Second home in France built on greenfield site

Your title to the property is for the land which you bought and on which you built the house. There is never a title deed simply for a house. The original title deed (acte de vente or acte authentique) will be stored in the archives of the notaire who dealt with your purchase.

You should have been given an official copy of the deed once the registration formalities at the local French Land Registry were completed. However, in our experience owners do not always receive this. If you instruct the same notaire to deal with the sale as who dealt with your land purchase, they will simply retrieve the title deed from their archives. If you instruct a different notaire, they can request it from the previous one.

The notaire will also need copies of the planning documentation for the house which you have built, including the permis de construire, déclaration d’achèvement des travaux et de conformité, arrêté ou attestation de non-opposition à la déclaration de conformité, or, if the house was completed before October 1, 2007, a separate declaration of completion and a certificate of conformity with planning.

Assuming the construction was completed more than 10 years ago you will not need details of the construction insurance and structural guarantee for the works.

As you are selling a second home, you may be liable to pay capital gains tax in France on the sale proceeds.

You will need original receipts for the construction work to calculate what costs can be allowed as deductions from the gross gain. These must be addressed to you, show the property address and be issued by a builder registered in France.

Question answered by Barbara Heslop of Heslop & Platt

Tel: +44 (0)113 393 1930 - www.heslop-platt.co.uk contact@heslop-platt.co.uk

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