Buying property in France as a foreigner: costs, taxes 2026

We are the “Vibe South of France” community. We don’t sell property or advertise agents; we have put the buying rules together from official pages of 2025-2026 and dated each one. Below: what the law says to a foreign buyer, what flats and houses cost city by city (our own count from actual sales), what the costs are made of, which taxes wait for the owner, and where to look at real prices. And if you want to ask about buying in the South, there is the “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram.

Can a foreigner, a Russian citizen included, buy property in France

Yes. In its answer to the Senate (Journal officiel of 21 August 2025) the Ministry of Justice wrote that no legal provision generally forbids selling property in France to a person of foreign nationality. Those whom the law does not forbid may buy and sell; the exceptions concern, for instance, a seller’s representatives, not nationality. The lawfulness of the buyer’s stay in France has no bearing on the sale. The ministry puts it as a general rule (“de façon générale”).

Does buying give you the right to live in France

No. The keys to a flat and the right to live in it for more than three months are different things. In the Interior Ministry’s answer to the Senate (Journal officiel of 5 June 2025) foreign owners fall under the general law:

• for a stay of 3 to 6 months, a temporary long-stay visa, the VLS-T “visiteur”;
• for more than 6 months, a VLS-TS “visiteur”, and then the second home effectively becomes the main one.

There was an example going the other way. A clause creating a visa “by right” for British owners of a second home was put into the immigration law. The Constitutional Council struck it down on 25 January 2024, but on procedure: it had been added with no link to the original bill. The Council did not rule on its substance. So there is no new visa for property owners today, and you will find the “visiteur” conditions in the guide “How to move to France: every legal route”.

How much does an apartment cost in France: property prices by city

Flats in France cost from €1,300/m² in Carcassonne to €9,677/m² in Paris (2025 sale medians from the DVF dataset, our own calculation for 22 cities): a gap of more than seven times. Saint-Étienne is not in the table: its price per m² is in its guide, but it is rounded and cannot be compared with the table’s figures. Among the southern cities, Cannes (€5,714/m²) and Nice (€4,848/m²) cost three to four times as much as Tarbes (€1,437/m²) and Perpignan (€1,508/m²), with Montpellier (€3,387/m²) and Marseille (€3,186/m²) in the middle.

All the figures are medians for 2025 sales, taken from our city guides. Houses are counted differently: they have no price per m², only the median sale price with the plot, so that column is in euros, not €/m².

Alsace and Moselle are not in the table: there is no open DVF dataset there, and the notaires’ figures cannot be compared with our medians. For them, see the guides to Strasbourg and Metz.

How we counted

The source is the tax authority’s (DGFiP) open data: the DVF dataset on data.gouv.fr (updated 12 October 2026) and its geolocated version, geo-dvf, with the files for 2024 and 2025 (delivered 20 October 2026). The 2025 medians and the comparison with 2024 are our own calculation, not a ready-made statistic.

The sample takes only ordinary sales (“Vente”) of a single flat, with no new builds. In some of the guides we also dropped the most extreme 1% of prices. So each figure is the median of our sample, not of all the sales in the city. A DVF price is, as a rule, without the agency’s commission; the taxes and the notaire come on top, and we go through them below. For the number of sales in the sample, the median floor areas and the sale prices of each city, see its guide.

What buying costs: frais de notaire

The name “frais de notaire” is misleading. According to service-public (F17701, version of 5 August 2026) these costs include:

• émoluments - the notaire’s remuneration at a State tariff, the same for every notaire;
• honoraires - a free price for services the tariff does not regulate;
• débours - sums the notaire has paid for documents on your behalf;
• taxes and charges that the notaire passes on to the State and local authorities.

The official pages give no overall percentage of the price, so we don’t quote one. Add it up item by item.

Transfer tax

This is the main item. For an existing home (ancien) it is built from four pieces:

For sales from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2028 a département may raise its rate to 5%. Transfer tax is then up to 6.32% of the price (impots.gouv.fr, page changed 17 July 2026; DGCL). The rise does not apply to first-time buyers of a main home (primo-accédant: someone who has not owned a main home in the two years before the sale): their maximum stays at 4.5%.

The contribution de sécurité immobilière is paid separately: 0.1% of the price, but not less than €15.

Which rate applies in your département is shown by the DGFiP table for notaires. At 1 June 2026 the picture for the South is this:

Montpellier is in the Hérault, Marseille in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes. A rate can change: before the sale, open the table for your signing date. We don’t go into the rate for a particular commune.

For a new build (under 5 years old) the rule is different. If a developer sells it, the buyer pays VAT - in most cases 20% - and transfer tax at the reduced rate of 0.71%, plus the same 0.1% contribution de sécurité immobilière. If a private individual sells a new-build home, there is no VAT and only transfer tax is paid, at the ordinary rate, as on an existing home (impots.gouv.fr, the “Achat dans le neuf” page, changed 7 January 2026; that is a single source, so check your own case with the notaire).

The notaire’s fee

The State tariff for buying a home in metropolitan France has been in force since January 2021 (service-public F17701, 5 August 2026):

VAT of 20% is added on top. Service-public’s own example: on a price of €200,000 the fee is €1,995.25 excluding VAT.

A worked example

This is arithmetic on the rates above, not an estimate of a particular sale. An existing home at €300,000 in a département with a 5% rate:

The total leaves out débours and honoraires: we have no figures for them. For an exact sum, service-public offers the Notaires de France calculator (card R16181) and the ANIL calculator (through the link in F17701).

How a purchase goes

The standard steps:

1. Offre d’achat - a written price offer.
2. Compromis de vente - the preliminary contract. The law does not oblige you to pay the seller on signing, but the contract usually provides for a deposit (dépôt de garantie) of about 10% of the price; it is held by the notaire until completion.
3. Ten days to withdraw. A non-professional buyer may withdraw within 10 calendar days from the day after the first delivery of the registered letter with the contract. The withdrawal goes to the seller by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt (service-public F2965, 10 April 2026).
4. Acte authentique de vente - the final contract at the notaire’s. The notaire handles the formalities at the property publicity service, and the taxe foncière records change without any action from you.

It isn’t only a notaire who drafts the compromis: according to ANIL (page as of 18 February 2025) it can be prepared by an estate agent, a notaire or the parties themselves. We don’t go into individual banks’ terms for non-residents: the bank itself will tell you those. The general rules for every borrower are below.

Mortgages in France: the rules for everyone, foreigners included

There is no separate “mortgage for foreigners” in the official rules. Neither the HCSF, nor the Banque de France, nor ANIL, nor service-public describes special terms for foreigners: no ban and no concessions. The bank decides, and it may add its own criteria to the general rules (HCSF FAQ, question 36). The deposit, the remaining length of your residence permit and the collateral that brokers talk about are bank practice with no official figures behind them, so we don’t quote any.

The binding HCSF rules

Since 1 January 2022 banks have had to follow the decision of the High Council for Financial Stability (HCSF) of 29 September 2021 (HCSF page as of 23 September 2026, FAQ of 29 January 2024):

ANIL says banks usually ask you to keep repayments within a third of your monthly income. That is a rule of thumb; the binding ceiling is 35%.

Does this apply to a non-resident? Yes. Under the HCSF FAQ (question 35) the rules apply when someone who doesn’t live in France takes out a loan for a home in France from a bank or finance company supervised by the ACPR, the French banking supervisor.

What a loan costs: the Banque de France figures

We don’t quote any one bank’s rate. The official figure is the average effective rate on loans already granted: the Banque de France works it out every quarter, including interest, insurance, compulsory guarantees and arrangement costs. It sets the ceiling (taux d’usure), above which a bank may not lend. Home loans over €75,000 (Banque de France, published 28 September 2026, updated 29 September 2026):

The ceiling is recalculated every quarter: from 1 January 2027 the figures will be different.

Borrower insurance

The bank can require borrower insurance, but you are free to choose the insurer yourself: the policy has to give the cover listed in the bank’s personalised information sheet (fiche personnalisée). You can switch insurer at any time after the loan is signed. If the loan is no more than €200,000 per insured person and is paid off before you turn 60, the insurer may not ask for a health questionnaire or a medical (service-public F1671, checked 20 May 2025).

The bank’s offer: 30 days, and 10 days to reflect

The bank sends you the loan offer (offre de prêt) free of charge, and it is bound by it for at least 30 days. From the day you receive the offer a compulsory cooling-off period of at least 10 days runs: you can only accept from the 11th day. If you turn it down, neither the bank nor an intermediary may charge you for looking at your application (ANIL). The offer states the total cost of the loan (TAEG) and the guarantee the bank requires: a mortgage (hypothèque), a privilège de prêteur de deniers or a guarantor (caution).

Don’t mix these 10 days up with the 10 days to withdraw after the compromis de vente: those run from delivery of the sale contract, these from receipt of the bank’s offer.

PTZ: an interest-free loan, but not for non-residents

The prêt à taux zéro (PTZ) is an interest-free top-up to your main loan for buying or building your future main home (service-public F10871, checked 15 September 2026). Main home means you live in it for at least 8 months a year. So the PTZ doesn’t work for a non-resident, or for a second home.

For people living in France: the card has no conditions on nationality or residence permits, but that’s no guarantee. Only banks with an agreement with the state offer the PTZ, and a bank is not obliged to grant one. Further conditions: you must not have owned your main home in the two years before the PTZ, and income from abroad counts too. The income ceiling for one person runs from €28,500 (zone C) to €49,000 (zones A and A bis), and the repayment term is up to 25 years. Which zone your commune is in, the service-public simulator “Savoir si le prêt à taux zéro est possible dans votre commune” will tell you; we haven’t checked the zones of individual cities.

The owner’s taxes

• Taxe foncière is the annual property tax. It is paid by whoever owns the property on 1 January of the year, whether they live in France or abroad.
• Taxe d’habitation on a main home was abolished on 1 January 2023 and stays on a second home. If you have no tax domicile in France, a home here counts as a second one, and you pay the tax (impots.gouv.fr, page changed 10 March 2026).

The amounts depend on the commune and the cadastral value, and we have no general figure.

Selling and plus-value

A sale triggers capital gains tax (plus-value immobilière). For a non-resident it works like this (service-public F10864, 15 April 2026; impots.gouv.fr):

• 19% whatever the country of residence, plus social levies of 17.2%;
• if you are covered by the compulsory social security system of another EEA country (the EU, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein) or of Switzerland, you pay a solidarity levy of 7.5% instead of the social levies;
• look separately at your country’s tax treaty: service-public notes that a treaty may change the rules.

A non-resident appoints a fiscal representative (représentant fiscal), except in three cases (impots.gouv.fr, page changed 27 January 2026):

1. the seller lives in the EU, Iceland or Norway;
2. the sale price is no more than €150,000 (the threshold is counted per seller);
3. the gain is exempt through length of ownership: 22 years for the tax and 30 years for the social levies.

Taxes and citizenship

A common mistake: “a Russian passport means special taxes”. It doesn’t. Under service-public (F62, 1 January 2026) whether you are French or not makes no difference: a tax resident of France is anyone who meets at least one of three tests under Article 4 B of the CGI:

• your home or main place of stay is here (at least 183 days a year);
• your main job is here;
• the centre of your economic interests is here.

A resident pays tax on all income, a non-resident only on French income and whatever a treaty has left to France. If residence is dual, the tax treaty decides. Under the France - Russia treaty (Article 4) the order is: a permanent home, then the centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, and only after that citizenship; if even that does not settle it, the two countries agree between themselves. For other countries the order is set by the treaty with that country, if there is one. More on the taxes of someone who has moved is in the guide “Taxes in France”.

Where to look at real prices

Listings show the price the seller asks. The price actually paid is published by the tax authority.

• DVF (Demandes de valeurs foncières) - an open dataset: real sales over the last 5 years across France, except Alsace, Moselle and Mayotte. Updated in April and October, most recently on 12 October 2026 (data.gouv.fr).
• “Rechercher des transactions immobilières” - a service in your personal account on impots.gouv.fr, under “Données publiques”; would-be buyers can use it too.
• Notaires-INSEE indices - not a price per m² but the change in prices of existing homes at constant quality, once a quarter. The calculation uses the price net to the seller, without taxes, the notaire’s costs and the agency commission (INSEE).

There are no average prices by region on this page: for cities, see the table above, and for any other address, DVF.

If you are buying in the South, ask in our chat: someone there may have been through a purchase near you.

The “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram - real estate, moving and life in the South

See also:

• Taxes in France: income tax, for foreigners, self-employed
• Renting in France without a guarantor
• How to move to France: every legal route
• A bank account in France for newcomers
• Your first 30 days in France
• EU sanctions for Russian and Belarusian citizens: deposits, cards, cars