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Buying a French property en viager

A viager is a sale where the buyer pays a lump sum (bouquet) and then a life annuity (rente viagère) until the seller dies. The seller usually keeps the right to live in the property. This page states how our calculator values such a sale, so that a foreign buyer and a French notaire can discuss the same figures.

Tables and rates current as of 3 August 2026. Figures are indicative and not contractual.

1. Life expectancy

Residual life expectancy is taken by age and sex and converted into a monthly survival curve. Three sets of tables may be used and averaged: the general INSEE population tables, the TGH05 / TGF05 prospective tables approved for life annuities (longer expectancy, favourable to the seller), and the Daubry scale customary among French viager practitioners. Health is never modelled: assessing a genuine aléa — real uncertainty as to the duration — is the professional’s job, and a sale without it can be set aside.

2. Occupancy discount

Where the seller stays in the property, the sale price starts from the vacant market value less the value of the right retained. That value is the net market rent capitalised over the probable period of occupation and discounted to present value. A droit d’usage et d’habitation (right to occupy, no right to let) is worth less than a full usufruit (right to let and take the income). The statutory scale of article 669 of the tax code is shown alongside, but it serves tax liquidation, not negotiation. The economic figure is bracketed by a professional occupancy scale by age and sex: that scale acts as a progressive floor below, and — widened by the corridor set by the firm (35 % by default, never above 95 % of the vacant value) — as a cap above. Rents are not assumed flat: their indexation is a stated valuation assumption, and the retained right is life-contingent by default, with a perpetual mode available as a prudent alternative.

3. From price to bouquet and annuity

The bouquet is a share of the sale value paid on signature. The balance is divided by the present value of one unit of annuity — the sum, over all future instalments, of the survival probability times the discount factor. Payment frequency and payment in advance or in arrears are taken into account.

4. Discount rate and indexation

French notarial practice uses a technical discount rate of 2 to 3 %. Indexation is a separate matter: the annuity is usually revalued each year on the construction cost index (ICC), the consumer price index excluding tobacco, observed local rents, or a fixed negotiated rate. Over twenty years the indexation clause moves the total cost more than the discount rate does.

5. Taxation

For the seller, only a fraction of the annuity is subject to income tax, set by article 158-6 of the tax code according to age at the first instalment: 70 % below 50, 50 % from 50 to 59, 40 % from 60 to 69, 30 % from 70. Social levies of 17.2 % apply to the same fraction. Neither applies to a vente à terme (fixed-term instalment sale) nor to a bare-ownership sale paid in full. Non-resident buyers should also take local advice on wealth tax (IFI) and on double taxation treaties.

6. Return for the buyer

Expected total cost weights each instalment by the probability that it will fall due. The internal rate of return is the rate cancelling the present value of the buyer’s flows, and net present value is shown for several assumed durations (5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years) rather than as a single number, because the risk is the duration itself.

Glossary of French terms