Buying a second home in France: the buyer’s guide

What will you use your second home for?

A second home most often serves one of the five uses below, and each calls for a different location, property and budget. Write down your own before you look at a single listing.

• The family house: repeated stays, across several generations. It needs plenty of bedrooms, outdoor space, simple upkeep and a journey that everyone accepts.
• The weekend pied-à-terre: frequent, short stays; the journey matters more than the floor area, and an apartment that can be shut up quickly beats a property that needs maintaining.
• The property let for part of the year: letting covers part of the running costs, if the municipality and, in a co-ownership building, its rules allow it.
• The future main residence: bought with a retirement or a move in mind, it is judged on year-round life, not on August; the guide to leaving the Paris region develops this project.
• The store of wealth: a rare location (a view, the seafront, a historic centre) matters most, because it is what carries value over the long term.

One property rarely serves two uses equally well: the villa designed for summer letting is not always the one you will want to open up in November. Settle on a main use and an acceptable secondary one; the brief follows from them.

Sea, mountains, countryside or city: where should you buy a second home?

The right location is the one that serves the use: the sea for long seasons, the mountains for two distinct seasons, the countryside for space, the city for a pied-à-terre you can use all year round.

By the sea

The sea comes at a price: in Arcachon, the median for houses reaches €7,600/m², against €4,000/m² for the Gironde as a whole (DVF / DGFiP via data.gouv.fr, April 2026 release, 2025 sales). From Cap Ferret to the villas of Biarritz, from the île de Ré to Deauville, from Cassis to Saint-Tropez, every stretch of coast has its own market, but all raise the same questions: the Loi Littoral (coastal law), coastal risks, buildings exposed to the salt air. The guide to buying by the sea covers them.

In the mountains

Mountain markets are narrow, and some of the finest chalets sell there without ever being advertised. The median for apartments reaches €9,600/m² in Megève and €11,800/m² in Courchevel (DVF / DGFiP via data.gouv.fr, April 2026 release, 2025 sales). A chalet in Chamonix, in a genuine valley town, can be lived in all year round, as can a house on the shore of Lake Annecy or of Lake Geneva at Évian-les-Bains. Chalet or apartment, altitude, winter access: the guide to buying in the mountains sets out the criteria.

In the countryside

The countryside sells space: a bastide around Aix-en-Provence, a mas (a Provençal farmhouse) in the Alpilles or the Luberon within reach of Avignon, a longère (a long, low farmhouse), a maison de maître (a large, stately house). Land, private drainage, a swimming pool and a garden weigh more heavily there than in town, and the SAFER (the rural land agency) holds a right of pre-emption on certain rural properties. Older houses have a set of criteria of their own, set out in the guide to buying a character property.

In the city

A city second home, in Bordeaux, Nice, Lyon or Montpellier, is often the easiest to live with: an apartment you simply lock up, cultural life in every season, a train station and an airport close by.

The south of France

Buying a holiday home in the south of France means choosing between the Côte d’Azur, Provence, the Occitanie coast and the Basque Country: a long season, but heavy summer crowds and, in exposed areas, a wildfire risk that makes brush clearance (débroussaillement) compulsory.

The journey rule: the home you actually get to

The easier a second home is to reach, the more it is lived in: a direct journey opens up weekends, an expedition confines it to the long holidays. Measure the journey door to door, not the distance on the map.

• The direct route: a train or flight with no connection; every change costs you weekends.
• Departure times: Friday evening, the eve of school holidays, the Sunday return; make the journey for the decisive viewing at those times.
• The season: a mountain road in winter, access to an island in high summer, villages packed out during the holidays.
• The last leg: whether a car is essential, parking, shops and the beach within walking distance.

Bordeaux, Lyon, Avignon, Arcachon, Biarritz, La Rochelle, Saint-Malo and Annecy can be reached by TGV high-speed train from Paris, and the Côte Fleurie by train from Gare Saint-Lazare. From abroad, you set out from the nearest international airport: Nice for the Côte d’Azur, Marseille for Provence, Bordeaux for the Bassin d’Arcachon, Geneva for the lakes and resorts of Haute-Savoie.

Take a typical case: to come every other weekend from April to October, you need a direct journey you would be happy to repeat, without fatigue, on a Friday evening; for the summer alone, a more distant address can be justified, in return for a garden or a view.

What budget should you plan for a second home?

On top of the price, allow for around 7 to 8% in acquisition costs (the so-called notary fees) on existing homes, 2 to 3% on new builds, then an annual budget that runs whether or not the property is occupied. It is this second budget, which no listing ever sets out in full, that hides the unpleasant surprises.

A second home is also part of the taxable base of the real estate wealth tax (impôt sur la fortune immobilière, IFI), payable above €1.3m of net taxable real estate assets, without the 30% allowance reserved for a main residence: your wealth adviser can measure the effect.

How do you finance the purchase of a second home?

A second home is financed under the same rules as a main residence, those of the Haut Conseil de stabilité financière (the French financial stability council): a debt-to-income ratio of 35% at most, insurance included, and a term of 25 years at most. That ratio is calculated across all your loans, main residence and other properties included. In 2026, interest rates stand between 3.2 and 3.5% over twenty years.

• Banks grant fewer exceptions for a second home: count on the rule, not on the exception.
• The down payment most often covers at least the acquisition costs; a larger one makes approval easier.
• Income from future holiday letting is counted with caution, when it is counted at all.
• A cash purchase, or a mortgage agreement in principle obtained before the offer, strengthens your position: the seller gains in certainty.

At the preliminary sale agreement (compromis de vente) stage, the mortgage condition precedent, which makes the sale conditional on your loan being granted, protects the buyer: one month at least by law, often 45 to 60 days in practice. If several people buy together, a written joint-ownership agreement (convention d’indivision) settles who pays, who occupies and how to exit. A société civile (a non-trading company) can help prepare succession, but furnished letting inside it changes the tax regime: the structure should be chosen with your notaire, the public officer who draws up the deed, and your wealth adviser, before signing.

Can you rent out your second home in France?

Yes, but renting out a second home on a short-term basis, as a furnished holiday let, has to be checked before the offer: the municipality, the co-ownership building and the property’s energy performance can restrict it, even prohibit it. The law of 19 November 2024 strengthened each of these levers.

What the law of 19 November 2024 changed

• Registration: the law extends it to all furnished holiday lets, and the registration number must appear in every advertisement.
• Municipalities have new tools to regulate, even limit, furnished holiday lets, including the option of lowering to 90 days a year the letting of a main residence. For a second home, it is the change-of-use authorisation, where that regime applies, that governs repeated letting to short-stay guests.
• The tax treatment of this income, which is taxed as industrial and commercial profits (bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, BIC), has become less favourable, particularly for unclassified furnished lets (those with no official star rating).
• A co-ownership building can now ban furnished holiday lets in units that are not main residences, by a majority of co-owners representing at least two thirds of the votes, if its rules already prohibit any commercial activity outside units designated for commercial use.
• The energy performance certificate (DPE): the law subjects furnished holiday lets to energy performance requirements that tighten in stages.

Managing the lets can be entrusted to a professional whose trade it is, or done yourself. The Home Select concierge service looks after the property between your stays, billed for time spent and by quotation, with no management mandate.

Buying far from home: how do you search remotely?

A second home is often bought far from where you live: the search can be conducted remotely up to the decisive viewing, provided everything that can be checked on documents is checked before you travel. The deed can also be signed remotely, by a notarial power of attorney taken by video conference; funds are transferred only to the notaire, after the notaire’s bank details have been checked by telephone. The guide to buying remotely details each step.

What can be checked on documents

• The risk report (état des risques), handed over from the first viewing since 1 January 2023: flooding, coastal submersion, wildfire, coastline retreat, depending on the municipality.
• The mandatory diagnostic reports: DPE, asbestos and lead depending on the age of the building, electricity and gas depending on that of the installations, termites depending on the zone and, where there is no mains drainage, an inspection of the private drainage system less than three years old.
• The co-ownership building: its rules, meeting minutes, maintenance log, service charges, clauses on letting.
• Planning: the local urban plan (plan local d’urbanisme), servitudes (legal easements and restrictions) and, in the surroundings of a historic monument (a defined perimeter or, failing that, 500 metres within its line of sight) or in a remarkable heritage site (site patrimonial remarquable), the consent of the architecte des Bâtiments de France (the State heritage architect) to exterior works.
• The price, set against actual sales on the street and in the neighbourhood.

What only the season shows

A video conveys neither the damp of a house closed up all winter, nor the bustling bar beneath the windows in July. So choose an area you know in both seasons, the chalet road under snow included, and get these questions answered before you travel: the decisive viewing, grouped into a single trip, is there to confirm, not to discover.

What happens when you resell a second home?

Capital gains tax is due on the gain made when a second home is resold, with allowances that increase with the length of ownership; the sale of a main residence is exempt from it. The notaire calculates the tax and deducts it from the sale price; the capital gains tax simulator estimates it in advance from your prices.

Income tax and social charges (prélèvements sociaux) each have their own allowance schedule, up to full exemption after a long period of ownership, and a surtax applies to the highest gains. A second home that has become a main residence, genuinely occupied on the day of the sale, is exempt: the authorities check that it was really lived in.

Resale is prepared from the day you buy, by looking at the depth of the market: in 2025, 7,826 sales were recorded in Nice, 781 in Biarritz and 195 in Saint-Tropez (DVF / DGFiP via data.gouv.fr, April 2026 release, 2025 sales). On a narrow market, a rare property sells well but sometimes slowly; a location that nobody can reproduce remains the best protection for resale.

How Home Select searches for your second home

Home Select, a property finder on the buyer’s side, conducts the search for a second home remotely, video viewings included, up to the decisive viewing: you travel only for the shortlisted properties, in a single trip. Home Select runs the search under the direction of its management and draws on a network of 15,000 professional partners.

1. The brief, written up after a first conversation by video call or phone: use, seasons, journey, full budget.
2. The hunt across the whole market: Home Select monitors 1,700 listing sites, receives at least 100 off-market properties every day from its network and makes its first proposals within 48 hours of the mandate being signed.
3. The pre-viewing by commented video and an analysis sheet for every shortlisted property, with the price benchmarked against DVF sales, address by address.
4. The decisive viewings, grouped together: Home Select brings them down to 3 on average, or about 15 hours of your time, against 40 viewings or more and about 150 hours for a buyer on their own.
5. The offer and the negotiation, where Home Select obtains 6% off the asking price on average, then securing the preliminary sale agreement: review, diagnostics, co-ownership building.
6. Coordination of the notaire, the mortgage broker and the diagnostic surveyors up to the deed, and afterwards: tradespeople, administrative formalities, settling in.

Home Select charges 2.5% of the net purchase price on the Exclusive offer (an exclusive mandate), minimum €10,000 incl. VAT; the Confidential offer, on a simple mandate and reserved for projects of €2m and above, brings the same full service at 1.5%, with off-market properties only. Nothing is due before the authentic deed, and the mandate, of twelve months at most, can be terminated at any time on seven days’ notice. The detail is on the pages for the fees, the method and the property finder for a second home.

Since 2011, Home Select has guided more than 1,200 buyers, with an average search time of 45 days to an accepted offer and a 4.8/5 rating on Google (130+ reviews). Every market presented on the site has its own page, DVF prices and neighbourhoods included: for example, property finder in Arcachon, property finder in Megève or property finder in Saint-Tropez.