So you’re in the process of buying your dream house in France and obviously what you really want to know is how much will it actually cost you?

There are a number of different factors that will affect the final price. You should be able to  get a pretty good idea of the costs in Euros by adding up the following different items:

• The House - The price you have actually agreed for the house
• Estate Agents or Notaires Commision - if the fees aren’t already included in the price of the house
• Notaires fees -  which are fixed by the Government and depend on the value of the transaction. These will usually include:
  • The fee - usually around 6%-8% of the purchase price (most of this is tax due to the government, ask your agent how much this will be or try this notaires fees calculator)
  • Loan Acquisition Fee - If you are getting a mortgage you will also have to pay a loan acquisition fee of 1.5% - 2% of the loan value to the Notaire as the Notaire will act for your mortgage lender
• Taxe Foncière - You will probably also have to pay the proportion of the Taxe Foncière that is remaining for the year to the vendor (e.g. If you buy on the 1st July you will probably have to pay 50% of the Taxe Foncière to the vendor as they will already have paid for the full year). 
• Taxe d’habitation - This will again already have been paid for the year but you will not normally have to pay the vendor any proportion of this back but do check, just in case.

Remember to check whether the agents / notarires commission is included or not in the price you agree as these costs can be quite substantial.

You will also need to look into inheritance as the  laws are quite different in France. We took out a communauté universelle to ensure that all property  goes directly to the other party on death but the law has changed recently so you would need to look into this a bit further to see if you are affected. Make sure you do this before you sign the Acte de Vente as it can be quite expensive to change anything afterwards. If you do need anything you may need the Notaire to draw up an agreement for you and they would charge a couple of hundred euros extra for this so you should add this ont your final price.

After all that you will have the total price in Euros for your house, so what will that cost you in sterling, well it depends on the exchange rate you can get and that’s another story!

 2 Bedroom Self Catering Cottage / Gite near Dinan, Brittany, France

Buying, Owning and Running a Gite in Brittany Blog

©Derek Arkwright 2007

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