As a property owner in France, you may have recently received an email from the French tax office requesting that you complete or update your “déclaration d’occupation” or declaration of usage. This requirement applies to all residential real estate owners, individuals, and companies, and it has been in place since January 2023. The registration must be completed online through your personal account, “espace particulier”, on www.impots.gouv.fr, no later than June 30th, 2024.
The goal of the request is still to precisely determine whose owners are liable for the housing tax (secondary residence, rental housing) or the tax on vacant housing. Although the housing tax has been abolished for principal homes as of 2023, the General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP) asks all primary, secondary residence, or rented housing unit owners to make this supplementary declaration.
Unlike last year, the French Tax Office has announced that they will not grant an extension and that infringing owners may be liable for a minimum penalty of €150 per piece of undeclared real estate by the due date.
If you have opened your tax profile and completed your Déclaration accurately in 2023, your registration is still valid. However, if the usage of your property has changed before the 1st of January 2024, you must update your registration to avoid being penalised. This can be done via the tab “Biens Immobiliers” on your tax profile.
One of our partners has set up a service dedicated to assisting international property owners and non-residents dealing with this issue. They can open their “Espace Particulier” and complete the declaration on their behalf.
LTV update
We can generally offer Loans to Values between 70% and 80% of the purchase price (excluding the fees). In more cases, the deposit required is 30%.
Rates update
The ECB declared not a long ago that they were planning to reduce the rates from June 2024 until the end of the year. Reuters wrote about it 2 days ago, mentioning that the ECB is sticking to its plan. We don’t know how far the decrease will go but we should all keep our fingers crossed! Justin Low from Forexlive wrote that we cannot be sure that the decrease in June will be followed by more decreases and that we should be
Please see the updated rates table below. Further rate increases are likely over the year, and rates can only be secured once a mortgage offer is issued. As always, we are here to assist you and look forward to hearing about your project.
Matthieu Ragon
General manager
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