It is one of the measures that the new socialist mayor Emmanuel Grégoire intends to take to address the housing crisis.
Paris is one of the world capitals of the housing crisis. One of the reasons it has earned this highly coveted title is the large number of habitable, vacant, and empty homes. Empty because owners prefer to keep them that way rather than renting or selling them: it is estimated that vacant homes are as much as one in five of all those that should be available on the market. For this reason, between a cigarette and a bike ride, the newly elected mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, has decided to double the taxes on vacant homes. Specifically, the French budget law of 2026 authorizes municipalities, starting in 2027, when the demand for housing far exceeds the supply, to increase the annual tax from 17 to 30 percent of the rental cadastral value after one year of “vacancy” (where “vacancy” refers to a property without inhabitants or secondary use designations, so no tax increase for vacation homes or second homes).
After two years, the rate can rise from 34 to 60 percent. As explained to Le Mondeby the deputy mayor of Paris (in charge of housing), Jacques Baudrier, “for an average apartment, the tax would increase from 2,000 to 4,000 euros per year after two years of vacancy”, figures that will all end up in the municipal budget. But the increase in taxation is not intended to be punitive, as Baudrier reassures, “our goal is to collect as little as possible, we announce it in advance so that owners have time to sell or rent their homes.” The Paris administration estimates that about 20,000 homes will return to the market, in the hope of starting to remedy a housing crisis that has become extremely serious.
Among the countries already implementing similar policies is Belgium, more specifically in the Brussels region. There, keeping a vacant home for more than 12 months constitutes a violation, punishable by an administrative fine of 7,500 euros for the first year, 15,000 for the second, 22,500 for the third, and so on. Across the ocean, in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced a tax on “pied-à-terre,” that is, luxury properties valued over 5 million dollars that remain empty for most of the year. A completely new initiative for the State of New York, which is expected to generate 500 million dollars in annual revenue.
