

France charges for the transfer itself, and the register is only one line of it. 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, consist of 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 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, the French duty is 17,430 euro at 5.81% and 18,960 euro at 6.32%. Swedish stämpelskatt on the same figure would be 4,500 euro plus the 825 kronor fee. Those are calculations on the two authorities' published rates.

The French number is not fixed either. 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, the French government's public information service, puts the end date at 30 April 2028 and states each rise has to be voted by the conseil départemental. We set out how that vote works in our piece on French transfer duties.

What do the ten days actually buy?

A documented exit, written into French law rather than negotiated. Service-Public.gouv.fr states that a non-professional buyer of a home has 10 calendar days to withdraw from a compromis or promesse de vente, 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. In Sweden the registry step arrives after the deal rather than inside it: Lantmäteriet requires the lagfart application within three months of the acquisition, on a handwritten original.

What those days are for is prescribed. Service-Public lists the diagnostics a French seller must supply in the dossier de diagnostic technique: the diagnostic de performance énergétique, the French energy rating known as the DPE, from 50 square metres of floor area, with an energy audit at rating E, F or G; a lead statement for a building predating 1 January 1949; an asbestos statement where the building permit predates 1 July 1997; and the state of the interior electrical installation once it is over 15 years old.

Why does Sweden not appear in the French figures?

The French notaries do not count Swedes separately. The Notaires de France studied non-resident foreign buyers using the BIEN and Perval databases their profession maintains, covering 2005 to 2015, and put that group at about 2% of existing-home purchases on average, 2.6% for 2005 to 2009 and 1.5% after that, roughly 8,380 a year. Its nationality table names the British, Belgians, Italians and Swiss, and then folds Sweden into a single Scandinavian line. The study's own footnote is explicit: "Les Scandinaves regroupent les Danois, Norvégiens et Suédois." That combined group was 5% of non-resident foreign buyers in 2015, against 6% for the Swiss. Finland does not appear at all.

So there is no published number for how many French homes Swedes buy, and there has not been one on this basis for a decade. We would rather say that than repeat a figure from somewhere unattributable.

What ownership costs every year

Two French charges run annually and one runs on the balance sheet. The taxe foncière is due each year, the taxe d'habitation on top for a second home, and the tax administration states that a person domiciled outside France is liable to the Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière, the French wealth tax on property, on French property and property rights alone, above 1.3 million euro of net value at 1 January. Letting the house is caught separately: the administration applies a minimum rate of tax on French-source income for non-residents of 20%, rising to 30% above 29,579 euro of net taxable income for income received in 2025, with the option of the lower taux moyen where the taxpayer can show their worldwide rate is lower.

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: 1.5% plus 825 kronor to register at home against 5.81% to 6.32% in France, ten calendar days to withdraw after signing, a prescribed diagnostics file, a wealth tax from 1.3 million euro, and a 20% floor on rental income. AiMYNDi reads the listing, the copropriété accounts and those diagnostics for a specific property, so what is in them lands inside the ten days rather than after. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.