Earl Evleth

The prior rules on secondary residences had a 22 years limit of
taxable ownship if the property was sold. No capital gains
tax after 22 years.

That is being moved downwards to 15 years.

All the Americans I have urged to buy here have sold, after
owning the property a period of time, with virtually no taxes
to pay in France.

Now it will even be easier to do so.

Of course this does not take into account what the US
tax obligation is, the IRS always has its hands out.

Earl

Gordon Forbess

On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:55:51 +0100, Earl Evleth <[email protected]>
wrote:

    >The prior rules on secondary residences had a 22 years limit of
    >taxable ownship if the property was sold. No capital gains
    >tax after 22 years.
    >That is being moved downwards to 15 years.
    >All the Americans I have urged to buy here have sold, after
    >owning the property a period of time, with virtually no taxes
    >to pay in France.
    >Now it will even be easier to do so.

This change should also improve the outlook of real estate brokers in
the countryside as more Parisians will be able to 'cash out' and leave
sooner. Todays LA Times has a front page article about the migration
of people away from Paris to the south and the clever promotion done
by an agency for a rural district. Available at http://latimes.com,
registration required.

Gordon

Earl Evleth

On 8/12/03 17:37, in article [email protected],
"Gordon Forbess" <[email protected]> wrote:

    > This change should also improve the outlook of real estate brokers in
    > the countryside as more Parisians will be able to 'cash out' and leave
    > sooner. Todays LA Times has a front page article about the migration
    > of people away from Paris to the south and the clever promotion done
    > by an agency for a rural district. Available at http://latimes.com,
    > registration required.
    >
    > Gordon

Interesting, The specific address for others to read is

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...8dec08,1,55180
46.story?coll=la-home-world

It is not evident as a "Parisian" that the French are leaving Paris.
Still Paris is not gone up as much as New York or London, althought the
euro at 1.2 does not favor Americans coming in.

First, there was no capital gains in personal residents here. Secondary
residence gains were taxed but progressively decreased. The same will
be true with the 15 year period. So you get most of the capital gains
removed even if owning it only 12 years. Foreigners are treated like
the French. We had friends who just sold their place in Paris to buy
something in Tuscany. They had held the place here for nearly 20 years and
their total tax was less than 20 euros!

What has driven up southern real estate a little was the TGV Paris
-Marseilles, one could leave after work on a Friday and spend a weekend
down there, only three hours by train.

Basically, the procedures and guarantees of buying in France is promoted
by the notarial system. The notaire provides the assurances of not getting
cheated. It usually requires paying cash since getting a lender in France
would not be easy unless the down payment is hefty. I arranged a purchase
for an American friend and he could only get the lender to lend half of
the purchase price and he had to pay it off in some short period, less
than 10 years. But the situation may have changed.

Another thing is that real estate taxes are not high, I think we pay
400 euros a place marketing now for over 400,000 euros. They are so low
one does not think about them, at least in Paris.

The English particularly are attracted to French real estate, much
cheaper for the same thing. However, none of this does you any good
unless you can spend a lot of time here. Historically secondary
residents in the country side have NOT been a good investment.
Things have remained fairly cheap and some prices have not risen as fast
as the inflation rate.

Earl