What are typical French notaire’s fees for a house purchase?

Reader question: In a previous article in Connexion you said that buying a €200,000 apartment incurs fees for the notaire of €1,995.25 HT. What is HT and also this is the figure so low? I have been looking at a €70,000 Euro property and the notaire fees are around €7,000.

HT means hors taxes – in this case excluding VAT, at 20%.

As for the 'low' figure, it refers to the actual émoluments: the fees that go to the notaire for their own work.

What is commonly called 'notaire fees' is a mixture of taxes, statutory fees and expenses (débours) paid by the notaire on the client's behalf, as well as the notaire's remuneration.

The largest element is the departmental tax, which since April 2025 most departments have raised from 4.5% to 5% on a temporary basis.

To that are added a communal tax of 1.2%, a national charge equal to 2.37% of the departmental tax, and the contribution de sécurité immobilière of 0.1%.

Transfer taxes therefore total 6.32% in most of France, against 5.81% where the increase was not adopted.

First-time buyers purchasing their main home are excluded from the increase.

The main émolument for drawing up the sale deed is regulated and calculated progressively: 3.870% on the first €6,500, 1.596% from €6,500–€17,000, 1.064% from €17,000–€60,000, and 0.799% above €60,000.

These figures are HT, with 20% VAT added. On a €200,000 property this gives €1,995.25 HT (€2,394.30 TTC).

Fixed émoluments de formalités of a few hundred euros are also due, and a notaire may offer a capped discount on their part of fees relating to value above €100,000.

So on an older property buyers often talk about paying around 7.5–8.5% in 'notaire fees', but only a fraction of that is kept by the notaire.

The percentage falls as the price rises because of the émoluments scale, and the fact that expenses incurred are similar regardless of the price of the property.

On a €70,000 property the total can indeed come to close to 10% of the price.

Note that overall ‘notaire fees’ are considerably lower on qualifying new-build property (around 2–3%), mainly because the transfer tax is only 0.715%.

The notaire's regulated émoluments are still calculated on the same proportional scale.