Building permits will become less restrictive

img

Benoist Apparu, the Secretary of State for Housing also wants to modify the tax system in order to encourage sales of plots of land.

The conception of an eco-friendly district is twice as long in France than in other countries, and a period of 4 to 5 years is needed between the planning of a city centre redevelopment and groundbreaking: our town planning rules make us waste a lot of time. Add to that unwelcome surcosts when today France lacks housing.

There has been a strong command from the President on urban planning reforms. He mentioned it again at Le Havre some days ago, highlighted Benoist Apparu.  His working parties have been working on it for several months.

And yesterday, the four working parties created for the occasion and composed of housing professionals and local councillors, announced their suggestions in front of Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the Minister for the Environment, and Benoist Apparu.  The last arbitrations will be given late May so the rulings go to the council of Ministers before summer and are applied after the summer break.

First constituent of the reform: building permits. “Working parties advocate that the registration of a building permit only becomes obligatory from 40 sqm compared to 20 sqm currently.  Benoist Apparu added: “It is necessary for French people to be able to expand their home easily”. Also, the time frame for building permits may be reduced. Thus, in a conservation area, households may only wait 5 or 6 months instead of more than a year.

To boost the construction industry, the government also wants to play on tax reductions. At present it is in the interests of those owning a plot of land that hasn’t been built on to keep it for as long as possible. Indeed, in the course of time, prices keep increasing and taxes get lighter.

Capital gains tax should see a 10% reduction in five years, meaning tax exemption after 15 years. “For a plot of buildable land that hasn’t been built on yet -and only in this case- we want these reductions to be removed.

Benoist Apparu explains that the capital gains tax will be the same for a plot of land sold after a year or after 15 years in order to fight against the retention of ground rent.

An evolution which adds to the overhaul of building permit taxes which was voted late 2010 and reduces from 17 to 5 the number of taxes to pay for the issuing of building permits. This will make buyers lives easier without however reducing their bill (the amount of the 5 taxes being the same as that of the 17).

“We are also trying to change the way we calculate property surfaces so it becomes more in keeping with the Environment round table. Nowadays, in the administrative count, a household that installs insulation panels on the walls of their accommodation undergoes a surface decrease. This should not anymore,” details Benoist Apparu. A precaution that could increase prescribed surfaces of apartments and houses by 10%.

Tags: ,


This entry was posted on Thursday, May 19th, 2011 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Golf in Provence . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


Leave a Reply

    News search

    Archives

    Recent Comments