Buying a home is not just about paying the sale price. Once the owner, you will have to pay, in addition to the monthly loan payments, the property tax. And it is better to anticipate this expense in your financing plan before the project comes to fruition because its weight is sometimes heavy.
What budget to plan? The broker Meilleurtaux estimates, in a recent study, that this tax (to be paid on October 15 in the general case, but of which payment can be monthly over ten months) represents on average a cost of 101 euros per month for a housing of 70 m2 located in one of the twenty largest cities in France. MeilleurTaux specifies that it has carried out the calculation “With the average amounts of property tax in force in 2020 for a couple with two children”.
This amount varies significantly depending on the location. For the most expensive cities, Meilleurtaux calculated an average of 128 euros for Montpellier, 125 euros for Nîmes and Angers, 124 euros for Le Havre and Bordeaux.
Montpellier-Paris, from single to double
Thus, in Nîmes, it takes an average of 145,390 euros for the purchase of a 70 m apartment.2, which implies a monthly loan payment of 675 euros for a 20-year loan at the rate of 1.10%, according to the broker’s estimates. Including the property tax, the monthly cost will be 800 euros per month.
In Montpellier, a 70 m2 costs 233,100 euros on average. With a monthly loan payment of 1,082 euros, the monthly cost reaches 1,210 euros, property tax included.
In Angers, the 70 m2 costs 211,400 euros: you need 982 euros of credit per month but 1,107 euros with the property tax.
In Paris, you have to spend an average of 742,980 euros to buy 70 m2, which results in a monthly loan payment of 3,450 euros. The monthly cost increases to 3,512 euros with the property tax, which represents 62 euros per month. The capital records the lowest level of property tax of the twenty cities studied.
“In a city where the monthly credit is important, as in Paris, the amount needed to pay the property tax is almost painless. On the other hand, in an average city in which the monthly payment is for example 800 euros, an addition of 100 euros per month is not negligible and it must be taken into account in your budget from the start ”, insists Maël Bernier, spokesperson for Meilleurtaux.
Along with Paris, Lille, Strasbourg and Lyon are among the cities where the monthly weight of the property tax does not exceed 75 euros. Rennes, Marseille, Reims, Nice and Le Mans cost between 90 and 100 euros per month.
Rising
“Even if buyers are informed of the level of the property tax when they acquire them, they do not necessarily realize the importance of the sum. This very often cancels out a very interesting credit rate ”, estimates Mme Bernier. In a city like Nîmes or Saint-Etienne, for an area of 70 m2, the purchaser who borrows over 20 years at 1.10% excluding insurance actually sees his rate go to 2.90% if the cost of the property tax is included, according to Meilleurtaux’s calculations.
“If you want to become an owner, taking these costs into account when calculating the budget becomes more and more important because they are increasing”, adds André Percheron, tax lawyer at TZA Avocats.
In its 2020 study, Meilleurtaux estimated the average monthly cost of property tax at 98 euros, and at 92 euros in the2018 study (against 101 euros in 2021). The same goes for the National Union for Real Estate (UNPI), which reported, in its annual property tax observatory published at the end of 2020, of an average increase in property tax paid of 12.1% between 2014 and 2019, i.e. three times more than inflation.