NOTARIES FEES ON BUYING, WHERE DO I FIND THIS OUT PLEASE?

[ebaynut]

We are looking to buy in France in the very near future, and have been busy finding out all we can about the process.

We have purchased two books which have been mentioned many times on this site and in Living France for information, but have found the following conflicting details.

David Hampshires book "Buying a house in France", states the fees the Notarie charges for his services, (not taxes etc), at 5% up to 45734 euro's, and 2.5% above this amount.

This is of course WAY more than a UK solicitor would charge, sure he handles both the sale and purchase, but its about 10 times more.

Then when I read "Living in France" by Belvin Franks, this book states that the fees are about 1% of purchase price.

Both of these books are the latest editions out.

I have looked on the Notaries de France website but this does not give fees, so if the fees are regulated by law, surely this informaton should be available correctly for forward planning of financal matters.

If anyone can help or point me in the right direction I would be very grateful.

[Panda]

Hi

I would think perhaps one is including stamp duty type equivalent and the other not, normally the notaires fees (including taxes) works out to about 6-8% of the purchase price.

Found this link on Century21.fr, might help:

http://www.creditfoncier.fr/editorial/Calculettes/Frais_Notaire/Frais_Notaire.html

The site (creditfoncier.fr) also details all the relevant charges, the transfer charge (stamp duty equiv) is stated at 4.8% so this could be the missing number between to the two publications.

Panda

[Will]

I use this calculator. http://www.paris.notaires.fr/frais_mut_ecran1.php

You will see that the notaire fee is considerably more than any of the percentages mentioned, for an average sort of house it is nearer 7% to 8%. But as Panda indicates, most of this is tax, roughly the equivalent to stamp duty in England.

The figures you have extracted from the David Hampshire book are the 'frais de negociation' - i.e. the fee you pay the notaire when the notaire also acts as the selling agent. This is in addition to, not instead of, the normal legal fees.

[Boiling a frog]

[quote user="ebaynut"]

We are looking to buy in France in the very near future, and have been busy finding out all we can about the process.

I have looked on the Notaries de France website but this does not give fees, so if the fees are regulated by law, surely this informaton should be available correctly for forward planning of financal matters.

If anyone can help or point me in the right direction I would be very grateful.

[/quote]

 

The notaires de France website does give an on line calculator to establish the fees due so it is available

Perhaps first job brush up on your french

second job  have another look at the notaires de france website

 

[cooperlola]

It's here

http://www.paris.notaires.fr/frais_mut_ecran1.php

and on Will's link.

[ebaynut]

Many thanks for this direct link Cooperlola, and to the others that replied to my question. As my French is at an early stage, I was looking for something in the English section on the notairies site about fees.

The fees section  is of course in french. Since posting this question, I have been shown a site called google translate, http://translate.google.com/translate_t which will convert either, a word, phrase or whole pages directly to english, so finding out these fees were easy, therefore if anyone needs to find out about translating webpages in the future they should also use Google, I expect a lot of people already know this, but hope it is of future use to others who did not.

[jc]

Having read some of these books about "France" and having found glaring errors in subjects I do know about,it makes you wonder on the accuracy of other subjects in the books!!

[P]

Some of the Immobiliers sites have a calculator on them that enables you to calculate the fees - but cannot remember one at present!

[Will]

Most agents (I am married to one) use a barème (table) prepared by the chamber of notaires.

Or they use the on-line calculator on the Paris notaires site, a link to which I posted above and which was repeated by Cooperlola. That's the best one - it gives more options, and has a better chance of being accurate than the simpler ones used on some web sites. And I can assure anybody that, unlike some of the books, the scale of charges is well up to date. We know how tardy some agents are at updating house details on their sites, so I would tend not to trust any fee calculator unless it was a link to an official one.

All of the calculators are in French - I think you only need a very basic understanding of the language and perhaps a dictionary to use them. More important is an understanding of the French house sales system.

I also tried to explain in my earlier posting that the David Hampshire book was referring to the scale of commission charges (2.5% to 5% plus TVA at 19.6%) when a notaire is acting as selling agent, and the other books and websites are giving the scale of legal fees, including taxes etc, which the buyer has to pay to the notaire regardless of whether the house is sold by the notaire, an agent, or privately.

So I think the question has been answered.

[Gastines]

Still hoping that as property prices have risen so dramatically over the last 10 + years, that Immo's fees will start going DOWN to a realistic proportion.

Regards

[somme man]

I bought in November 06 from a notaire (no Immo involved) and paid 7.5% with the likelyhood of a small refund after 6 months if I have overpaid.

It is not the notaires that should wear a mask but the Immo who charge an additional 6-8% to the buyer for doing very little.