The French Property Playbook · Verified June-2026 law

What does buying that French property really cost?

The "frais de notaire" everyone quotes as a flat 7% changed in 2025 — and it now depends on which département you buy in. Get your true, all-in acquisition cost on the only English-language calculator built on verified June-2026 French figures. Free, two minutes, no guesswork.

Free. No card. One email to unlock the full report. Educational tool — not tax or legal advice.

The myth: "frais de notaire are about 7%, flat, everywhere." Wrong twice over — it's geographic (most départements raised the duty to 5% in 2026), it's far lower on new-build, and ~80% of it is transfer TAX, not the notaire's fee. Here's your real number ↓

Your true French buying-cost calculator

Enter the price, the property type, the département and your buyer status. Your real all-in cost updates live — no email needed to see it.

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Your real buying cost

Total "frais de notaire"
All-in cost to budget
DMTO — transfer tax
Notaire émoluments (incl. 20% VAT)
CSI — security contribution (0.10%)
Débours — disbursements
Total
Where the money actually goes:
Taxes Notaire Débours
Moving target: DMTO is geographic and the +0.5 pt window runs only 1 Apr 2025 – 31 Mar 2028 — confirm your département before you sign. The ~7–8% ancien / ~2–3% neuf framing is an illustrative, date-stamped rule of thumb; the per-département figure above is exact for the inputs you chose. Verified as of June 2026.
Free PDF + 2026 guide

Get your full PDF cost report + the 2026 "What Changed" guide

A personalised PDF breakdown of the calculation above, plus the plain-English guide to the 2026 French property-law changes — the LMNP plus-value reform, the class-G rental ban, the LFSS-2026 social-charge split and the DMTO geography — that just made most online advice wrong. Your numbers stay on screen either way.

✓ On its way — check your inbox (and spam) for the guide.

No card. One email. Unsubscribe anytime. Educational tool — not tax, legal or financial advice.

One quick question — so we send you the right thing

French property splits into two very different journeys. Which describes you?

Not sure yet? Pick the one closest to today — you can switch any time, and a lot of the groundwork is the same.

Why this exists

Almost every English-language guide to buying in France is out of date

Pinel ended. The 15-Feb-2025 LMNP plus-value reform now adds previously-deducted amortissement back into your taxable gain. The class-G rental ban has been live since January 2025. Loi Le Meur cut the micro-BIC. The LFSS-2026 split social charges. And the DMTO rose +0.5pt across most of the country.

Each of those decides outcomes — and almost every English guide predates them. We pin every figure to verified June-2026 law and date-stamp it, so you always know exactly how current the number you're acting on really is.

14
modules, each ending in a working calculator
14
working tools kept current on French law
June 2026
every figure verified and date-stamped
Education, not advice. We teach you to run your own numbers — and tell you which ones to re-check with a notaire or accountant before you sign.

Choose your path through the Playbook

Start free with the calculator above. When you're ready to go further, two one-time courses — one for home buyers, one for investors. Prices are launch estimates pending live validation.

Buy Your French Home
€600 €900
one-time · self-paced · yours to keep

For the home or second-home buyer. Walk in wanting a place in France; walk out able to judge the true cost, navigate the notaire-driven purchase, and separate the property from the right to stay — on verified 2026 rules.

  • Full buying-process walkthrough — offre to acte, every reversible vs irreversible step flagged
  • The visa & residency reality + the Visa & Residency Route Selector
  • The Second-Home Planner & total-cost-of-ownership tools
  • Region, renovation & energy guidance against the DPE trajectory
  • Compliance slices — the 90/180 Schengen rule, the DPE/energy rules — all dated

Order bump at checkout: the "2026 — What Changed" premium guide (€25).

Get "Buy Your French Home" →
French Property Current
€300/yr
annual-first · or €29/mo · cancel anytime (pending validation)

The kept-current layer. The numbers that decide your outcome don't hold still — so we keep them current. Re-run your tools on this quarter's rates and this year's law, and get alerted the moment a reform changes your math.

  • Annual law/tax/market updates to the facts pack and the affected tools
  • Quarterly refresh of fast-decaying inputs — taux d'usure, taxe foncière, market prints
  • New-reform alerts — encadrement expiry, the F/G ban runway, micro-BIC indexation
  • Community for ongoing portfolio questions

Bundled free for Year 1 inside the Investor flagship.

Stay current →

For context: a buyer's agent in France charges 2–4% of the purchase price — on a €300k purchase that's €6,000–€12,000 for a single transaction, with no education product to hand you.

🛡️

A results-honest, 30-day money-back guarantee

Both courses carry a 30-day, no-questions money-back guarantee. What we will never do is guarantee a yield, a loan approval, a visa, or a tax outcome — this is education, not regulated advice, and France-specific figures are dated, moving targets you must re-verify before acting. That "verify-before-you-act" discipline isn't a disclaimer to bury; it's the whole point of the brand.

Questions worth answering up front

Isn't "frais de notaire" just about 7%?

No — that flat number is the single most common mistake. Most of it is transfer tax (DMTO), which since the 2025 reform varies by département — raised to 5.0% in 87 of 101 départements as of January 2026. It's also far lower on new-build (neuf/VEFA), and first-time principal-residence buyers can be exempt from the +0.5pt surcharge. The calculator above shows your exact number for your inputs.

Does buying a French property give me the right to live there?

No. Owning property in France grants no residency right and no visa — France has never run a real-estate "golden visa." Non-EU nationals (which, since Brexit, includes UK citizens) get 90 days in any rolling 180 in Schengen. Longer stays need the right visa, most commonly the VLS-TS "visiteur" route. You plan the purchase and the right to stay together — it's covered in the home-buyer path.

Can't I just find all this for free?

You can find most individual facts for free — buried in French-language official sources, scattered across forums, or stated confidently and wrongly in an English guide written before 2025. What you can't easily find: the numbers assembled into a working model you run on your own deal, explained in English for resident and non-resident situations, verified and dated, and kept current as the law moves.

Is this financial or legal advice?

No. The French Property Playbook is education built to make you a sharper client of your own notaire, courtier or fiscaliste. We teach you to run your own numbers and tell you exactly which ones to re-check before you sign. Every figure is verified as of June 2026 and date-stamped.

How current are the figures, really?

Every France-specific number is pinned to verified June-2026 law and date-stamped. Fast-decaying inputs — the quarterly taux d'usure, the DMTO window, the taxe foncière coefficient — are flagged "re-check before you act." The optional "French Property Current" membership keeps your tools running on this quarter's rates.

What's the difference between the two courses?

"Buy Your French Home" is the lifestyle path — purchase process, visas, true cost of ownership. "Build a French Portfolio" is the investor flagship — all 14 calculators including the Vehicle & Regime Comparator, the STR model and the Exit & Decision Dossier, plus Year 1 of the kept-current membership. If you'll ever let the place out, the flagship is the one — and lifestyle buyers can upgrade by paying the gap.

Start with the number that decides everything

Before you make an offer, know your true all-in cost — on verified 2026 figures, in two minutes, free.

Know your real French buying cost — free, on verified 2026 figures. Get my number →