How to Estimate the Value of Your French Property: A Paris Owner's Guide

Introduction

You own an apartment in Paris and you live in New York, or London, or Geneva. In the space of a fortnight, three sources have given you three different numbers, and the gap between the highest and the lowest is roughly the price of a car. An online tool produced one. An agent produced another over email. A neighbour who sold a similar flat in the same building last spring produced the third. None of them showed you how they got there.

Paris is an unforgiving place to guess, because France has no MLS and therefore no public listing database you can search the way you would at home. At the same time, the city records tens of thousands of apartment sales a year, so the evidence for a precise valuation genuinely exists. The problem is not scarcity of data. It is that the good data sits in French, on government platforms, behind a login. This guide walks through the process in the order you should actually do it, and none of it requires you to be in France.

Start by Deciding Why You Need the Valuation

The purpose of the valuation decides how formal it needs to be, and getting that wrong is what produces figures that differ by tens of thousands of euros.

If you are preparing to sell, your target is not a number. It is a defensible range with a floor you will not go below and a ceiling you can justify to a buyer's agent. Asking prices are a poor guide, because the gap between the price advertised and the price recorded in the deed regularly runs to between 5 and 10 percent.

If the valuation is for an inheritance, a divorce settlement or a wealth tax declaration, you need something sturdier. Here the relevant figure is the valeur vénale, the price the property could reasonably fetch in an ordinary open-market sale on a specific date, and the tax authorities can challenge the number you declare. Understating it exposes you to a reassessment with penalties. Overstating it means paying more inheritance tax than you owed.

Buyers run exactly the same process in reverse, using the identical tools to test whether an asking price is anchored to recent transactions or to optimism.

Use the Official Online Tools That Show Real Sale Prices

Three free official sources will give you a defensible range for any French address in under an hour, and none of them requires you to set foot in France.

1. Search the DVF database for comparable sales

Demandes de Valeurs Foncières, usually shortened to DVF, is the state record of every notarised property transaction in France since 2014. It is free, it is public, and it shows the price written into the deed rather than the price the property was advertised at.

Most people open it, type a street name, and give up. The method that works looks like this:

• Search by section cadastrale, the land registry section, rather than by street name. Streets cross section boundaries and produce misleading neighbours.
• Filter by property type and surface, keeping comparables within roughly 15 percent of your own floor area.
• Discard any deed covering several lots at once. These bundle a cellar or parking space into a single price and will distort your price per square metre badly.
• Keep transactions from the last eighteen months, and adjust anything older for the market trend before you use it.

The one thing DVF cannot tell you is the condition of the property when it sold. Two identical flats on the same landing, one renovated and one untouched since 1978, appear in the data as the same kind of transaction at very different prices, with no explanation attached. You can work through the records yourself on the government DVF platform (opens in a new window) run by Etalab.

2. Request land values through the Service-Public tool

The administration also runs a land value request service that shows recorded selling prices for up to the last five years, refreshed twice a year in April and October. It covers apartments, houses and land, and gives you a description of each property alongside the price.

For non-residents there is one practical hurdle. Access runs through an account on the French tax portal, and if you do not have one you can open it through the tax office for non-residents entirely online. It is worth doing regardless, since the same account is where your French tax obligations as an owner will eventually live. The service is explained in the official Service-Public guidance on estimating your property's value (opens in a new window).

3. Read the notaire price map for your arrondissement

French notaires record every transaction, and the Paris Chamber of Notaires publishes the resulting data as an interactive map covering each arrondissement and each quartier within it. The underlying database, known as BIEN, covers more than 95 percent of Paris transactions, which makes it the most complete picture of the market available anywhere. Note that notaires publish medians rather than averages, a distinction that matters when you read the table further down this page.

4. Use private estimate tools for a first range only

Instant valuation tools are genuinely useful for one thing: producing a rough range in sixty seconds so you know whether you are in the 600,000 or the 1.2 million conversation. Beyond that they have two structural limits that no algorithm fixes. They read your postcode rather than your building, and they cannot read your co-ownership file. Both of those, as the next two sections show, are where most of the money is.

Get a Free Valuation From a Local Professional

In France a property valuation is free by law from most professionals, so there is no reason to collect fewer than three before you accept any figure as your own.

1. What to ask before you accept an agency valuation

Estate agents in France are not permitted to charge for an estimation. That makes agency valuations the easiest opinion to obtain and, for that reason, the easiest to take at face value. Agents competing for a listing also have a well-documented incentive to quote high, which is why owners who accept the most flattering figure are often asked to reduce it three months later.

The question that separates a valuation from a guess is simple. Ask each agent for three comparable sales, with the address, the Carrez surface and the date the deed was signed. If they cannot produce them, you have an opinion rather than a valuation.

A serious agency valuation is carried out in person and takes an hour or more. A valuation of your Paris property carried out on site (opens in a new window) should cover the Carrez surface against the deed, the floor and lift configuration, the condition relative to comparables on the same street, and the last three sets of co-ownership meeting minutes. It should also cost you nothing.

2. How to request a notaire valuation

This is the option almost no English-speaking owner thinks of, because there is no equivalent role in the American or British systems. A notaire is a public officer who handles every property transfer in their area, which means they see the real price of every sale before anyone else does, and they will provide a valuation free of charge. Contact the chambre départementale des notaires for Paris, or approach an étude directly in your arrondissement. Notaire valuations tend to be conservative and evidence-led, which makes them a useful counterweight to an agency figure.

3. When it is worth paying for an expert immobilier

There is one valuation you should expect to pay for. An expert immobilier agréé produces a formal written appraisal that carries weight before a court or a tax inspector, with fees generally running from around 300 to 1,500 euros. You need one for an inheritance, a divorce, an indivision where co-owners disagree, a property held through an SCI, a split between usufruct and bare ownership, or a dispute with the tax authorities.

4. How to read three valuations that disagree

Expect them to disagree. Two qualified professionals looking at the same Paris apartment can land 5 to 10 percent apart, which is normal. Discard the highest and the lowest if neither can be supported with named comparables, then anchor on the one with the strongest evidence behind it.

Check the Criteria That Move a Paris Property Price

Work through these characteristics in a fixed order, because in Paris they explain most of the price gap between two apartments in the same building, let alone the same arrondissement.

Confirm the loi Carrez surface first

Everything else is calculated per square metre, so the surface has to be right before you do anything else. The loi Carrez surface is the legally declared floor area for a lot in a co-ownership, counting only parts with a ceiling height of at least 1.80 metres. It is measured, certified and attached to the deed.

Online tools use whatever figure the owner typed in, which is frequently the surface habitable or a rounded memory. On a Paris apartment, a five square metre discrepancy at 10,000 euros per square metre is a 50,000 euro error before anything else is considered.

Weigh floor level against lift access

After location, this is the single largest variable in Paris. A fifth-floor apartment with no lift in a Haussmann building and a third-floor apartment with a lift in the same building are not variations on one product. They sell to different buyers, at different speeds, at different prices.

Light, outdoor space and condition

South and west exposure carries a premium, a courtyard aspect is quieter but darker, and vis-à-vis, meaning a direct view into a neighbouring window, reduces value even when the flat is otherwise excellent. Balconies and terraces have commanded a clear premium since 2020 and the supply is fixed. Condition matters less for its own sake than for what it signals about the work a buyer will have to fund in the first two years.

Energy performance belongs in this group too, and the notaires publish a dedicated study on what they call the green value of housing (opens in a new window), which is the measured price difference between two otherwise identical properties with different energy ratings. The 2026 rules on this changed enough to need their own section further down.

Read the last three assemblée générale minutes

This is the step most owners skip and most buyers do not. Request the procès-verbal from the last three co-ownership general meetings, plus the current charges per square metre per year.

A facade restoration or an external insulation programme that has been voted but not yet carried out is a liability attached to your lot, and a well-advised buyer will deduct it from their offer in full. Finding out yourself, before you set a price, is the difference between a negotiation you control and one you do not.

Taken together, these factors move prices by 15 to 25 percent within a single arrondissement, and sometimes within a single street. In the 18th, a renovated apartment near Abbesses trades at around 10,500 euros per square metre while an equivalent flat in Goutte d'Or is negotiated closer to 7,000. Same arrondissement, fifteen minutes apart on foot. So start from the median for your quartier, then adjust for floor and lift, condition, outdoor space and voted works. The district figure is your starting point, never your answer.

Market conditions explain part of that spread, and what buyers are willing to pay for has shifted noticeably in the last two years. The video below looks at how those changing priorities are feeding through into French property values.

Live quarterly figures are published on the Paris notaires property price map (opens in a new window), which breaks each arrondissement down further by quartier.

What to Check About the DPE in 2026 Before You Value

Check the date on your energy performance certificate before you accept any valuation, because the calculation method changed on 1 January 2026 and an older rating may be dragging your figure down for no reason.

Check whether your DPE predates 1 January 2026

The conversion coefficient applied to electricity in the DPE calculation (opens in a new window) fell from 2.3 to 1.9, bringing France into line with the European value. Around 850,000 electrically heated homes moved out of the passoire thermique category as a direct result, with no work carried out on any of them.

If your property is electrically heated and the certificate was issued before January 2026, commissioning a new DPE is probably the cheapest action available to you and the one with the largest effect on your valuation.

Confirm you can still sell an F or G rated property

You can. This is the most persistent misunderstanding among owners, and it comes from conflating two different regimes.

The loi Climat et Résilience of 22 August 2021 (opens in a new window) regulates letting, not selling. Its timetable bars G rated homes from being let from 1 January 2025, F rated homes from 1 January 2028, and E rated homes from 1 January 2034. No article restricts the sale of a poorly rated property. Your obligations as a seller are informational: a valid DPE, the rating in the listing, and an energy audit where one is required.

Work out whether you need an audit énergétique

The regulatory energy audit applies to individual houses and to buildings in single ownership rated F or G. It does not apply to an apartment in a conventional co-ownership, which covers the overwhelming majority of Paris housing stock. If you own a Paris flat, the standard sale pack is very likely all you need.

Adjust the discount to Paris, not the national figure

National green value figures are widely quoted and widely misapplied. The notaires' study of 2024 transactions (opens in a new window) shows discounts on poorly rated houses that can reach the high teens or beyond in some regions.

Paris behaves differently. The same research puts the discount on an F or G rated Paris apartment at around 2 percent, against roughly 11 percent for an equivalent flat in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Market tightness and the scarcity of period stock absorb most of the energy penalty. If someone has applied a 15 percent deduction to your valuation on DPE grounds, ask them to justify it with Paris comparables.

One practical lever is worth knowing. A costed energy audit, presented to the buyer alongside a works plan and available grants, reduces the effective discount further than handing over a bare certificate does. You are replacing an unknown with a number, and buyers discount unknowns far more aggressively.

Factor In the Costs That Change What Your Property Is Worth

Your property's market value is only the starting point. For a non-resident owner, the amount you actually receive after a sale depends on agency fees, capital gains tax and other selling costs.

Deduct the agency fee on a Paris sale

French estate agency fees are not capped and are usually paid as a percentage of the sale price. In Paris, sellers typically pay around 4 to 6 percent, although the exact amount depends on the agency and property value.

For an apartment sold at €900,000 with a 5 percent fee, the commission alone represents €45,000 before taxes and other costs are considered.

Calculate capital gains tax as a non-resident

If the property is not your main residence, French capital gains tax (plus-value immobilière) may apply. The standard calculation combines:

• 19 percent income tax on the taxable gain
• 17.2 percent social levies for owners who are not covered by the French/EU social security system
• Additional surtax of 2 to 6 percent for larger gains above €50,000

Tax relief reduces the taxable gain depending on how long you have owned the property, with full exemption reached after 22 years for income tax and 30 years for social levies. The full rules are explained in the official Service-Public guidance on property capital gains tax (opens in a new window).

The rate can vary depending on your country of residence and social security status. For example, some EU, EEA and Swiss residents may benefit from a reduced social levy, while many non-European residents pay the full rate. Always confirm your position before setting your expected sale proceeds.

Check whether you need a représentant fiscal

Owners living outside the EU or EEA may need to appoint an accredited représentant fiscal when the sale price exceeds €150,000. This representative verifies the tax calculation with the French authorities, and their fee is deducted from your proceeds.

The threshold applies per seller rather than per property. The tax administration's guidance on appointing an accredited representative (opens in a new window) explains how this works, including cases involving jointly owned properties.

Check available exemptions before selling

Some owners may benefit from exemptions, including the €150,000 gain exemption available to certain EU/EEA nationals who previously lived in France for at least two consecutive years, subject to specific conditions.

Because these exemptions can affect the timing and order of a sale, they are worth reviewing before signing a sale agreement. This is one of the points we help owners assess when selling a Paris apartment as a non-resident (opens in a new window).

Remember the ongoing cost of ownership

The value of keeping a property should also be part of your calculation. A Paris property owned by a non-resident may continue to generate costs such as taxe foncière and second-home residence tax. Paris applies the maximum permitted 60 percent surcharge on second-home residence tax.

For high-value properties, remember that French real estate wealth tax (IFI) can apply above €1.3 million of net taxable real estate assets. For non-residents, only French-situated property is generally considered.

How Estate in Paris Values a Paris Property

The three gaps running through the steps above, the absence of a public listing database, the variation inside a single building, and the distance between headline price and net proceeds, all narrow the same way. They narrow when someone who works in this market every week looks at your specific property rather than at your postcode.

Estate in Paris works across four areas, and a valuation sits at the start of most of them. Property Evaluation is the service to ask about if you want a figure for your apartment. Sell follows on where the valuation leads to a disposal. Buy applies the same analysis in reverse, against a price someone else has set. Relocation Support covers the practical side when the property is part of a wider move.

Which of those applies depends on what you are trying to decide, and the fastest way to find out is to ask. How our engagement works (opens in a new window)sets out what each stage involves.

How to Value and Sell Your Paris Property From Abroad

You never need to set foot in France, from the first valuation through to the signing of the final deed, provided you start the power of attorney early enough.

A remote valuation runs on the same evidence as an in-person one. The professional visits the property, films the visit, and reviews the co-ownership file with you over video. The listing mandate is signed electronically, viewings are conducted on your behalf, and a fiscal representative is appointed in parallel where required.

The procuration notariée, a notarised power of attorney, is what allows someone in France to sign for you. It can be drawn up through a local notary where you live or at a French consulate. It is also, reliably, the slowest part of the process and the one that blocks everything else if left late. Start it when you accept an offer, not when the completion date is set.

Before your first conversation with any professional, assemble the title deed, the last three sets of co-ownership minutes, the current charges statement, a valid DPE, the Carrez surface certificate and your French tax number. One further tip saves weeks: choose a notarial office that regularly handles international transfers, consular powers of attorney and time zone differences.

Finally, check what your likely buyer can borrow, because it shapes who can realistically bid. EU nationals and British buyers can generally borrow up to 75 to 80 percent of value, while American, Canadian and other non-EU buyers are frequently capped closer to 50 to 70 percent. A 1.4 million euro apartment aimed at an American buyer therefore requires a substantially larger cash deposit than the same property aimed at a French one, which narrows your buyer pool and affects both price and time on market. The same constraints apply in reverse if you are also buying an apartment in Paris (opens in a new window), and they are worth modelling before you commit. Where the move itself is part of the picture, we also provide on-the-ground support for owners relocating to or from Paris (opens in a new window).