Ma Prime Logement Décent: the French Grant That Pays up to 90% of a Wreck’s Repairs, and Who Actually Gets It

This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change and individual situations differ. Always confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.

Every foreign buyer knows the fantasy: the stone house in the Lot for the price of a London parking space, bought with a shrug about the roof. What fewer know is that the French State runs a grant built for exactly that house, and that for the right household it pays up to nine tenths of the bill. It is called Ma Prime Logement Décent, and Bercy refreshed its guide to the scheme on 4 September. We have gone past the guide to the Anah deliberations behind it. The conditions are where foreign owners either qualify or quietly do not, and a sister aid exists for landlords that the guide mentions in a single line.

What the grant is, and what it replaced

Ma Prime Logement Décent (MPLD, roughly “my decent-housing bonus”) is paid by the Agence nationale de l’habitat, the Anah, the State agency that funds the improvement of private housing. It exists since 1 January 2024, when it absorbed two older Anah aids, Habiter Sain and Habiter Serein. The single scheme covers heavy works on homes that are dégradés (seriously run down) or indignes (unfit, in the legal sense of the loi du 31 mai 1990). The current rules sit in Anah deliberation n° 2026-23 of 26 June 2026, which the ANIL’s legal analysis sets out article by article. That is the text we have used for every figure below.

Two things distinguish it from MaPrimeRénov’, the grant most people have heard of. MPLD is about making a home safe and sound first, with energy performance as a bonus rather than the point. And it is means-tested at the low end: only households the Anah classes as modestes or très modestes qualify, which rules out most investors and includes a surprising number of retirees.

Who qualifies, and which foreign owners do not

Three cumulative conditions decide it. You must own the home and live in it as your résidence principale, and keep living in it for at least three years after the works. The house must be more than fifteen years old on the day you apply, and it must sit in mainland France. And your household income must fall under the Anah caps, measured on the revenu fiscal de référence of your French tax notice for year N-1 or N-2. The 2026 caps, from the ANIL note, are these.

Read those figures against the people who buy ruins. A British couple living full time in the Creuse on two State pensions, with a French tax notice, is a modest household by the Anah’s arithmetic and is squarely inside the scheme. A couple in London restoring the same house as a holiday home is outside it twice over: the house is not their main residence, and there is no French tax notice to test their income against. There is no nationality test anywhere in the text, but there is a residence test everywhere in it. The scheme also opens to a child paying for works in an ageing parent’s home. It opens, with conditions of its own, to holders of a bail commercial or bail à ferme who will live in the housing part of the premises.

What “dégradé” means in a file, not in a photograph

A leaking roof and a damp gable wall are not enough on their own. The works must answer one of five situations the deliberation recognises.

• An arrêté de mise en sécurité or de traitement de l’insalubrité, the mayor’s or prefect’s order against a dangerous or unhealthy building, other than one issued for imminent danger.
• The same kind of order against defective shared equipment in an apartment building.
• A report by a qualified professional using the Anah’s grille d’évaluation de la dégradation, the official scoring grid, finding dégradation importante or très importante.
• A works notification issued for lead risk.
• A lead survey (the CREP) less than two years old showing degraded lead paint above the legal thresholds.

Most owners of an old house will qualify through the third route, the grid, which means the assessment comes first and the application follows it.

The eligible works are then generous. Structure and foundations, roof, charpente, damp treatment, floors, water, electricity and gas networks, sanitary equipment, asbestos, lead, radon, termite and dry-rot treatment, the demolition and site-setup costs around them, professional fees for a maître d’œuvre and the diagnostics that lead to works. Energy works count too, since 1 May 2025 in six categories: wall, floor and roof insulation, windows, ventilation, and heating or hot water. You may even extend the habitable surface by up to 14 m². The one thing the aid will not do is fund cosmetic renewal of a house that is merely tired.

What it pays, and the three details that change the sum

Bercy’s guide says 60 to 80 percent of the works up to €70,000 excluding VAT, with a 10 percent bonus for lifting the home from F or G to D or better. The deliberation is more precise, and more generous than the phrase “10 percent bonus” suggests. The bonus adds ten points to the rate. A très modeste household reaching class D from a G therefore gets 90 percent of €70,000, which is €63,000. The full grid looks like this.

Three details change the sums. Professional fees and diagnostics sit outside the works ceiling, added pro rata, so €70,000 of works with €7,000 of architect’s fees is subsidised on the whole. The compulsory project assistance described below attracts its own subsidy on top, up to €2,000 or €4,000 per home. And the aid cannot be stacked with MaPrimeRénov’ for the same works, so an owner chooses one regime per line of the quote. A second application within five years is capped by the ceiling already used. Add the reduced-rate VAT that applies to renovation of homes over two years old and the numbers for a très modeste household start to look like the State rebuilding the house and the owner buying the kitchen.

The strings: three years, an assistant, an audit

The occupancy condition is the one that bites foreign owners who change their minds. You must occupy the home for at least three years after the works, and article 15-D of the Anah’s general rules provides for repayment if you sell before then. The local Anah delegate can waive the condition for a family, health or professional reason that makes staying impossible. A real change of circumstances can be argued. A change of heart cannot. The second string is the assistant à maîtrise d’ouvrage, the AMO: an operator approved by the Anah who must accompany the project from programme to payment claim, advising on the works, assembling the file and following the site. It is compulsory, and it is subsidised, so the sensible reading is that the State is paying for the project manager most foreign owners wish they had hired. The third is an energy audit before and after, produced to the arrêté of 17 November 2020 standard. Since the arrêté of 13 August 2025 the audit may be completed by the attestation de changement d’étiquette, the certificate recording what the new 1.7 electricity coefficient does to the label. Where that attestation exists, its classes replace the audit’s. For an electrically heated ruin that is worth knowing, because it can move a project from the 60 percent row to the 70 percent row without a single extra brick.

Two smaller strings. The works are done by qualified professionals, RGE-certified where the works are energy works, unless you are in a supervised self-renovation programme. And any energy-saving certificates the works generate are reserved to the Anah, so the coup de pouce bonuses we described for heat pumps are not yours to claim on top.

How to apply, in the order that works

Step 1: check your income band

Take the revenu fiscal de référence from your last French avis d’imposition and find your band in the table above. If you have no French tax notice, stop here: the scheme is not for you yet.

Step 2: book a France Rénov’ adviser and get the house assessed

The France Rénov’ adviser is free and will tell you whether the house is a candidate and which of the five qualifying situations applies. If the answer is the grid, a qualified professional produces the dégradation report, and the AMO is engaged.

Step 3: file on France Rénov’ before any work starts

The France Rénov’ site is now the single entry point to your monprojet.anah account, where the application is lodged with the audit, the report and the quotes. Nothing subsidisable starts before the file is in. The aid is paid on completion, but an advance of up to 30 percent of the grant can be requested before the works begin, against a signed quote from a contractor demanding a deposit.

The sister aid for landlords, which has no income test

Ma Prime Logement Décent itself is for owner-occupiers only. Landlords have a sister aid from the same agency, the aide aux travaux de lutte contre l’habitat indigne ou dégradé, which is what Bercy’s one-line mention of “specific aids for landlords” refers to. It is set by a separate Anah deliberation, n° 2026-24, adopted the same day as the owner-occupier one, and described in the ANIL’s companion analysis. Its logic is different. There is no income condition on the landlord. The price is a convention with the Anah under which you cap the rent and let the home for at least six years from the declared completion of the works, keeping it to the legal decency standard throughout. The subsidy is smaller. For heavy works on a home that is unfit or very badly degraded, it reaches 35 percent of the cost within a ceiling of €1,000 per square metre and 80 square metres, so €28,000 at most. The AMO and audit requirements are the same. Ordinary degraded-housing works get 35 percent within €750 per square metre, €21,000 at most. Primes stack on top for social letting through an approved intermediary (€1,000, plus €1,000 for a managed mandate and €1,000 for homes under 40 m²) and for deep rent reductions in expensive areas.

Nothing in the deliberation requires the landlord to live in France, so a non-resident owner of a run-down French rental can apply. Two cautions. The rent-cap convention also opens the Loc’Avantages tax reduction, which offsets French income tax only: a non-resident landlord will feel it against the tax on French rents and nowhere else, so weigh the subsidy and the reduction separately. And a landlord who receives a mise en demeure over an indecent flat has, as we have written, a court problem before a grant problem. The aid is designed for the owner who gets ahead of that.

Why this matters more than the money

France is tightening every screw on bad housing at once. Mayors can now take a derelict house off an absentee owner, the energy label decides what may be let, and the courts have stopped landlords using notice as a way out of a flat they knew was unfit. MPLD and its landlord sister aid are the other side of the same policy: the State pays to fix the houses it is otherwise prepared to punish. For a foreign owner living in France on a modest income, in an old house that fails the grid, it is the single most valuable programme in the French system. Almost nobody in the English-speaking forums has heard of it.

FAQ: Ma Prime Logement Décent

Can a non-resident owner of a French second home claim Ma Prime Logement Décent?

No. The aid requires the home to be your main residence, occupied for at least three years after the works, and your income is tested on a French tax notice. A second home fails the first condition whatever your income.

Does nationality matter?

No. Nothing in the Anah deliberation refers to nationality. A British, American or Australian owner living in France as a tax resident, under the income caps, in a qualifying house, is treated exactly like a French one.

What happens if I sell within three years of the works?

The three-year occupation is a condition of the grant under article 15-D of the Anah’s general rules, and selling before then exposes you to repayment unless the local Anah delegate accepts a family, health or professional reason. Treat it as a lock-in, and plan the sale after the anniversary.

Can I combine it with MaPrimeRénov’?

Not for the same works. The deliberation bars cumulating MPLD with MaPrimeRénov’ on identical works or services in the same home. Energy works can be included in the MPLD file itself, which is usually the better route for a badly degraded house.

Is there a version for landlords?

Yes, the Anah’s aid for works against unfit or degraded housing, with no income condition but a six-year rent-cap convention. Up to 35 percent of heavy works within €1,000 per square metre and 80 square metres, so €28,000 at most, plus primes for social letting.