RENOVATING AS A LIVING IN FRANCE?

[anteater]

hi all, my husband and i are about to finalise the sale of our maison secondaire in the creuse.  we would eventually like to live in france permanently.  we renovate houses for a living in new zealand and i would be interested in hearing from anyone who does this in france. (we do alot of the work ourselves).   i believe cap gains tax is 33% if you live in france.  what i want to know is this :  is it possible to make a decent living from doing this?  apart from the cap gains tax, what other taxes are involved when selling a renovated house? we would also want to buy something to rent out long term for extra income.  Finally, what is considered a reasonable amount of money per year to live on in france?  (no mortgage, one teenage girl and us). Oh dear, thought of another question :  this is very general, but can anyone give us a ball park figure of how much it costs to build a 4 bedroom house? if we move, we would like to build on the land we have and also use our little house as a holiday cottage too.  MERCI BEAUCOUP TO ANYONE WHO CAN HELP!!!  Anita and Ian (New Zealand)

[LesFlamands]

The main problem here is the housing market is traditionally very slow. Houses are moving quite quickly at the moment due to the huge influx of British buyers riding high on the house price boom in the UK. This is slowing down now and the French market will follow.

For a new build you should allow 1000 euros per square metre of habitable space plus the cost of the land, connection of services and TVA at 19.6%.

[Nick Trollope]

[quote]hi all, my husband and i are about to finalise the sale of our maison secondaire in the creuse. we would eventually like to live in france permanently. we renovate houses for a living in new zealand...[/quote]

Hi

CGT (Plus Value) is 16%. If you are resident in France, then there is an additional 10/11% (forget which) in social charges. It is often difficult to define (needs negotiation) exactly what the added value of a property is. It is not as cut-and-dried as some would insist.

As for making a living from renovation, I try, but there is more money in new builds (which I also try). You won't make anything like as much as you could in the UK - know nothing about NZ property scene.

How much to live on? How about 1 centime/yr more than your expenses? Other than that, it depends upon the length of your string...