The English Investor is the go-to English-language resource for foreign property investors in France. Written by a tri-qualified lawyer, our guides cover legal structures, tax strategy, rental regulations, and practical advice for buying and managing French real estate.
Every French estate agent operates behind a licence, a financial guarantee and compulsory insurance. How to verify the carte professionnelle in two minutes, what protects your deposit, and the case law making agents answer for the deals they touch.
France hangs an agent’s entire right to payment on a written mandate, a register number and a completed sale. When the commission is owed, who owes it, and the five decades of case law on agents who tried to get paid anyway.
Every French estate agent operates behind a licence, a financial guarantee and compulsory insurance. How to verify the carte professionnelle in two minutes, what protects your deposit, and the case law making agents answer for the deals they touch.
France hangs an agent’s entire right to payment on a written mandate, a register number and a completed sale. When the commission is owed, who owes it, and the five decades of case law on agents who tried to get paid anyway.
Official 2025 rates for the 47 French towns where foreign buyers concentrate: a 3.3x spread, the 90% club in the Dordogne, eleven towns with 60% second-home surcharges, and Paris up 50% in five years.
France's property-tax bill, decoded box by box on a real anonymised 2025 avis: what every line means in English, how the €1,016 total is built, what to check before paying, and how to contest it.
France's Relance Logement bill would sweeten the Jeanbrun tax break and hand F and G homes a renovation-for-reprieve deal, but the Conseil d'Etat has filled the margins with warnings. Here is what foreign owners need to know.
Bought a French tax-shelter property that underdelivered? A June 2026 Cassation ruling resets when the five-year clock to sue the adviser starts - later than you might think.
Loc'Avantages gives French landlords a 15% to 65% income-tax reduction for letting below market. Who qualifies, how much it is worth, and the residence catch for non-resident owners.
France scrapped the taxe d'habitation on main homes but kept it on second homes - and 1,628 communes now pile on a surcharge of up to 60%. What foreign owners actually pay in 2026, and how to lighten it.
Letting your own French home for a few weeks a year is legal, but tightly framed. Here are the 2026 rules: the 120-day cap, the new nationwide registration, and the tax that follows.
France has revived property amortisation for the first time in a generation. Here is how the new Jeanbrun (Relance logement) regime lets landlords - residents and non-residents alike - write down up to 80% of a flat's price against their rental income.
Get the free one-page tax calendar for second-home owners: every bill, deadline and quiet trap of the year, verified against official sources. Plus one short email when the rules change.