Real estate transactions in France are subject to stamp duty, which the buyer pays. The rate is currently 5.09% of the price of the property and breaks down into: A departmental (county) tax of 3.80%. Paris is classified as a county. A communal (municipal) tax of 1.20%. Each arrondissement (district) of Paris counts as a […]

Next up in the series by our office manager Faustine Cressot, giving you regular glimpses of the neighborhood around her desk on the rue de Verneuil, is an interview with master chocolate maker Hubert Masse of Le Cacaotier.

Paris notaires (officials who handle property transactions) recently issued figures for real estate sales during the 3rd quarter of 2013. Real estate prices in Paris overall have seen a fall of 2.1% during the past 12 months but, in the 3rd quarter, they were slightly up on the same quarter in 2012. The average price […]

La Samaritaine, one of Paris’s iconic landmarks, is to be reborn following an ambitious makeover project. The famous department store, first opened in 1870, is situated between the Pont Neuf and the rue de Rivoli, close to the Louvre Museum. The 1st arrondissement (district) is the city’s luxury shop window, with some sought-after addresses.

Ask anyone which monument most symbolizes Paris and the answer is almost certain to be the Eiffel Tower. Since its completion in 1889, the 1,063-foot ‘Iron Lady’ has dominated the skyline of the City of Light and drawn millions of visitors. Not everyone appreciated Gustave Eiffel’s masterpiece at the time but now it’s one of […]

Shooting in Paris has recently finished for a new movie that delves into an aspect of French real estate law – property that is already occupied. ‘My Old Lady’ stars Kevin Kline as a penniless New Yorker who has inherited a valuable Paris apartment from his father. Arriving in Paris to take possession, he finds […]

In August, we reported on the much-welcomed tax relief on real estate sales, which was immediately applied to any sale finalized after September 1, 2013. The changes were intended to offset the government’s wholesale revision of the capital gains tax laws in 2012, which had discouraged property owners from selling and thus significantly curbed the […]

If courtiers of the Sun King, Louis XIV, came back today they would be astonished at the changes time has wrought on the City of Light. Not only has the architectural face of Paris altered but real estate ownership has also been transformed.

The real estate market in Europe is experiencing significant variation by country in 2013. The good news is that, while France as a whole has seen a decline in residential property prices, Paris is attracting interest from non-European investors in particular this year 

Buyers from outside Europe – notably from Russia, China and the Middle East – are snapping up French luxury homes in the absence of European purchasers. France is one of the most popular choices for property investors from Russia and the former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine and Belarus. Mostly business leaders, they typically spend […]