Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Always consult qualified professionals before making decisions about your French property investments.
Update (July 2026): the doubling is no longer a proposal. On 18 July 2026 the Paris council voted the new taxe sur la vacance des locaux d’habitation (TVLH), replacing the regime in place since 1999. From 1 January 2027 a home left vacant pays 30% of its cadastral rental value in year one and 60% from year two, against 17% and 34% today. For a small 30 m² flat in the 17th billed around €790 today, the French property press estimates a bill of roughly €2,800 a year from 2028, and the deputy mayor has put the figure for a typical flat higher still, as set out below. INSEE counts 139,075 vacant Paris homes, second homes excluded, and the city says the aim is to push 20,000 of them back onto the market. The exemptions described below survive in the voted text.
If you own property in Paris, or you’re thinking about buying, there’s a tax change coming in 2027 that you need to know about. The city’s new mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, has announced that the taxe sur les logements vacants (vacant property tax) will double. First-year rates jump from 17% to 30% of the valeur locative cadastrale (cadastral rental value); second-year rates go from 34% to 60%. In cash terms, a bill that today sits between €1,500 and €2,000 could hit €4,000.
Here’s what’s changing, who it affects, and why British investors with a Parisian pied-à-terre or buy-to-let should pay attention.
What Is the Taxe sur les Logements Vacants?
The taxe sur les logements vacants (TLV) has historically been France’s national tax on residential properties left unoccupied and unfurnished for more than one year in designated high-demand housing zones (zones tendues). Paris, predictably, is one. The tax is calculated as a percentage of the property’s valeur locative cadastrale, a notional annual rental value set by the tax authorities, and the rate escalates the longer the property sits empty.
Technically, the loi de finances 2026 has merged the old TLV and its cousin the THLV into a single new levy, the taxe sur la vacance des locaux d’habitation (TVLH), effective 1 January 2027. For practical purposes the mechanics are the same, it’s still a percentage of the valeur locative cadastrale, still escalating by year of vacancy, but the revenue now flows directly to the commune rather than to ANAH, the national housing agency that received the old TLV. We’ll use “TLV” and “vacant property tax” interchangeably in this article, since that’s still the term most people (and most French media) recognise.
It’s distinct from the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (THRS), the council tax equivalent that applies to second homes that are furnished and used occasionally. If your Paris flat is furnished and you stay in it a few weeks a year, you pay THRS. If it’s sitting empty with no furniture and no tenant, you pay TLV. Both are about to get more expensive.
The New Rates: What the Doubling Looks Like
The loi de finances 2026 (France’s annual finance act) gave municipalities in zones tendues the legal authority to multiply the TLV rate by two. Paris has confirmed it will exercise that power from 2027.
- Year 1 of vacancy: 17% → 30% of the valeur locative cadastrale.
- Year 2+: 34% → 60%.
According to Jacques Baudrier, Paris’s adjoint au Logement (deputy mayor for housing), the typical bill of €1,500–€2,000 could therefore reach up to €4,000 from 2027 onwards. “On a le droit de multiplier le taux de la taxe par deux, donc on annonce dès maintenant que nous allons le faire”, he told the Conseil de Paris: we are entitled to double the rate, so we are announcing here and now that we intend to.
How Many Empty Homes Does Paris Actually Have?
Paris has a vacant-housing problem that successive mayors have struggled with, and the figure you see quoted depends entirely on what is being counted. The number that governs this tax is INSEE’s: 139,075 vacant homes, second homes excluded, or close to 10% of the Parisian housing stock, which is what the city cited when it voted the surtax. Long-term vacancy, the kind the tax is really aimed at, is a far smaller subset, and APUR puts the durably vacant stock at roughly 18,600 homes. Widen the lens to every dwelling standing empty for any reason, including résidences secondaires, occasional professional use and tourist lets, and the prefecture’s own figures put it at nearly one Paris home in five, or 19%, which is about 260,000 properties. That wider count is where the headline figure of roughly 300,000 unoccupied homes comes from, and it is a much broader category than the one this tax reaches.
The numbers vary sharply by arrondissement. The 10th (Xe) is among the worst-hit, with around 13% of homes vacant and a further 8% classified as résidences secondaires, according to the Portrait Social du 10e. Multiple arrondissements exceed 10% vacancy rates, and the vacancy stock isn’t static, the mairie estimates it is growing by roughly 7,000 units a year.
Second Homes Are in the Crosshairs Too
The TLV doubling is only half the story. The Grégoire administration has also signalled that it wants “full control” over the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (THRS), the surtax that already applies to second homes in Paris at a rate of 60%.
Eleven arrondissements have more than 10% of their housing stock classified as résidences secondaires. Six of those, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th, are at or approaching 20%. These are, of course, exactly the arrondissements where international buyers (British investors included) tend to concentrate. If you own a furnished flat in the Marais or Saint-Germain that you visit a few times a year, the THRS bill is already steep, and the direction of travel is clearly upward.
A New “Brigade de Protection du Logement”
Alongside the tax hikes, Paris is creating a brigade de protection du logement, a 150-person enforcement team tasked with cracking down on illegal short-term tourist lets (meublés de tourisme), insalubrious housing, marchands de sommeil (slum landlords), rent-cap violations, and eviction prevention.
For anyone running a short-term let in Paris, or thinking about it, this is a clear escalation in enforcement. We covered the regulatory landscape for Airbnb-style lets in our guide to Airbnb in France; the rules were already strict, and the new brigade is the operational muscle to back them up.
Why Should British Investors Care?
Three reasons:
- If you own but don’t let. British investors who bought a Paris flat as a pied-à-terre or investment and left it empty, perhaps while deciding what to do with it, or because they can’t find the right tenant, will see their TLV bill double. The economics of leaving a property vacant in Paris are about to get significantly worse.
- If you let furnished on a long-term basis. You’re not directly affected by the TLV (since the property is occupied), but the broader political signal matters. Paris is tightening the screws on all forms of under-utilised housing, and the THRS increase could matter if your tenancy gaps are long enough to trigger a reclassification. Our LMNP guide covers how furnished letting works from a tax perspective.
- If you’re buying. Factor the holding cost into your projections. A vacant flat in Paris will now cost meaningfully more to hold empty, which changes the break-even on renovation-and-let strategies. Our step-by-step buying guide walks through the full cost stack for British purchasers.
And for anyone managing French property from the UK, the general principle holds: the fewer gaps in occupancy, the better your tax position. We covered that angle in our guide to managing French property remotely.
A Unified Tax on Under-Utilised Housing?
There’s a legislative subplot here worth understanding. As noted above, the loi de finances 2026 has already merged the old TLV and the THLV (a separate, weaker vacant-property tax that applied outside zones tendues) into a single new levy, the TVLH. That reform is done, it takes effect on 1 January 2027.
But the Grégoire administration has signalled it wants to go further: merging the vacant-property tax with the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (THRS) into a single, unified tax on all forms of under-utilised housing, whether empty or used as a second home. That hasn’t happened yet, and it would require new legislation. But the political will is clearly there, Baudrier and Grégoire have both spoken about wanting a more punitive, joined-up framework. If it happens, it would simplify the system but almost certainly raise the combined burden on both vacant properties and second homes.
The Opposition View
Not everyone in the Conseil de Paris is on board. Aurélien Véron, an elected member from the opposition group Changer Paris, has criticised the measures as further surtaxes that pile pressure onto private landlords, while, he argues, social housing blocks (parc social) managed by the city are themselves “left in a state of disrepair.” It’s a familiar tension in French housing politics: the left sees vacant private property as speculative hoarding; the right sees punitive taxation as a deterrent to investment.
Important Caveats
- The doubling takes effect from 2027, not immediately. The loi de finances 2026 grants the power; the Paris council must formally vote to exercise it. That vote came on 18 July 2026, and the new rates are now law, applying from 1 January 2027.
- TLV only applies to properties vacant for more than one year. If your property is occupied, even intermittently, or is genuinely on the market and you can demonstrate reasonable letting efforts, you may be exempt. Consult your gestionnaire or tax adviser.
- The cadastral rental value is not the market rent. The valeur locative cadastrale is typically well below actual market rents, so 30% or 60% of it is less alarming than it sounds at first glance, but €4,000 per year is still a meaningful holding cost on top of taxe foncière and any charges.
- This is Paris-specific, at this scale. Other zones tendues can also apply the doubled TVLH rates, but few have announced that they will. If your French property is outside Paris, check your commune’s position.
The Bottom Line
The Grégoire administration is sending an unambiguous message to owners of empty Parisian flats: put them on the rental market, sell them, or pay substantially more for the privilege of keeping them vacant. Combined with the THRS pressure on second homes and the new enforcement brigade targeting illegal short-term lets, the fiscal environment for under-utilised property in Paris is getting meaningfully tighter.
For British investors, the practical takeaway is simple: if you hold property in Paris, occupancy matters more than ever. Whether that means a long-term bail meublé under the LMNP regime, a carefully compliant short-term let, or a timely sale, the cost of doing nothing just went up. If you’re still weighing your options and haven’t yet secured a tenant, our guide to the Visale rent guarantee explains how to de-risk the letting process at no cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Paris vacant property tax increase take effect?
The doubling is expected to apply from 2027. The legal authority was granted by the loi de finances 2026, and the Paris council has announced its intention to exercise it, though a formal vote is still required.
What are the new vacant property tax rates in Paris?
30% of the valeur locative cadastrale for the first year of vacancy (up from 17%), and 60% for the second year onwards (up from 34%). In cash terms, the bill could reach up to €4,000 per year.
Does this affect second homes in Paris?
Indirectly. The TLV applies to vacant (unfurnished, unoccupied) properties, not to furnished second homes. However, the Paris administration has also signalled that it intends to increase the taxe d’habitation sur les résidences secondaires (THRS), which applies to furnished second homes. Both taxes are moving in the same direction.
How many vacant homes are there in Paris?
The mairie cites more than 36,000 homes vacant for over two years; the independent APUR figure for “durably vacant” homes is around 18,600. Total vacant homes (including shorter-term vacancies) number roughly 128,000. The headline “300,000” figure cited by the mairie includes both vacant homes and résidences secondaires combined.
Can I avoid the TLV if my property is on the market?
Potentially. If you can demonstrate that the property is genuinely on the rental or sales market and that the vacancy is not deliberate, you may qualify for an exemption. Consult your tax adviser or gestionnaire de patrimoine for specifics.
