" Lots of Brits and others buy up the old knackered and over looked French properties and spend our money putting them back into serviceable use, no impot refunds for us. Many of these houses have been derelict for decades."
Their choice John, no one forced them into it ! It’s not like they were the doing the French any favours, mostly it was because it was cheap to buy here!
Anyway… to calm the thread down just a little… only those of you who live in the areas/towns mentioned elsewhere in the thread…will be touched by the steep rise.
The rest of us… who perhaps live in the outer rims… will possibly see a small rise… but (hopefully) still be able to cope.
As I have said. Folk can put their second-home on “hold” by emptying it (and/or ???) cutting-off the services. Dramatic steps to take, but I know some folk who have done this in the past…
We didn’t have the huge outlay as we bought through the viager system (a monthly amount payable to the previous owners)
We can’t visit various places as our daughter has specific equipment she requires - profiling high sided bed, hoists, lifts, shower table etc. She has very severe brain damage, doesn’t cope with unusual places and likes to be where she feels safe.
She loves her time spent in France as she knows what to expect.
We don’t have spare money for extra taxes.
We found the place in France and would love to be there full time. Only thing stopping us is the medical care our daughter needs. She has neuro surgery every 5/6 years and though it is available in France, the specific unit she needs is not yet available there.
But to get back to the taxes we pay our taxes on our income in the UK as that’s where we spend most time. We pay council tax in UK and the equivalent in France.
What extra taxes would you like to see us pay Misty? Due to the viager system we sort of own the property, but selling it is very complex and I doubt anyone would buy it with this in place!
Karen… roughly whereabouts are you ?? did you see my private message ?
I guess the underlying feeling is, people who come here on holiday to enjoy what a village has to offer, should contribute to the upkeep of the village. Those who live here year round don’t like feeling they’re paying to provide a “free” tourist attraction.
I thought that normally when you bought “en viager”, the previous owner continues to have sole use of the property and the purchaser can’t use it until after the death of that person?
Does the taxes fonciere not get used towards the upkeep of the village?
Your post has made me think that I have misunderstood the viager system in the past. I’d always presumed that you paid the previous owner while they were alive and in residence but stopped once the house was vacant and available for you to occupy. It sounds as though I’d got that wrong.
In my personal experience of living in south west England and western France there is no doubt that second home owners push up house prices at the expense of the majority of the local population. In my area the expat housing market is a bit like the football transfer system, houses are bought and sold, large sums of money change hands but very little goes into the outside world. Brits seem to buy from other Brits, live in their new home for a while then sell to another Brit coming along.
Here is the link to buying en viager…it does state that “Occupation du logement - Le débirentier ne peut occuper le logement qu’au jour du décès du crédirentier.”
So not sure how holidays can be spent there. An en viager purchase seems a massive gamble, not a risk I would like to take …
If we and others hadn’t bought these places, would anything have changed? It’s not about cost, it’s about housing stock. These places lay empty for years. The French state did nothing to put them back into use, or fine the owners or tax the owners. Now is it about housing stock or revenue raising?
Taxe foncière is divided between the commune, the department and possibly other stakeholders, eg communautés des communes. The commune itself receives only a small portion of what property owners pay in taxe foncière, probably less than a fifth. As I understand it, communes do receive most of what’s paid in taxe d’habitation and that’s where most of their income comes from, along with business taxes.
It is a gamble but the odds are worked out carefully. Some people like gambling. I don’t.
“pour l’acquéreur à acheter un logement sans avoir à verser la totalité du prix de vente le jour de l’acquisition, mais qu’il ne pourra occuper qu’au décès du vendeur, sauf si ce dernier le libère tout de suite”
This is a complex subject… I’ve just done another look-see and found the paragraph above…which clearly says…
2 ways of buying en Viager: Vacant Possession… or … Possession on Death. In both cases…the Buyer pays the agreed sums until the death of the Seller.
Well spotted Stella 
A realistic way of looking at tax on second homes issue: Raising revenue and spending it is what governments do. Usually the basic aim is to make their country a nice place to live in for its residents and taxpayers, and this is very much the case in France. Quality of life and discussing whether France is achieving its goal of being ‘un pays où il fait bon vivre’ is an oft discussed topic (compare and contrast with the UK, but that’s a different issue). That means looking after the environment and the economy, and the tourist industry is part of the economy, and second homers are part of the tourist industry. The bottom line is that the reason any country encourages tourism is not to give itself and its assets and attractions away for free so that tourists and visitors can enjoy them at no cost; it’s to maximise these assets and sell them to tourists to help fuel the national economy for the benefit of its own taxpayers. You can’t blame France for the way economies and taxation work. It’s about trying to strike the right balance so that nobody gets a free ride if they can afford to pay, and everybody feels they’re seeing something of value in return for their taxes.
Yes but they can hand over the house eg to go into an old people’s home and continue to get the rente until they die, I think this is what happened with Jeanne Calment whose notaire bpught her hpuse en viager when she was about 60 something and his grandson finally got it because she died aged 113.
Nobody IS getting a free ride, we pay our taxes for a whole year, if we have the property empty we have still paid. If we have guests, they spend and that goes directly to local business’s not to mention the tax sejour we collect on the Gov’s behalf. What do the french do to encourage tourism, not a lot, that is why visitor numbers for gites are about 70% down on 10 years ago because most are going elsewhere for better value.
Some change from people getting on the housing ladder which is what was said before and globally building more houses is the only way to feed the demand unless we have a war to cull the ever expanding population and no one wants that.
Sticking a bit more on second property tax won’t accumulate much to house many if they are social housing.
The french system is creaking under the weight of tax, they are even talking about re introduction of road tax. Macron says it’s to fix the poor roads as they cause accidents. Well Mr Macron UK roads are far worse, far busier with traffic and we don’t have the number of accidents so apart from the obvious tailgating it’s another tax they are going to bring back.
Phew! So what you’re saying John is that France is bloody lucky to have you as a second home owner…
Well, I could write you a little thesis on what France does to promote tourism because as it 'appens I do a lot of work for CDTs and OTs, and I assure you a lot of analysis and dialogue goes on about regional strategies, initiatives, funding etc, but this isn’t the place and I doubt you’d be interested. However, France is still the world’s number one tourist destination, albeit going down a bit, so they can’t be getting it too wrong.
The trouble here is that you seem to be taking it very personally, whereas second home owners are a broad spectrum and there are various different issues thrown up. I don’t know and I don’t want to know where your holiday home is or how much property tax you pay, however it is a fact that there are too many holiday apartments in Paris and other big cities where there is a shortage of accommodation, and it is creating problems in those places. You can’t build new homes in the middle of a city.
Local tax revenue isn’t an issue in cities where there are lots of businesses paying tax, but it is an issue in rural villages with lots of holiday homes and next to no businesses. For instance, as a full-time resident working freelance, I pay nearly as much to my commune in CFE as I do in taxe d’habitation. If I worked in the UK and kept this as a holiday home, I wouldn’t pay CFE.
So increasing the tax would kill 2 different birds with 1 stone - it would be a disincentive to keeping city housing as holiday homes, and it would top up the budget in small communities with a lot of empty houses and little economic activity.
Second home owners already pay more habitation tax than principal home owners because they get no discount according to their income level. I’d say it was really unfair if everyone was being charged but it’s only in towns with a population of more than 50k where they have a housing shortage. Someone looked up the number of places available to let via airbnb and realised that this was why nobody could find anywhere to rent - owners get much more revenue doing short term lettings. They’ve already said in certain areas you can’t buy unless you intend to live in the property and this is the next stage to try to make it either more unattractive to buy a second home in such places and if not, to at least get more tax out of those who do. Bear in mind it’s not even every second home owner in those specific areas. If the place isn’t furnished you don’t pay tax d’habitation - which is more than can be said for the UK, where you pay full council tax regardless of whether the place (non principal home) is furnished or not.
Personally I think a revision of the French letting laws would help to get more rental properties on the market. With the rules being so biased towards the tenant; contracts being fixed lengths of a year for furnished or three years unfurnished for the landlord but not for the tenant, being unable to evict people in winter months and evictions being very difficult all round, it’s not surprising people would rather go down the route of holiday lettings and be sure they’re not going to lose their property for a long time with no revenue and the risk of damage.
Re the viager thing - you can have viager occupé and viager libre and in the latter case you have full use of the property. Some viager libre properties involve payments for a fixed period and so are more correctly defined as vente a terme or credit vendeur. Then there is location vente, in which you have use of the property (but ownership is not transferred until it’s been paid for and the owner is still responsible for tax fonciere and exterior maintenance but you are reponsible for everything interior) and part of the payment is for rent and part of it is capital - and if you change your mind about buying the property you get the capital part back.
After advertising a property for location vente I know that often French people don’t understand the differences between these options so I’m not surprised some people on this forum don’t 