Property tax in Colmar in 2026: the lightest rate in Alsace

1. What is the property tax rate in Colmar in 2026?

The Colmar notice is simple to read, and that simplicity is already a piece of information. Colmar Agglomération, which brings together 20 municipalities and 113 600 residents, levies only 0,70 % on built property. In other words, 97,6 % of what you pay on the 'built property' line goes to the Town.

One useful marker: the special facilities tax is nil in Colmar, whereas it appears on Strasbourg and Mulhouse notices. Non-built property, on the other hand, remains heavy, with a municipal rate of 54,93 % and an overall rate of 108,06 %, but it concerns only a minority of owners.

2. Colmar, Strasbourg, Mulhouse: who pays the most?

This is the comparison that counts for an owner in Alsace, far more than the national ranking. The three cities share the same region, the same local law and comparable housing markets. What separates them comes down to the choices of their town councils and of their inter-municipal authorities.

Two gaps add up. The first comes from the inter-municipal share: 0,70 % in Colmar, 4,60 % at the Eurométropole de Strasbourg, 3,58 % at Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération. The second comes from household waste, where Colmar shows 7,30 % while its two neighbours exceed 11 %.

The gap has not always been so wide. Between 2021 and 2025, Mulhouse raised its municipal rate from 41,01 % to 43,01 % and its inter-municipal share from 1,58 % to 3,58 %. Strasbourg left its municipal rate at 37,44 % but saw its inter-municipal share go from 1,15 % to 4,60 %. Colmar, over the same period, moved nothing.

3. Why the Colmar rate does not move

The 2026 calendar made the question a sensitive one. Éric Straumann was re-elected mayor of Colmar on 22 March 2026 with 37,71 % of the vote, at the end of a tight four-way contest, and the new council was installed on 28 March. The first budget of the term was voted a month later, on 23 April, by 34 votes in favour, 11 against and 4 abstentions out of 49 councillors.

That budget commits 53,5 million euros of investment for the year 2026 alone, within a programme of 288,5 million running to 2032: restructuring of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul district (3,5 M€), redevelopment of the Plaine Pasteur (12 M€ up to 2032), external renovation of the Saint-Martin collegiate church (14,6 M€ up to 2032), and the oasis schoolyard programme.

The Town points to two levers to sustain that ambition without raising tax. The first is self-financing, at 26,4 million euros in 2026. The second is control of energy costs: LED street lighting, energy renovation of buildings, connection to the district heating network fuelled by waste incineration, for an annual saving of 483 000 € since 2019, according to the Town.

4. So why is your bill rising?

The mechanism is the same everywhere in France. The administration starts from the cadastral rental value of your home, applies a flat-rate allowance of 50 % to obtain the tax base, then multiplies that base by the sum of the rates voted. Two levers make the bill vary: the rate and the base.

In Colmar, the first lever is neutralised. That leaves the second, over which neither the Town nor the conurbation authority has any control: the revaluation coefficient of rental values is set every year in the finance act, indexed to recorded inflation.

The 2026 revaluation, at +0,8 %, is the smallest since 2021. On a tax base of 3 000 €, it means about 10 € more over the year, household waste included. It is the gentlest step of the sequence: in 2023, the same home took on nearly 87 € in one go.

A point of honesty: the 2026 rates voted by local authorities have not yet been published by the DGFiP at the date of this article. The figures presented here are the 2025 recorded rates. Neither the 2026 initial budget of the Town nor its communications announce a rise in the municipal rate; the exact figure appears in the minutes of the town council of 23 April 2026.

5. How much do you pay depending on your tax base?

We reason here in terms of tax base rather than purchase price, and that choice is not a methodological detail. In Alsace, there is no public record of sale prices allowing a market value to be linked to a cadastral rental value (see section 7). The base written on your notice is therefore the only reliable anchor.

To place these amounts: the average property tax paid by a private individual stood at 1 117 € in 2025 nationally, according to the DGFiP, the French public finances directorate. A Colmar home reaches that level at around 2 700 € of tax base, when 1 900 € is enough in Mulhouse.

These amounts are orders of magnitude calculated from the recorded rates. They do not take into account the exemptions and allowances specific to your situation, nor the temporary exemptions for new homes.

6. Simulator: what the Colmar rate saves you

7. Why you cannot compare your tax with market prices

Elsewhere in France, an owner who finds their property tax high has a simple check available: comparing the rental value used by the administration with the prices actually paid in their street, through the demandes de valeurs foncières database, the record of notarised sales open since 2019. That cross-check is our raw material at Immover. It is impossible in Colmar.

The reason is historical. In Alsace-Moselle, land publicity goes through the livre foncier, the land register kept by the judicial courts, and not through the land registration service of the DGFiP. The official frequently asked questions of the DVF database are explicit: the administration 'does not hold the transfers of the departments of the Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Moselle and Mayotte', the data being in the land register 'because of the application of local law' and not open to date.

The practical consequence is twofold. No free tool based on DVF, Patrim included, will return a Colmar transaction. And the prices per m² you will see circulating about Colmar rest on listings or on private databases, not on deeds of sale.

8. Does Colmar taxation support the value of your property?

Colmar has 36 922 dwellings for 66 970 residents, of which 32 594 are main homes, 1 762 second or occasional homes and 2 566 vacant dwellings, that is 6,9 % of the stock, according to the 2023 INSEE census. One figure deserves attention: only 36,9 % of main homes are occupied by their owner, against 61,4 % of tenants.

In other words, the Colmar property tax is above all a tax on landlords. For an investor comparing Colmar with Mulhouse at an equivalent rental yield, the gap of eighteen points of levy on the tax base translates directly into net return.

A second distinctive feature, which counts for a tourist city: Colmar applies no surcharge on the residence tax for second homes. The overall rate there is 26,59 %, with no surcharge, whereas Strasbourg applies a surcharge of 60 %. Across 1 762 dwellings concerned, it is a deliberate position, when the capital of the Alsace wines would not lack arguments for taxing its pieds-à-terre more heavily.

Taxation does not set a sale price for all that. To place the value of your property before any decision, a valuation based on the real features of the home and on the local market remains the first step.