Accountant for Property Dealers

The need for an accountant for property dealers when ordinary accounting is no longer the issue. What matters is the real margin of each deal: VAT on margin or on full price, inventory treatment, commitment to resell, works tracking, financing and how costs are allocated across a program. In this activity, a qualification error can erase a large share of the expected profit.

Property dealing is managed operation by operation. That requires a much finer view than a single annual profit and loss statement: margin by lot, full acquisition cost, transfer taxes, fees, works, interest, selling expenses, exit timing and remaining stock. This is the view that helps the operator arbitrate quickly, negotiate with lenders and know whether a transaction was genuinely successful.

The focus here is that precise intent: helping French property dealers and flip operators secure the tax and accounting treatment of each project before weak structuring or poor documentation destroys the economics.

Inventory, cost base and margin recognition#

In this business, assets acquired for resale are inventory, not passive patrimonial assets. The accounting framework must build a reliable cost base by lot and allocate acquisition costs, works, interest and commercial expenses correctly.

VAT on margin or VAT on total price#

This is often the tax issue that changes the deal outcome. Eligibility for VAT on margin depends on acquisition history, the nature of the asset, the scale of the works and the legal qualification of the transaction. It has to be documented before resale, not at signing.

Commitment to resell and reduced transfer taxes#

Reduced transfer-tax treatment can be powerful, but only if the relevant conditions and deadlines are tracked properly. On a multi-deal portfolio, this becomes a real management discipline.

Financing, works and cash timing#

A profitable deal can still create severe cash pressure. Outflows come before sales, works evolve, interest accrues and commercialization may take longer than expected. Cash needs to be read program by program, not only at year-end.

1. Start from the deal, not from a generic model#

We review the asset type, acquisition terms, financing method, planned works, sales calendar, VAT route and legal structure so the real accounting issues are identified before commitment.

2. Build deal-by-deal monitoring#

We put in place a reading by operation or by lot: cost incurred, cost still to come, forecast margin, updated margin, cash position, tax deadlines and documentary risk points.

3. Secure the close and the file#

We then help finalize inventory treatment, margin calculation, VAT, tax returns, cash extraction and the supporting file needed if the administration later asks questions.

The recurring failures are usually the same: using the wrong structure, underestimating VAT, allocating works badly, confusing inventory with fixed assets, failing to track the commitment to resell or managing the whole business from the bank balance alone.

All of those mistakes can be corrected, but often too late and at a heavy tax or financing cost. The right accounting framework needs to be set early so the operator knows where margin is created, where cash gets trapped and when a deal stops being attractive.

The first quarter should give you:

• a clear view of the applicable VAT route;
• a more defensible legal and tax structure;
• an inventory and cost-base method that can actually support margin tracking;
• deal-by-deal indicators instead of a single global view;
• early warnings on missing documentation or commitment-to-resell risk;
• numbers that are useful for the next acquisition, not just for closing the year.

The goal is simple: make each operation easier to read, margin easier to control and tax risk easier to secure before the next deal is signed.

If you live abroad and buy, renovate and resell French property, the first question is not which VAT applies, but whether France treats you as a property dealer (marchand de biens) at all. The activity is commercial by nature and falls under BIC, so repeated buy-to-resell operations can pull a non-resident across the line from private investor into a registered commercial trader, with registration at the RCS triggered shortly after the first purchase.

That reclassification changes everything: inventory accounting instead of patrimonial holding, VAT on margin or on full price, and the commitment-to-resell mechanism for reduced transfer taxes. It also means an SCI cannot be your vehicle without losing its tax transparency.

For cross-border operators, we qualify the activity and document the VAT route before resale, not when the notaire asks.

The gain on each buy-and-resell deal is not an individual's real-estate capital gain: it is a commercial trading profit (BIC), with no holding-period allowance. This trader status has three structuring consequences, and they should be decided before the first acquisition.

Choose the structure before the first deal#

• SASU or SAS subject to corporate tax: the most common set-up. The reduced corporate tax rate of 15% up to 42,500 euros of profit (25% above) lets you roll the net margin of one deal into the next with limited tax friction.
• EURL or SARL (self-employed manager): often lighter social contributions, but dividends above 10% of the share capital are subject to social charges.
• Parent holding company: to chain deals, a holding company can move the profits of a property-dealing subsidiary towards other vehicles (SCI, furnished rentals) with taxation limited to the 5% add-back for costs and charges. See our holding vs SCI comparison and our holding taxation service.

Real-estate VAT: full price or margin#

Two regimes coexist. VAT on the full price generally applies when the property was bought with VAT from a VAT-registered seller: you charge 20% on the sale price and deduct input VAT on the purchase and works. Margin VAT (article 268 of the French tax code) is the specific regime for purchases from private, non-registered sellers: the 20% VAT applies to the margin only. Watch point: this regime requires legal identity between the property bought and the property resold; a plot division or heavy restructuring can jeopardise it (Icade case law, BOI-TVA-IMM-10-30).

Reduced transfer duties and the resale commitment#

Property dealers benefit from reduced transfer duties of around 0.715% (instead of roughly 5.80%) provided they commit to reselling within 5 years (article 1115 of the French tax code). If the deadline is missed, the duty saving is clawed back with late-payment interest of 0.20% per month: tracking commitment deadlines is part of the accounting follow-up of every deal.