France’s housing tax has skyrocketed over the past decade, increasing by more than 30% between 2009 and 2019, new data shows.

While buying property in France - especially rural France - can be comparatively inexpensive, there are some hidden costs that homeowners need to be aware of. One of these is the property owners' tax - known as taxe foncière - which has increased by 31.4%, according to numbers revealed by the French National Union for Real Estate Owners in the French daily newspaper Le Parisien.

The biggest spike happened in the first half of the decade, while the increase of 12.1% during the last five years has been less significant.

Second home owners might have felt the consequences of the tax hike even more than first home owners, as several French cities also charge an extra tax for second homes and the number of cities implementing this extra tax is increasing every year, according to the report.

One reason that the property tax has increased so much each year is because it is revalued based on rental prices. As rental prices have gone up in the past 10 years, so has the property tax.