French Transfer Duties 2026: Your Département Sets the Bill

Two identical French flats in two départements now come with two different bills at the notaire. The gap is set by a local vote, not by the property.

Départements may charge up to 5% in transfer duty instead of 4.50%, a rise the loi de finances pour 2025 authorised and that runs into 2028. Buyers of a first main home are excluded from the rise, and a département may go further and exempt them from the departmental duty altogether.

Departmental transfer duty on a 300,000 euro purchase

Situation	Duty ( €)
Raised ceiling, 5.00%		15,000 €
First time buyer, 4.50%		13,500 €
Exempting département		0 €

What are droits de mutation made of?

Several separate charges, only one of which the département controls. On its page for buying an existing property, the Direction générale des Finances publiques, the French public finances directorate, breaks the droits de mutation à titre onéreux into a departmental duty variable between 1.20% and 4.50% of the price, with 4.50% the most widespread in practice, an additional tax of 1.20% collected for the communes, and assessment and collection costs for the state of 2.37% of the departmental duty. It gives a maximum overall rate of 5.81% of the purchase price, plus a contribution de sécurité immobilière of 0.10%.

That page describes the ceiling as it stood before the increase, which is exactly why the departmental line is the one to check. Everything else in the stack is national and fixed. The phrase "frais de notaire" covers this whole bundle plus the notaire's own fee, so most of what a French buyer calls notary fees is in fact tax.

Who can charge 5%, and until when?

Départements that have voted for it, on a clock that ends in 2028. Service-Public.gouv.fr, the French government's public information service, states that the loi de finances pour 2025 authorises départements to raise the transfer duty ceiling by 0.5 of a point, to 5% of the sale price, from 1 April 2025 and until 30 April 2028. It notes that departmental rates had been running between 3.8% and 4.5%, that each increase has to be voted by the conseil départemental, and that around thirty authorities were affected from April 2025.

The same page carries the timing rule that catches buyers mid purchase: any deliberation voted after 15 April 2025 could only take effect from January 2026. Service-Public tells readers to check with their notaire or their conseil départemental whether their département is affected, which is a fair summary of how hard this is to establish from the outside.

Who counts as a primo-accédant?

Someone who has not owned their main residence in the two preceding years, buying a home to live in. Service-Public states that the increase does not apply to primo-accédants, defined as buyers who have not been owners of their main residence during the two years before the acquisition deed is signed, where the property acquired is for use as a main residence. For them the departmental rate stays at the earlier ceiling.

A second, larger relief sits behind that carve out, and it is discretionary. The Chambre des Notaires de Paris explains that under article 1594 F septies of the Code général des impôts, primo-accédants can be exempted from the taxe de publicité foncière and the droits d'enregistrement on their main residence by decision of the conseil départemental. The notaries' chamber records that the scheme was created by loi n° 2025-127 of 14 February 2025, and adds the sentence that matters most: as at its publication on 24 November 2025, very few conseils départementaux had taken such a decision.

The conditions are strict. The Chambre des Notaires de Paris quotes the requirement that the buyer commits to using the property exclusively and continuously as a main residence for at least five years from acquisition, and sets out how that is measured: the home must be occupied as a main residence for at least eight months of the year, within one year of the acquisition date. It notes that the period extends to six years where the purchase is made in the context of retirement and the property is let in the meantime, and that tightly framed derogations exist for force majeure and for professional relocation, within a limit of three years. A décret of 8 September 2025, numbered 2025-946, sets out the cases in which the commitment is not required for the relief to be kept.

What this changes for a buyer

The single largest line in a French purchase cost is now a local political decision with a national deadline, and it is not visible in the listing. Whether a département voted the 5% ceiling, and separately whether it voted the primo-accédant exemption, are two different questions with two different answers.

The Dutch equivalent moved in the opposite direction this year, cutting the rate on homes the buyer will not live in, which we covered in the Dutch transfer tax change.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here is a view on French property. What the cited sources support is checkable at the conseil départemental: the ceiling may run to 5% until 30 April 2028, first buyers of a main home are outside that rise, the full exemption under article 1594 F septies exists but had very few takers as at November 2025, and it is conditional on a five year occupancy commitment. AiMYNDi reads the listing, the financials and the legal paperwork for a specific property so the cost questions land before the compromis, not after. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.