Property tax in Roubaix in 2026: three mayors in four months, a rate frozen since 2018

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

Your Roubaix notice reads in four columns. The Métropole Européenne de Lille levies no inter-municipal share on built property: it is funded by the household waste collection tax, which appears on a separate line.

For an owner, the figure that matters is the last one: two thirds of the tax base go back every year in property tax and household waste collection tax. The base itself is worth half of the cadastral rental value of the home. For a 3-room flat of 65 m² let at the Roubaix advertised rent for homes of three rooms or more, 11,80 €/m² a month (rent map 2025), the notice represents a little less than one month of rent.

2. Why does Roubaix tax more than Tourcoing with a lower municipal rate?

A tax-funded contribution is not, strictly speaking, a tax voted by the town. A syndicate of municipalities can decide to replace the budget contribution of its members with a direct levy on taxpayers. The syndicate has no tax-raising power of its own: it votes a yield, which the tax authorities then convert into a rate. That is why this line varies from one year to the next, unlike the municipal share.

The comparison with neighbouring towns is telling. Lille shows a municipal share of 48,35 % and an overall rate of 48,91 %. Tourcoing, 50,99 % and 51,55 %. Wattrelos, bordering Roubaix, peaks at a municipal share of 67,20 %, the highest rate among the large municipalities of the metropolitan area (DGFiP, 2025 rates). On the same tax base, an owner in Roubaix therefore pays a little more than one in Tourcoing, and clearly less than one in Wattrelos.

For the Tourcoing detail, see our article on property tax in Tourcoing; for the other end of the metropolitan area, the one on Marcq-en-Barœul, the lowest municipal rate among the large municipalities of the MEL.

3. Where does the 48,70 % rate come from?

The detail of the 2017 cut is worth noting, because it is often summarised wrongly: it did not concern built property. The town lowered the residence tax, brought down to 28,90 %, and the tax on unbuilt land, brought down to 60,74 %. The tax on built property was kept stable at 29,41 %. Since the abolition of the residence tax on main residences, completed in 2023, the 2017 measure only benefits holders of second homes.

The 2021 transfer changed nothing in the amount paid: the departmental line simply disappeared from the notice in favour of the municipal line. But it changed the meaning of the figure. A municipal rate of 48,70 % can only be compared with rates after 2021.

4. Three mayors in four months: who decides the rate?

The sequence is unprecedented for a town of close to 100 000 inhabitants. A centre-right independent mayor since 2014, Guillaume Delbar had been sentenced on appeal in Douai, in May 2024, to a six-month suspended prison sentence and two years of ineligibility for organised fraud, in a tax-avoidance case involving micro-parties. On 26 November 2025, the Cour de cassation confirmed the ineligibility, which automatically removed him from office.

Turnout in the second round stood at 37,48 % of the 49 802 registered voters (Ministry of the Interior). The programme of the new majority, "Roubaix 2040", focuses on housing: a "Mission Logement en transition" to bring vacant homes back into use, and a strengthening of the rental permit, already in force. We found no figured commitment on the property tax rate in it.

On the finance side, the inherited trajectory is one of slow debt reduction. The town's outstanding debt went from 114,6 M€ in 2019 to 104,2 M€ in 2023, that is around 1 058 € per inhabitant, while gross savings fell from 24,2 M€ in 2021 to 19,2 M€ in 2022 (municipal accounts, OFGL). The last budget voted by the former majority, on 6 February 2025, amounted to 229,5 M€, with unchanged rates.

5. Who can benefit from the exemption for works?

The scheme is provided for by article 1383-0 B of the code général des impôts, the French general tax code, but it only exists in municipalities that have voted it. Roubaix introduced it by council decision of 26 June 2008, at the maximum rate of 100 %, and it still appears in the file of local direct taxation decisions published by the DGFiP for 2026. Tourcoing, its neighbour, has not introduced it.

• Eligible homes: completed before 1 January 1989, which covers most of the Roubaix stock of townhouses.
• Works: energy-saving equipment and materials from the list in I of article 18 bis of annex IV of the code général des impôts (insulation, boiler, heat pump, high-performance windows and doors), installed by a company.
• Thresholds: 10 000 € in the year before the first year of exemption, or 15 000 € in total over the three previous years.
• Procedure: declaration on plain paper to the property tax office (service des impôts fonciers) before 1 January, with the invoices. The exemption cannot be renewed within the ten years following the end of the previous one.

The exemption only covers the municipal share. The syndicate line, the additional taxes and the household waste collection tax remain due. For a Roubaix owner, it nonetheless represents close to three quarters of the notice: 48,70 points out of 66,61. The Amélio service of the Métropole Européenne de Lille supports owners in setting up the works.

6. Simulator: what the exemption gives back to you

Take a townhouse of 90 m² with a tax base of 1 200 €. Its notice is around 800 € a year. During the exemption, it falls to around 215 €: 584 € saved per year, that is 1 753 € over three years. For 15 000 € of works, the exemption finances close to 12 % of them, on top of national renovation grants, which have their own conditions.

7. How much do you pay depending on your profile?

The profiles below are anchored on real neighbourhoods of Roubaix and on the prices per m² from our processing of DVF data, the French notarised sales database. They apply the rate of 66,61 %, household waste included.

Measured against value, the burden is heavy. The 3-room flat in the Centre, valued at around 112 000 €, bears around 670 € a year, that is 0,60 % of its value. In Boulogne-Billancourt, where prices are close to five times higher, the same calculation gives 0,17 %.

8. Who really pays property tax in Roubaix?

The contrast with Tourcoing, which borders it, is sharp: 48,0 % owner-occupiers. In Roubaix, the poverty rate reaches 47,4 % and the median disposable income 16 080 € a year (INSEE). For a modest owner-occupier of a townhouse, the autumn notice often represents several weeks of income.

Tenants do not escape it entirely: the household waste collection tax, 14,64 % of the base, is part of the recoverable service charges that the landlord passes on. And the stock includes 4 129 vacant homes, that is 9,4 % of the 43 709 homes. As Roubaix is classified as a high-pressure housing area (zone tendue), an unfurnished home left empty for at least one year on 1 January is automatically subject to the vacant housing tax there, unless the vacancy is involuntary.

Finally, two schemes can reduce the notice without any new vote: the national relief and exemptions linked to age or income, which apply automatically subject to means testing, and the renovation exemption specific to Roubaix, which must be applied for.

9. What effect on the value of your property in Roubaix?

The average price of a flat is around 1 974 €/m² (Immover processing, DVF data), with a gap of close to a third between Barbieux, at 2 255 €/m², and Sainte-Élisabeth, at 1 703 €/m². The trends diverge: the Centre gained around 16 % over five years while Barbieux fell back by around 15 %.

For a seller, property tax enters the buyer's reasoning, but not in first place. In a market where the entry price is low, the annual cost of ownership, property tax and energy, weighs proportionally heavily in the decision. That is where the renovation exemption makes sense: a renovated older home combines a lower energy bill, a better energy performance certificate and three years of reduced property tax, three arguments that can be quantified at the viewing.

The energy label also affects rental value. Since 1 January 2025, homes rated G can no longer be let under a new lease, and the timetable of the Climat et résilience law extends this ban to homes rated F in 2028. In a stock of old houses, the choice between works and sale therefore arises in the short term. It starts with an estimate calibrated at neighbourhood level:

For the breakdown by area, our page on property prices per m² in Roubaix gives the price of each of the neighbourhoods covered.