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‘Parisians, go home’: South west France fumes over rush for coastal property

A scramble by Parisians for homes in France's picturesque southwestern Basque region is fanning a nationalist backlash in a region with a troubled past.

'Parisians, go home': South west France fumes over rush for coastal property
Half of homes in Guethary are now second homes. Photo: AFP

In recent months, several properties with for-sale signs and estate agents in the region bordering Spain have been defaced with graffiti declaring “Euskal Herria ez da salgai”, (the Basque country is not for sale).

Some of the slogans have taken aim at holiday-home owners from the capital, who decamped to the coast during successive Covid-19 lockdowns.

“Parisians, go home, you are the virus of the Basque country,” giant posters pasted on the walls of houses in the village of Urrugne in March read.

But the anger is also directed at families cashing in their apartments in Paris and other French cities for a bigger home in a region that boasts some of Europe’s top surfing beaches, with the Pyrenees mountains looming in the distance.

After playing second fiddle for decades to the Cote d’Azur in the glamour stakes, the Basque country is having a moment.

“It’s not necessarily rich people we see arriving, they’re not Russian oligarchs with €14 million in a suitcase,” David Buchoou of La Rochefoucauld estate agency in Anglet told AFP.

He described them instead as people with “big corporate jobs, for example” who spend a few days a week in the city and the rest with their families in the Basque country.

The floodgates opened with the launch of a new high-speed train line from Paris to the mid-way station of Bordeaux in 2017, which brought Biarritz within nearly four hours of the capital.

A massive shift to home-working since the start of the coronavirus pandemic facilitated the move, causing house prices — and tempers — in the Basque region to flare.

In Guethary, a fishing village of 1,300 inhabitants where every second house is a holiday home, several estate agents and homes with for-sale signs have been vandalised.

The village’s mayor Marie-Pierre Burre-Cassou blames the tensions on spiralling property prices, which average €7,400 per square metre, compared with €6,670 in the greater Paris region.

With apartments in resorts like Biarritz now often commanding seven-figure sums, the demand for holiday homes is creeping inland to rural villages and farming communities.

An activist with the group Baiona Angelu Miarritze (Basque for the cities of Bayonne, Anglet and Biarritz), which campaigns for affordable housing, warned of growing despair among young people unable to get a foot on the property ladder.

“And when it begins to mobilise people that despair can become dangerous,” warned the activist, who asked to remain anonymous.

France’s Basque country was largely spared the bloodshed seen in Spain during the four-decade quest by separatist group ETA for an independent Basque state between 1968 and 2010, in which 853 people died.

But nationalists on the French side of the border have also used violence in the past to draw attention to their aims.

Estate agents and tourism industry operators accused of “folklorising” the region were targeted in several bomb attacks in 2007 and 2008.

No-one was injured in the explosions, several of which were claimed by French Basque separatist group Irrintzi, under the slogan “the Basque country is not for sale”.

Jean-Daniel Elichiry, a member of the Bake Bidea movement, which campaigned for a peaceful resolution to the Basque conflict, is among several officials warning of a risk of a return to violence.

Pointing to posts on social media expressing nostalgia for “the good old days of ETA”, he said: “There’s something very worrying about that.”

In Biarritz, where several cars with license plates from other French regions were vandalised in May, mayor Maider Arosteguy also fears that the growing chasm between new residents and local “have nots” could endanger the fragile Basque peace process.

“The risk is that a big part of Basque youth could become radicalised,” she said.

Between 2007 and 2017 the number of second homes in the French Basque country increased by 19 percent, according to the regional authority.

The figures show 54,000 homes lying empty, of which 42,000 are second homes.

Resentment over the newcomers from Paris and other French cities has been matched by frustration over a shortage of rental properties, with Airbnb blamed for shrinking supply of long-term rentals in favour of holiday lets.

To draw attention to what he calls the “speculative” nature of the rental market, a former Biarritz councillor, Eric Bonnamy, filmed himself using a grinder to dislodge boxes used to store keys for Airbnb clients on the street.

For Biarritz mayor Arosteguy such actions are “almost terrorist”.

In an interview with French television she suggested introducing tax breaks for property owners who offer year-round rentals.

The activist from Baiona Angelu Miarritze urged politicians to act fast against what he described as the threat to peace from unbridled capitalism.

“We’ve got to a point where we have to say stop,” he said.

Member comments

    1. I am glad you raised that. I have the same concern. RFI have attributed the article to AFP too. Unfortunately no one from The Local appears to monitor comments here or on their Facebook page.

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PROPERTY

French property: What is buying ‘en tontine’?

If you're buying property in France, you might be thinking about buying 'en tontine' - this has advantages especially when it comes to France's strict inheritance laws, but can also have tax implications.

French property: What is buying 'en tontine'?

What is it?

The ‘clause de tontine’ sometimes also known as a ‘clause d’accroissement’ is a clause that is inserted into the property deeds when you are buying a house or apartment.

It can only be inserted during the purchase, and cannot be added later.

It’s basically a ‘group purchase’. It’s most commonly used by unmarried couples who are buying together but it can be used by larger groups too – for example a group of friends buying a holiday home together.

You will have to ask a notaire to draw up the tontine clause during the property purchase and it can only be used if 

  • the parties are equally involved in the financing of the purchase
  • the parties involved have a roughly equal life expectancy (for this reason tontine clauses may be rejected if there is a significant difference in age between the purchasers)

What’s the point of it?

The main reason that people use it is to sidestep France’s strict inheritance laws, which assign that a certain portion of every estate must go to children, at the expense of a partner. 

READ ALSO How France’s strict inheritance laws work

For this reason it is particularly used by couples who have children from previous relationships.

On a property with a tontine clause in effect, when one owner dies their share of the property passes in its entirely to the other member/members of the tontine.

This cuts out children from inheritance, but means that a surviving partner is not evicted from their home in favour of the children of the deceased. 

It also has the advantage of making the intentions of the deceased clear, to avoid arguments among heirs after their death.

It should be noted, however, that the tontine clause only takes in the property that it covers – other assets may be subject to French inheritance law so it’s therefore probably wise to arrange a will, to ensure your wishes for your estate are met.

The surviving party can ask a notaire to update the property deeds to show that they are the sole owner, if they want. Be aware there will be a fee, which could reach four figures for the privilege – and it doesn’t actually involve any change to the property title.

Drawbacks

The advantages of the system are clear, especially for blended families, but there are some potential drawbacks too, which mean that anyone considering buying in this way would be well advised to take proper legal advice before they start.

Inheritance tax – while a tontine will help you to avoid restrictions on inheritance, it does not exempt you from inheritance tax. French inheritance tax is structured according to your relationship to the deceased, and people who are neither married nor related to the deceased pay an eye-watering inheritance tax rate of 60 percent.

The only exception to this top rate of inheritance tax is if the property is your main residence and it is valued at under €76,000 – in that case, tax is paid at a rate of 5.8 percent.

Married couples and family members pay a much lower rate or not tax, but if you’re not married to your tontine co-purchaser, be careful that you’re not lining yourself up for a massive tax bill in future years.

Wealth tax – depending on the value of the property, it could tip you over into the ‘wealth tax’ category when you inherit. France’s wealth tax is a real estate based tax and is levied on anyone who has real estate assets (property and land) worth €1.3 million or more.

The calculation includes property held en tontine.

Tax savings – you might hear tontines being advised as a way to limit your French tax liability.

While this used to be true, changes to tax laws means there are no no significant tax advantages to buying this way – the same is true for buying a property via an SCI, which used to represent a tax saving until the law was tightened up.

Disinheriting family membersOne side effect of the tontine clause on mixed families is to effectively disinherit any children of the first person to die.

Because the property passed to the survivor, under French law, only their direct descendants – rather than any family by marriage – are entitled to automatic inheritance.

That means that the children of the surviving partner will be entitled to the statutory share of the entire asset (between 25 and 30 percent depending on the number of children), but the children of the first person to die will be entitled to nothing. Obviously you can choose to leave them something in your will, but you can only leave them some or all of the estate which is not automatically given to the children on the survivor.

Divorce/dispute – if the members of the tontine split up or (in the case of friends) fall out, then they can either sell the whole property or agree to buy each other out.

However, if one party refuses to sell, then you have very limited legal options – unlike a standard property purchase a tontine is not regarded as joint ownership, so one partner cannot be forced to sell as part of a divorce procedings, for example.

Basically the tontine can only be ended or changed with the agreement of all parties – so if you can’t agree between yourselves then you may be stuck with it.

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