Housing Minister to propose tax package for landlords in budget

"The mission statement given by the Prime Minister was clear and calls for an emergency plan for the housing sector. We have signs from all sides of a crisis reaching its peak, and it is urgent to reverse the trend," the former LR minister, appointed on Sunday, told AFP.

This government amendment project is, for him, "a strong signal" sent to the sector, which is suffering from a crisis affecting all aspects of housing, from new real estate to social housing, including rental housing and the renovation of thermal sieves.

All the details of the text have not yet been defined and are the subject of discussions with the Ministry of the Economy and housing professionals, specifies the former mayor of Haÿ-les-Roses (Val-de-Marne), who assures that nothing is fixed and that everything will be debated in Parliament.

The initial copy will be based on the work already undertaken by the former Minister of Housing, Valérie Létard (UDI), who had commissioned a report from two parliamentarians.

The first version of the government's amendment would apply to both new and existing housing. It would include tax depreciation, reducing the taxable base of rental income by 2% for new housing, and incentives for energy renovations.

The report by parliamentarians Mickaël Cosson and Marc-Philippe Daubresse, released at the end of June, also proposed tax bonuses if the owner rents out their home at an affordable rent or to a modest household, a tax exemption after 20 years of ownership of the property and the removal of homes rented as a primary residence from the property wealth tax (IFI) base.

The Ministry of Housing has not yet said whether it will accept these proposals.

Considerations for tenants

The creation of a "private landlord status" has been eagerly awaited by the entire sector since the end in 2024 of the Pinel tax loophole, deemed too costly for state finances.

This announcement is "very good news" for Pascal Boulanger, president of the Federation of Real Estate Developers (FPI), who is delighted to see this "file put back at the top of the pile".

The French Building Federation (FFB) is equally satisfied, even though its president, Olivier Salleron, finds the proposed 2% depreciation rate "too low." An opinion shared by Mr. Boulanger, interviewed by AFP.

Pierre Madec, an economist at the French Economic Observatory (OFCE), a housing specialist, sees it as a "positive message to say that private rental investment must be boosted", given the context of shrinking rental housing supply.

However, he points out that "there must be compensation that benefits tenants," such as the rent cap associated with the Pinel scheme.

The number of new homes purchased by private investors has halved between the first six months of 2024 and the same period in 2025.

During his first ministerial trip to Seine-et-Marne, Vincent Jeanbrun also said he was in favor of capping the proportion of social housing per municipality, to "stop accumulating all the socio-economic difficulties in the same place."

The SRU law requires urban municipalities to have a minimum of 20% to 25% social housing, but no maximum. In 2022, 1.161 municipalities were below this threshold, or 54% of the 2.157 municipalities covered by the SRU law.