Giving your children the bare ownership of a French home while you keep the usufruct cuts French gift tax and leaves nothing more to pay on your death. Here's who pays for repairs, why the wealth tax still bites, and how HMRC may see the same deed.
If you live in the UK and own a let French property through an SCI, the same rent can be taxed twice. The UK now plans a credit for the French tax, with claims from early 2028: what it could save, and what is still open.
In France you can’t lift a sitting tenant’s rent to market whenever you like: the law sets the timetable, and in tight-market zones even a new tenant’s rent is capped. We run the numbers on when keeping a good tenant beats chasing the market.
Every step of selling a French property while you live abroad, in order: the reports, the agent, the preliminary contract, signing remotely, the French tax the notaire takes, and the UK side.
French home prices fell 0.8% in the year to mid-2026, with houses down 1.3% and flats almost unchanged. We break down the notaires’ figures by city, explain why the 4% mortgage line matters, and what it all means if you sell or buy from abroad.
From January 2027 France's new vacancy tax will decide whether your home is empty on the strength of a database, your own declaration and, sometimes, a neighbour's tip-off. What fiscally vacant means, how occupation is proven, and the two defences that actually work.
A draft arrêté would cut the DPE electricity coefficient from 1.9 to 1.7 on 1 January 2027, lifting hundreds of thousands of electrically heated homes out of passoire status with no works and a free updated label. What it changes for foreign owners, and why it is not signed yet.
From 1 October 2026 every new French lease gives a non-paying tenant six weeks, not two months, to clear the debt after a commandement de payer. What the new contrat type changes, which clock governs your existing lease, and the procedure that actually gets a property back.
INSEE's Q2 2026 IRL is 148.37, up 1.15% in a year and accelerating for the first time in two years. What foreign landlords can claim, the DPE freeze that still bites, and the one-year deadline.
A third of France's best-rated homes turn into ovens each summer. What the DPE letter actually measures, the summer-comfort indicator nobody reads, and the checks that spare you from buying a bouilloire thermique.
The French Senate adopted the Relance Logement bill on 8 July 2026 - swapping the works threshold for a two-class DPE test and halving the copropriete shield to 18 months, while the landlord amortissement statute lives in the budget law, not this bill. What changes, what does not, and what September can still undo.