A 90-minute conversation on the 2nd of May 2026 by phone with the former owner of a five-bedroom villa on Cap d'Antibes, who exited the property in November 2024 after five rental seasons. The villa was bought in March 2019 for EUR4.8 million headline plus EUR340,000 of stamp duty, notary, and agent fees. It sold in November 2024 for EUR6.4 million headline through a Sotheby's International Realty French Riviera mandate. The post-tax realized proceeds were approximately EUR5.91 million after the French plus-value capital gains tax, social contributions, and the 6 percent residual transaction cost on the sell side. Across the five years she paid roughly EUR1.42 million in refit, holding cost, and tax, against EUR1.18 million in net rental income. The annualised return on the full position was 4.2 percent. She would not buy again. This is the full ledger.
By The Villas For Kings desk
The former owner has asked us to mark her and the property. The villa was a five-bedroom 1960s build on a 4,200 square metre plot on the seaward side of the cap, two roads back from the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc (the hotel sets the rental rate ceiling on the cap, in her view, and remains the reason her property leased at the rate it did). She bought in 2019 as an American passport-holder, held through Brexit, the 2020 to 2022 closure period, the post-2022 rental reset, and the 2024 French wealth-tax revisions.
The piece is a single owner's math and is not generalisable. It is, however, the most complete ledger we have been allowed to publish, and it differs from the broker-side ledgers we have seen in three ways: she has included the refit, she has included the French capital gains tax, and she has not netted the unrealized appreciation that the market did not let her capture.
What follows is the ledger and her own three-line conclusion. The piece is structured for the buyer considering a similar acquisition and the renter wondering whether the villa they are paying EUR45,000 a week to rent is in fact a good investment for the owner. The two views answer to slightly different math.
The 2019 inflow ledger ran as follows.
Headline purchase price: EUR4,800,000, agreed in February 2019 after a six-month search through three local agencies. The asking had been EUR5.2 million. The reduction came on a structural survey that flagged a partial roof rebuild required within five years.
Notarial fees and stamp duty: EUR288,000 at 6 percent of the headline, in line with the standard French resale "frais de notaire" structure on a second-hand property of that band.
Buyer agent commission: EUR48,000 at 1 percent of the headline (the seller paid the principal agent commission of 4 percent on her side; the buyer agent on a property of this scale is increasingly common in the French Riviera resale market).
Survey, legal, currency: EUR4,200 of structural survey, EUR12,000 of French and US legal advice, plus a EUR21,000 foreign exchange cost on the dollar to euro conversion at the spot rate in early 2019. The currency cost is real and is rarely included in the broker-side ledgers.
Total cash out at completion: EUR5,173,200. We will round in this piece to EUR5.17 million.
"The refit was not optional. The survey had flagged the roof rebuild, the electrical needed upgrading to French RT2012 code, and the kitchen and three of the five bathrooms were 1980s vintage. I had budgeted EUR400,000 and EUR9 months. I spent EUR620,000 and 14 months. The overrun split was 40 percent labour (the Riviera labour market is tight), 30 percent material (post-2020 European material inflation), 20 percent specification creep on my part, and 10 percent unforeseen on the foundation. The 14-month timeline cost me the 2019 summer rental season I had planned to capture. The villa was rentable from August 2020, into a closed travel market, so the first real rental year was 2021."
"The refit added roughly EUR380,000 of estimated appraised value, on the agent's marking, against EUR620,000 spent. The math on refit-to-resale uplift is, in my experience, between 50 and 70 cents on the euro. The refit pays for itself in rental cash flow and saleability, not in headline value."
From 2021 to 2024, the holding cost ran at an average of EUR104,000 per year. The breakdown.
Staff (EUR58,000 per year average): a full-time house manager, a half-time gardener, and a part-time housekeeper, all on French CDI contracts with the 22 to 32 percent employer social charge burden that is the largest line. The staff retainer pattern matches what every Cap d'Antibes owner we have spoken with absorbs.
Utilities (EUR14,200 per year): EDF electricity ran at EUR8,400 with the pool heating, water at EUR2,800, and the pool maintenance at EUR3,000.
Insurance (EUR9,600 per year): property and public liability through a Riviera-specialist underwriter, with a EUR10 million cover. The rate climbed roughly 11 percent annually from 2021 to 2024 on the back of wildfire risk re-rating.
Maintenance reserve (EUR14,000 per year): a hard line provision for the routine refits, pool deck recoat, mattress replacement, and exterior paintwork. Spent every year. No carry-forward.
Property tax and CFE (EUR8,200 per year): the French taxe foncière at EUR6,400 and the small business CFE for the rental activity at EUR1,800.
Total: EUR104,000 per year, EUR416,000 over four years.
The four rentable seasons (2021 to 2024) grossed EUR1.78 million across 76 booked weeks. Net of platform commission (Le Collectionist on the bookings she did not place directly), the cleaning and turnover cost, and the linen reset, the net rental income ran at roughly EUR295,000 per year. Total four-year net rental income: EUR1.18 million.
The rental book covered the EUR416,000 of holding cost and contributed EUR764,000 toward the refit and the capital tied up. The villa did not produce a free cash flow above the holding cost large enough to compound meaningfully. The capital appreciation, when it came, was the entire return.
"The French Impot sur la Fortune Immobiliere applied from 2019. The property put me above the EUR1.3 million net real estate threshold automatically. The annual IFI ran at EUR14,000 in 2019, EUR16,800 by 2024, on the appraised value after deduction of any mortgage. I had no French mortgage, so the gross value drove the calculation. The total IFI paid over six tax years was roughly EUR94,000. That number is not in most broker-side return projections."
"The US-France tax treaty was helpful on the income side, but the IFI is a wealth tax that does not have a clean US offset. I absorbed it as a cost of holding French real estate."
The villa listed in May 2024 at EUR6.85 million through Sotheby's International Realty French Riviera. The first offer came in at EUR5.9 million in July. The accepted offer was EUR6.4 million in October. The compromis was signed on the 14th of October 2024 and the acte authentique completed on the 22nd of November 2024.
The selling-side friction was roughly EUR384,000. The principal agent commission ran at 4 percent of headline (EUR256,000), the notary's seller-side fees and discharge of the sale at EUR12,000, the energy certification and asbestos diagnostics at EUR3,200, the staging and pre-sale repaint at EUR18,000, and the foreign exchange friction on repatriating the proceeds to the US dollar at the November 2024 spot at roughly EUR94,000 of effective slippage.
French plus-value capital gains tax applied. The headline rate is 19 percent plus 17.2 percent social contributions, against a EUR1.6 million gross gain. With the standard 6 percent per year holding allowance (which begins year six on French resale law), the five-year hold did not yet trigger the meaningful taper. The combined CGT and social burden landed at roughly EUR105,000 after deductions for the documented EUR620,000 refit. The net after CGT was approximately EUR5.91 million.
The five-year ledger, simplified.
Cash in: EUR5.17 million at acquisition. EUR620,000 refit. EUR416,000 holding cost. EUR94,000 wealth tax. EUR384,000 selling-side friction. EUR105,000 capital gains tax and social contributions. Total cash committed: EUR6.79 million.
Cash out: EUR1.18 million net rental income. EUR5.91 million net sale proceeds. Total cash returned: EUR7.09 million.
Net realized gain on the position: EUR300,000 on EUR6.79 million of capital committed over five years. The annualised internal rate of return, weighted for the timing of the inflows and outflows, lands at roughly 4.2 percent in EUR terms. In USD terms the return is closer to 5.1 percent because of the dollar weakening against the euro in the holding period.
"Below my cost of capital. Below the index. Below what the same money in a US municipal bond ladder would have produced with none of the operational load. The villa was not a bad investment. It was not a good one either. It was a lifestyle purchase that paid for its own operation and returned approximately the inflation rate of the French Riviera property market over the period. That is the honest version."
"One. Include the refit in your acquisition budget. The five-bedroom French Riviera villa under EUR6 million is, in nine cases out of ten, a property that needs a EUR400,000 to EUR800,000 refit inside three years. Budget it before you sign."
"Two. Include the French wealth tax and the capital gains exit in your return projection. The broker-side projections almost universally exclude both. Both are real."
"Three. Do not buy a luxury villa as an investment. Buy it as a lifestyle property whose rental will defray the holding cost. If the math also works as an investment, treat that as upside. Do not size the position on the assumption that it will."
Our work on Provence villa prices walks the same buyer math from the cost side. Our coverage of the villa rental fraud playbook walks the renter-side risk on a related axis.
What did the villa cost and what did it sell for? Bought 2019 for EUR4.8 million headline plus EUR340,000 in acquisition costs. Sold late 2024 for EUR6.4 million headline. After capital gains tax, social contributions, and selling-side friction, the realized proceeds were approximately EUR5.91 million.
What was the net annualised return? 4.2 percent in EUR over five years, after the refit, the holding cost, the rental income, the French wealth tax, and the capital gains tax. 5.1 percent in USD due to currency.
Why was the refit so much larger than budgeted? The labour market on the Riviera tightened post-2020, material inflation hit Europe, and the foundation work uncovered conditions the survey had not anticipated. EUR400,000 budget, EUR620,000 spend.
Would she buy again? No. The return was below her cost of capital. The capital gain was the entire return, and she does not feel confident the second-hand market will deliver a comparable gain in the next cycle.
What did she do with the proceeds? A combination of US municipal bonds and a continued villa rental relationship with a different property on the same coast as a renter rather than an owner.
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