The Paris City Council today approved the doubling of the charge on returnable housing from 2027 on, to “displace the rental market” in the French capital, where the municipality expects to recover some 20,000 dwellings.
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Lusa
A The city has about 150,000 vacant houses, the equivalent of 9% of the housing park, says the Chamber of Paris, which underlines the “persistent imbalance between supply and demand”.
The Finance Act for 2026 allows municipalities to increase, from January 1, 2027, the rates applied to return housing of 17% of the tax assets after one year of vacancy and from 34% after two years, to 30% after one year and 60% after two years.
“It is a historic victory, after ten years of struggle”, Jacques Baudrier, councilor of the House of Paris, led by the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, at the end of the vote, quoted by AFP.
According to the mayor, of the 150,000 return homes, “about 80,000 are in structural return” and are therefore subject to the tax. The goal is to put again about 20,000 properties in the rental or sale market.
The increase in the fee should also “descite some owners from resorting to tax optimization by declaring their secondary residence as a return home,” Jacques Baudrier explained to AFP.
In his opinion, the measure will “stop the decrease in the number of principal residences in Paris and consequently reverse the decline of the population”.
The right-wing opposition, which contests the figures of the autarchy on the vacant dwellings, considers that doubling the rate “will do no good”, said Grégory Canal, co-chairman of the Paris Libertés group, alongside Rachida Dati.
“They are raising the rate to the maximum permitted, when the reference rate laid down in the law is 17%. This is not an incentive, it is a real aggravation of the tax burden”, criticised the elect.