French notary fees calculator 2026: your département’s rate, not an average

On a €250,000 resale property in Paris, French notary fees (frais de notaire) come to €19,827, or 7.93 % of the price. Nearly eight euros in ten never reach the notary: €15,796 is transfer tax paid to the département, the municipality and the State. The notary’s regulated pay is €2,874 of proportional emoluments including VAT and €408 for formalities; on top come €250 of land registry contribution and the disbursements. The same purchase costs €18,548 in Alpes-Maritimes, still at 4.50%, and €16,756 in Indre, the only département at 3.80%. On a new build the tax drops to 0.715 % and the fees to €5,819. A first-time buyer purchasing a main home in a 5% département pays €18,548. These figures come from the table published by the French tax administration (DGFiP) and the notary tariff in force until 2028.

How French notary fees are worked out

The name is misleading: “notary fees” are really acquisition costs, and the notary mainly collects them on behalf of others. In France every property sale must be signed before a notaire, a public officer who drafts the deed, checks the title and registers the sale. The statement handed to you on signing adds up five items, which the calculator reproduces one by one.

1. Transfer tax (droits de mutation). A départemental tax (5%, 4.50% or 3.80% depending on the département), a municipal surcharge of 1.20 % and a State collection fee equal to 2.37 % of the départemental tax. Total: 6.319 %, 5.807 % or 5.09 % of the price.
2. Proportional emoluments. The notary’s fee for the deed of sale, set by article A444-91 of the French Commercial Code, calculated in sliding brackets from 3.87 % down to 0.799 %, plus VAT at 20 %.
3. Formalities. A flat fee of €339.58 excluding VAT covers part of the land registry paperwork.
4. Land registry contribution (CSI). 0.10 % of the price, at least €15, collected by the State for registering the sale.
5. Disbursements (débours). Money the notary advances for you: planning documents, mortgage search, co-ownership papers, cadastral extracts. The amount varies by file; the calculator uses €500 by default, to be replaced by the figure in your quote.

Worked example: €200,000 in Gironde

Gironde (Bordeaux) charges the 5% rate. The transfer tax splits into €10,000 départemental tax, €2,400 municipal tax and €237 collection fee, €12,637 in all. The emoluments are worked out bracket by bracket: 3.87 % on the first €6,500, 1.596 % up to €17,000, 1.064 % up to €60,000 and 0.799 % above, €1,995.25 excluding VAT, exactly the example published by service-public.fr. With VAT, €2,394.30. Formalities, CSI and disbursements bring the total to €16,139.

Why your département changes everything

France is divided into 101 départements, administrative areas each run by an elected council. The 2025 Finance Act allowed them to raise their transfer tax from 4.50% to 5% for sales signed between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2028. Almost all of them did: as of 1 June 2026, the DGFiP table lists 88 tax areas at 5%. Eleven départements stayed at 4.50%: Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Ardèche, Charente, Drôme, Lozère, Oise, Hautes-Pyrénées, Saône-et-Loire, Guadeloupe, Mayotte. Indre alone still applies 3.80%. A calculator that applies “about 8%” everywhere is therefore wrong by hundreds to thousands of euros depending on the location.

Three départements have also voted special rules that most simulators ignore: Savoie applies 4.00% to buyers of a first property who undertake to live in it for five years; Calvados has voted a €46,000 allowance on certain purchases; Hautes-Pyrénées cuts the rate to 3.80% for block sales of flats with a tenant’s right of first refusal. The Rhône is split in two: the Lyon Metropolis and the rest of the département vote separately, and both currently apply 5%.

Finally, the overseas départements have their own, higher emolument scale and their own VAT: 8.5% in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion, none in French Guiana and Mayotte. On a €250,000 purchase in Réunion the emoluments reach €3,534, against €2,874 in mainland France. The table of all 101 départements gives each rate and its fees; the comparison tool shows the gap between two places for the same property.

Transfer tax rates as of 1 June 2026

Example notary fees 2026 on a resale (5% département)

The share of fees falls slightly as the price rises, because the emoluments slide and the flat items weigh less on a large amount. It never drops below 6.32 %, though: transfer tax stays proportional whatever the price. For a garage or a small plot the opposite happens: the €90 minimum emolument, the flat fee and the disbursements can push fees well above 10% of the price.

The notary’s emolument scale

This scale is the same at every notary’s office in mainland France: you cannot shop around for a cheaper notary on a sale. The only room for discussion is the discount a notary may grant, up to 20%, on the part of the emoluments calculated above €100,000. It must be displayed at the office and offered to every client on the same terms. See the guide to the notary fee discount.

Special cases

New builds, off-plan and building land from a developer

The reduced 0.715 % rate applies to sales subject to French property VAT: a new home bought from a developer, an off-plan purchase (VEFA), a resale by a VAT-registered professional within five years of completion, building land sold by a VAT-registered seller. Between private individuals, a plot or a recent house falls under the standard rate. See new-build fees, off-plan and buying land.

First-time buyers and first property

A first-time buyer purchasing a main home escapes the 5% increase. In a 5% area that brings the overall rate back to 5.807 %. In Savoie, the “first property” reduction under article 1594 F septies of the French General Tax Code lowers the départemental rate to 4.00%, provided the home is lived in as a main residence for five years. The first-time buyer guide sets out the conditions.

Gifts, garages, capital gains

A gift follows different rules: gift tax after an allowance, and its own emoluments. The gift calculator applies them. For a garage or parking space, the minimum charge changes everything. And when you sell, the fees paid on purchase are added to the acquisition price used for capital gains tax, either at their actual amount or as a flat 7.5 %: see notary fees and capital gains.

The other costs and taxes of buying property in France

Notary fees are the largest cost, not the only one. Frais Immobilier calculates every fee and tax of a French purchase with the same care, excluding the mortgage. The total cost of a purchase adds the price, notary fees, agency commission and the property tax refunded to the seller: for €250,000 in Paris with €10,000 of agency fees and an early-July completion, it reaches €280,429. Estate agency fees split into fees excluding VAT and VAT, and how they are presented changes the base for transfer tax.

To fund the purchase, the PTZ 2026 calculator reads the zone of your town and applies the zero-interest loan scale: €90,000 for a couple buying a new €250,000 flat in Nantes. Once you own the home, the taxe foncière is calculated with the rates voted by each municipality, from 4.63 % to 101.13 %, and the development tax with those of the town and département for a new build or extension. For an investment, the rental yield includes real purchase costs, and capital gains tax shows what the notary deducts on resale.

Common calculations by price

• Notary fees on a €100,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €150,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €200,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €250,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €300,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €400,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €500,000 purchase
• Notary fees on a €1,000,000 purchase

Six legal ways to pay less

1. Check whether you count as a first-time buyer: two years without owning your main home is enough, with no income test.
2. Have the furniture listed in the deed at a realistic, provable value (fitted appliances that can be removed, furniture).
3. Negotiate for the agency commission to be payable by the buyer rather than included in the price: it then drops out of the taxable base.
4. Above €100,000, ask the notary whether the office grants a discount on its emoluments, and at what rate.
5. Compare with new builds: at the same price, the fee gap often exceeds five percentage points.
6. If you are torn between two neighbouring départements, check the gap with the comparison tool.

The guide to reducing notary fees puts a figure on each lever and flags those that risk a tax reassessment.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of these official sources, read on2026-10-04.

• DGFiP, registration duty and land publicity tax rates applicable from 1 June 2026, by département
• Service-Public.fr, notary fees explained (emolument scale, mainland France and overseas)
• Notaires de France, acquisition costs (municipal tax, collection fee, CSI, discounts, formalities)
• impots.gouv.fr, registration duties: monthly tables of départemental rates