The impact of the 2014 increase in the real estate transfer taxes on the French housing market

Guillaume Bérard (1) , Alain Trannoy (2, 1)

1 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques
2 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales

This paper estimates the effects of an increase in the share of the real estate transfer taxes (RETT) rates going to the French départements from 3.80% to 4.50%. Not all the départe-ments voted the RETT increase on the same date, which is the starting point of a natural experiment. Using a difference-indifferences design, we estimate two main effects. (1) An anticipation effect, one month before the implementation of the reform, in order to avoid the RETT increase. (2) A retention effect in the post-reform period. In the end, the net effect (retention minus anticipation) corresponds to an average drop in transactions of around 6% over the first three months after the reform, that is, approximately 15,000 transactions lost at national level. If we find a short term effect of the reform, we do not find evidence of a medium-or long-term effect.

Mots clés: local government; real estate market; transfer taxes; natural experiment; local government

Domaines: Economies et finances

Guillaume Bérard, Alain Trannoy. The impact of the 2014 increase in the real estate transfer taxes on the French housing market. Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 2018, 500-501-502, pp.179-200. ⟨10.24187/ecostat.2018.500t.1951⟩. ⟨hal-01976524⟩