What will your French property really return? Calculate the IRR

How to read the result

The IRR takes every cash flow into account: your savings on day one, the monthly difference between net rent and loan repayment, and, at the end, the sale price minus selling costs and the loan still outstanding. On the pledged route, your portfolio comes back to you at the end too.

That is why it is a better yardstick than rental yield. A 6% gross yield says nothing about leverage, about the loan you repay, or about the years you hold the property. The IRR does.

For comparison, the MSCI World index in euros has returned 7.88% a year with dividends reinvested, and 5.49% a year on price alone, since 31 December 1998 (MSCI, data as of 30 September 2026). Past returns do not predict future ones, for shares or for property.

What moves the IRR

• The price you pay and the rent you get. Buying well, and renovating so that it lets well, sets the yield for the whole holding period.
• The value at resale. One percentage point more or less of yearly price growth changes the result markedly over 15 years.
• The holding period. Notary fees, around 7% to 8% of the price on an existing property, are lost on day one: short holding periods suffer.
• The mortgage rate. Leverage helps as long as the property earns more than the loan costs.
• Empty months and repairs. They sit in the running-costs line; we use 25% of the rent by default.

This calculator gives an estimate before tax on rent and on the sale, and without borrower insurance. It is not investment, tax or legal advice, nor a promise of returns. We go through a detailed simulation of your own project, with French tax included, during the call.