Property tax in Saint-Raphaël in 2026: the rate is frozen, your bill is not

1. What is the property tax rate in Saint-Raphaël in 2026?

Your property tax notice does not show a single rate but a stack of them. The city decides only one line, its own. The other levels vote theirs separately, which explains why the total can vary slightly from one year to the next even though Saint-Raphaël has changed nothing.

2. Why is your tax rising when the rate is not moving?

This is the point that municipal communication, in Saint-Raphaël as elsewhere, gladly leaves in the shade. Announcing a stable rate is accurate. Implying that the bill is stable is not.

The tax base is the cadastral rental value of your property, divided by two. This rental value is a theoretical rent assigned by the administration to your home according to its floor area, its address, its standing and its comfort features. It does not follow the property market: it follows a national coefficient voted each year in Parliament.

Since 2018, this coefficient has been indexed on the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP). In other words: when inflation rises, your property tax rises, whatever your city council decides.

A local figure confirms this mechanism: between 2013 and 2023, the revenue from the property tax on built property collected by Saint-Raphaël rose by about +51 %, even though the municipal rate was frozen over most of the period. The city did not raise its rates, it collected the rise in the bases and new construction.

3. How much has the revaluation cost you since 2022?

The amounts below are orders of magnitude reconstructed from real profiles in the commune. They do not replace your tax notice, which alone is authoritative: two flats of identical floor area on the same street can have noticeably different rental values depending on their condition and comfort features.

Four typical profiles in Saint-Raphaël

These four profiles are anchored on areas with very different prices. In Santa Lucia, the average apartment price reaches 6 534 €/m² in 2026, against 4 008 €/m² in Les Arènes and 3 404 €/m² in Le Petit Défend, for a city average of 5 070 €/m² (DVF data processed by Immover, 2024-2025 transactions projected to 2026). The cadastral rental value, for its part, does not follow these market gaps: it is one of the great oddities of the French property tax.

4. Simulator: what freezing the rate did not spare you

5. Why is the city not cutting its rate in 2026?

The political context is that of a term just beginning. Frédéric Masquelier was re-elected mayor at the March 2026 municipal elections, and the inaugural council met on 20 March 2026. The budget adopted a month later is therefore the first of the new term, with 66 resolutions on the agenda of the sitting.

This choice deserves to be read for what it is. On the Côte d'Azur, several municipalities have taken the opposite direction: Nice voted in April 2026 a cut of 4,4 points to its municipal rate, and Cannes had already removed a point from its own in 2025. Saint-Raphaël, for its part, is not moving.

The council points to prudent management and the absence of any rise for more than a decade. The argument is real, but it does not answer the question the owner is asking: if the bases rise mechanically each year, doing nothing amounts to letting the bill climb.

6. Second homes: why you pay more

This is the tax specificity of Saint-Raphaël, and it is structural. The commune is a seaside resort of the Var where the housing stock is almost evenly split between permanent residents and weekend or seasonal owners.

If your property in Saint-Raphaël is a second home, you therefore stack three lines: the property tax (which every owner pays), the residence tax on second homes (from which main homes have been exempt since 2023), and the 20 % surcharge applied to the latter by resolution of the city council.

This surcharge is open to municipalities located in a tight-market zone. The legislator designed it as a lever against the shrinking of permanent housing: its scale can range from 5 % to 60 % since the scheme was broadened. Saint-Raphaël keeps to 20 %, where La Rochelle went up to 60 %. The Saint-Raphaël setting therefore remains moderate compared with what the law allows.

7. Is a frozen rate a low rate?

Stability is an effective communication argument because it compares with the commune's own past. It says little about its position relative to others. Here is where Saint-Raphaël really stands among the cities we follow.

This table tells a simple story. Saint-Raphaël holds a mid-range position it chose more than ten years ago and has never reopened. Meanwhile, Cannes and Nice have gone the other way and moved below its level, while Marseille has pulled away above it.

To go deeper into each of these cases, you can read our analysis of the property tax in Cannes, of the cut voted in Nice, of the 2023 Lyon rise and of the record Marseille rate.

8. What impact on the value of your property?

Three observations to place the real effect of taxation on your property.

1. Stability reassures, without pushing prices up. A buyer comparing Saint-Raphaël with a commune that has raised its rate by 15 % in three years takes note of the signal. But the gap of a few hundred euros a year weighs nothing against an entry ticket of 300 000 € or 600 000 €. The real value drivers remain proximity to the sea, the view, the condition of the property and its energy rating (DPE).

2. Holding cost matters more on the second-home segment. This is the point specific to Saint-Raphaël. With 43 % of the stock as second homes, a significant share of buyers reason in terms of annual cost rather than purchase price. The 20 % surcharge on the residence tax enters this calculation, more surely than the property tax rate itself.

3. The gaps between districts far exceed the tax effect. Between Santa Lucia (6 534 €/m²) and Le Petit Défend (3 404 €/m²), the gap reaches 3 130 €/m², nearly double. On a three-room 65 m², that represents about 203 000 € of difference in value. No municipal tax decision produces an effect of this order. If you want to understand what your property is worth, the district weighs infinitely more than the rate.

To place your home precisely, see our page dedicated to property prices in Saint-Raphaël, detailed district by district from actual transactions.