Biarritz property market: prices, second homes and local rules

The average asking price for an apartment in Biarritz is €8,455.6/m² in Q3 2026 according to CASAFARI Area Insights, the source of the price series in this guide (indexed listings, outliers excluded), 3.1% lower than a year earlier and 9.8% below the Q2 2023 peak; houses hold at €8,682/m² (-0.6% year on year). These are asking prices, not sale prices. Biarritz remains the most expensive town on France's Atlantic coast, where two local rules—strict compensation for short-term lets and a 60% second-home tax surcharge—shape every purchase as much as the price.

Consider a Parisian couple who bought a two-bedroom apartment near the Grande Plage in the spring of 2023, right at the top of the post-pandemic surge. In Q2 2023, the average asking price for apartments in Biarritz peaked at €9,378.2/m² in the CASAFARI Area Insights series. Were they to put a similar apartment on the market in Q3 2026, the town-wide asking average sits at €8,455.6/m². The market has not crashed, nor have owners rushed for the exits, yet three years of higher borrowing costs and decisive municipal intervention against holiday letting have quietly handed the initiative back to the buyer.

What does property cost in Biarritz in 2026?

In Q3 2026 (the quarter starting 1 July 2026), the average asking price for an apartment in Biarritz stands at €8,455.6/m², while houses average €8,682/m², according to CASAFARI Area Insights (location id 467946, queried October 2026, based on indexed listings with outliers excluded). Even after a three-year adjustment in the apartment segment, Biarritz remains the priciest residential market on France's Atlantic seaboard, sitting well above neighbouring Basque communes and rival resort towns further north.

Within the town, the gap between houses and apartments has inverted since late 2024. While apartment asking prices have drifted down from above €9,000/m² in 2023, houses have moved within a narrow band between €8,497.6/m² and €8,842.9/m² across the entire fifteen-quarter series from Q1 2023 to Q3 2026. By Q4 2024, house asking prices moved above apartments (€8,694.7/m² against €8,654.4/m²) and have remained higher since.

A critical distinction for any buyer or adviser is that these figures measure asking prices from active listings, which track seller sentiment and initial positioning. Completed transaction prices recorded by notaries sit noticeably lower, particularly in a cooling market where buyers take their time and negotiate. For a wider perspective on how coastal and urban markets are behaving nationally, see our guide to the French property market.

Why have apartment asking prices fallen for three years?

Apartment asking prices in Biarritz have stepped down by 9.8% from their Q2 2023 peak of €9,378.2/m² to €8,455.6/m² in Q3 2026, and by 7.9% compared with Q1 2023 (€9,181.8/m²), according to CASAFARI Area Insights. Across the fourteen quarter-on-quarter moves since early 2023, the average asking price has fallen in ten, without a single sustained rebound.

Three forces explain this steady deflation. First, the extraordinary inflow of buyers from Paris, the Île-de-France and the Bordeaux property market during 2021 and 2022 pushed sellers to test ambitious levels above €9,300/m² by mid-2023. Second, higher European interest rates cooled leveraged domestic buyers. Third, and specific to the Basque coast, the local rules enacted between 2021 and 2023 removed the short-term holiday-let investor bid that used to compete for one- and two-bedroom flats near the beaches and Les Halles.

Looking at the year-on-year changes computed from the CASAFARI Area Insights series, the sharpest annual drops for apartments occurred in Q3 2024 and Q4 2024 (both -5.1%). The decline slowed toward the end of 2025 (-0.7% in Q3 2025 and -0.3% in Q4 2025), before widening again through 2026 to -0.8% in Q1, -2.0% in Q2 and -3.1% in Q3 2026 (€8,455.6/m² against €8,723.5/m² in Q3 2025). Set against the INSEE Notaires-Insee house price index, Q2 2026, which recorded a 0.8% annual dip across France for existing dwellings (-0.1% for apartments and -1.3% for houses, with about 958,000 transactions in the twelve months to June 2026), Biarritz apartments are correcting more noticeably than the national apartment average, as is typical of a high-multiple resort market digesting post-pandemic gains. You can compare this trajectory with CASAFARI's property market trends across Europe.

Why do houses hold their value better than apartments?

In Q3 2026, houses in Biarritz command an average asking price of €8,682/m², down just 0.6% from Q3 2025 (€8,733.2/m²) and 1.7% below Q1 2023 (€8,835.4/m²) in CASAFARI Area Insights. That leaves houses at a €226.4/m² premium over apartments in Q3 2026.

The resilience of houses comes down to acute physical scarcity. Biarritz's housing stock is heavily dominated by apartments; detached houses and historic villas represent a small minority of dwellings and very few come to market in any given year. Whether it is a Belle Époque or neo-Basque villa around the Phare, Miramar, Saint-Charles, the Côte des Basques cliff-top or La Milady, owners are typically well-capitalised families with little pressure to cut their asking price.

Because the house segment is thin, a handful of prestige listings entering or leaving the market can shift the quarterly figure by a couple of percentage points—such as +2.8% year on year in Q3 2025 or -2.4% in Q2 2026 in the CASAFARI series. Readers should treat the house line as a stable €8,500–€8,850/m² plateau rather than over-interpreting single-quarter swings.

Property type	Q1 2023 asking (/m²)	Q2 2023 asking (/m²)	Q3 2025 asking (/m²)	Q3 2026 asking (/m²)	1-year change	Change vs Q1 2023
Apartments	€9,181.8	€9,378.2	€8,723.5	€8,455.6	-3.1%	-7.9%
Houses	€8,835.4	€8,787.5	€8,733.2	€8,682.0	-0.6%	-1.7%

Source: CASAFARI Area Insights, location id 467946, queried 23 October 2026.

How exceptional is Biarritz as a second-home market?

According to INSEE census data for Biarritz (2023), 40.1% of the town's 26,457 dwellings are second homes or occasional dwellings, while 57.8% are primary residences and only 2.1% sit vacant. Among the 15,335 resident households, 53.7% own their main home.

That 40.1% second-home share sets Biarritz apart from its immediate neighbours in the urban area: in the same 2023 INSEE census, second homes account for 15.4% of dwellings in adjoining Anglet and just 4.4% in Bayonne. Historical census series from INSEE (RP 2020) show how deeply rooted this structure is: Biarritz counted 2,449 second homes in 1968, 6,834 in 1999, and 10,783 in 2020 (41.3% of the stock).

At the same time, Biarritz's permanent population reached 26,206 in the 2023 census, growing by an average of 0.5% per year between 2017 and 2023 despite a negative natural balance of -1.0% per year (deaths exceeding births). In plain terms, every net addition to the town's population comes from newcomers—retirees, remote-working professionals and families relocating from Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse. Hemmed in by the Atlantic Ocean, Anglet and the hinterland with almost no land for new development and a 2.1% vacancy rate, this dual pressure of year-round arrivals and a 40.1% second-home share is what underpins long-term values—and what triggered the regulatory clampdown.

Can you let a Biarritz apartment short term?

For anyone buying a second home in Biarritz today, short-term tourist letting is effectively off the table. Between 2016 and 2020, the number of short-term tourist furnished lets across the Pays Basque rose by 130% to more than 16,000 units, according to the urban planning agency AUDAP cited in parliamentary records (Assemblée nationale written question no. 527). In response, the Communauté d'Agglomération Pays Basque (CAPB) adopted a strict change-of-use and compensation regulation in 2022, in force since 2023 across 24 "tense" communes including Biarritz.

Under this rule, letting a property that is not your primary residence as a short-term tourist furnished let (meublé de tourisme) requires prior change-of-use authorisation accompanied by compensation: the owner must purchase or provide non-residential premises of at least equivalent surface area within the same commune and convert them into long-term housing. Furthermore, temporary authorisations are reserved for natural persons, excluding property-holding companies (SCI).

After challenges brought by property federations and landlords' associations, the measure was definitively validated by the Conseil d'État decision of 11 June 2026 on the Pays Basque compensation rule (decisions nos. 504736, 504737, 504743 and 504754), welcomed as a landmark ruling in the Communauté d'Agglomération Pays Basque statement on tourist-let regulation. A homeowner may still let their own primary residence for up to 120 days a year (with a mandatory town-hall registration number), and the national Le Meur law of November 2024 has tightened tax allowances and energy-performance rules for tourist lets across France. Consequently, buyers analyzing how investors use CASAFARI data in Biarritz now focus on long-term furnished tenancies, student or seasonal-worker leases, or pure lifestyle use rather than holiday-platform income.

What does owning a second home in Biarritz cost each year?

Beyond maintenance and seafront copropriété (commonhold) charges—which can be substantial on historic façades exposed to Atlantic salt air—second-home owners face two local property taxes: the taxe foncière (paid by all owners) and the taxe d'habitation sur les résidences secondaires.

In 2021, Biarritz voted to apply the maximum legal surcharge of 60% on the communal share of the taxe d'habitation for second homes (under article 1407 ter of the Code général des impôts). Following the surcharge and the tourist-let restrictions, the town observed an 11.5% drop in the number of declared second homes from 2024, with more than 1,000 properties reclassified on paper as primary residences, according to a France 3 report on Biarritz's second-home tax audits (May 2026). To recover the resulting revenue shortfall, the municipality signed an audit convention with the regional tax authorities (DGFiP) to verify actual occupancy; tax reassessments on false primary-residence declarations can reach back three years.

How do international buyers purchase in Biarritz, and what does it cost?

French law places no restrictions on foreign nationals—whether from the European Union, the UK, Switzerland, the US or elsewhere—buying residential property in Biarritz. Every purchase is executed by a public notary (notaire), starting with a preliminary contract (compromis de vente or promesse de vente) that triggers a mandatory ten-day cooling-off period for the buyer, followed by two to three months of municipal pre-emption and title searches before the final deed (acte authentique).

On top of the purchase price, buyers should budget roughly 7.5% to 8% for acquisition costs (frais de notaire) on an existing property. Under article 116 of the 2025 Finance Act, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department raised its departmental transfer duty (droits de mutation à titre onéreux, DMTO) by 0.5 percentage points from 4.5% to 5.0% for deeds signed between 1 May 2025 and 31 March 2028 (confirmed in the DGFiP schedule of 1 June 2026; see the breakdown of departmental transfer-duty rates after the 2025 Finance Act). Combined with the communal tax and state levy, transfer duties alone total about 6.3% of the price, before the notary's regulated emoluments and land-registry disbursements; only first-time buyers purchasing a primary residence are exempted from the 0.5-point increase.

Where to focus depends on how you intend to use the property:

• Grande Plage, Impératrice and Miramar: Seafront apartments and prestige residences with direct beach access and the highest asking prices per square metre.
• Les Halles and Saint-Charles: Walkable year-round town life, independent shops and period apartments; popular with full-time relocators.
• Côte des Basques and the Phare: Cliff-top vistas, surf beaches and a concentration of historic villas.
• Bibi Beaurivage and La Négresse (around the TGV station): More village-like residential quarters offering relative value and easier parking.
• Anglet and Bayonne: The practical alternatives where local households and value-conscious buyers look when priced out of Biarritz.

Before submitting an offer in a market where asking prices have been drifting for three years, four checks are essential. First, check an asking price against sold comparables with Comparables and a market study so your offer reflects recent closes rather than 2023 expectations. Second, on the Côte des Basques and Miramar seafronts, review the municipal coastal-erosion risk plan (Plan de Prévention des Risques Littoraux) and upcoming cliff-stabilisation works. Third, inspect the copropriété minutes for voted façade or roof works and any clauses restricting letting. Fourth, confirm the property's declared tax and use status.

Wealth managers, relocation advisers and analysts who want to embed these series into their own workflows can read the Area Insights API documentation, pair it with the Comparables and valuation API documentation, or query the same Biarritz series through Casafari MCP. To explore the data directly, you can create a CASAFARI account and run the Biarritz query yourself.