Furnished rental, management through an SCI, investment in an SCPI… The various investments to increase the profitability of your property.
Par Laurence Allard
Motivations. Montpellier. Optimizing your property often meets three objectives: increasing your income, preparing for transmission and relieving yourself of management worries.
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AT From the age of 65 opens a second stage! The first consisted during his working life in buying one or more properties as a rental investment, preferably on credit to reduce the savings effort and the taxation of rents, taking advantage in passing of the tax exemption systems in force. (Pinel, Malraux….). This wealth building phase being completed or in the process of being completed, the time has come for optimization. “The objective is often threefold: increase your income to supplement your retirement, begin to prepare the transmission of your assets and relieve yourself of management worries, notes Guillaume Berthiaux, head of private management at Sofidy. The increase in income can pass on the occasion of a renewal of the lease by the rental of the property no longer bare but furnished. » The advantage is mainly fiscal. Rents for an empty rental property are taxed at the owner’s marginal tax rate, which can reach 30, 41, or even 45%. Added to this are social contributions (17.2%). If the property is rented furnished, the owner can deduct from the amount of the rents collected – which may be slightly higher, as they escape the rent control and the restrictions linked to the DPE – the depreciation of the property, the charges, in particular maintenance, works. And if he opts for the micro-BIC scheme, he benefits from a 50% reduction. “With furnished rentals, it is not uncommon for the owner of the property to pay no tax for ten or fifteen years”, emphasizes Guillaume Berthiaux.
The system nevertheless has some drawbacks: an often higher vacancy rate, more active management.
Limit taxation. For owners who are thinking about the transmission, Guillaume Berthiaux advises to use a civil real estate company if they do not already have one. “This makes it possible to retain income and management power over the property or properties, to limit the taxation of real estate capital gains and to anticipate transmission. »
The operation consists in bringing the property to the SCI, in dissociating on this occasion the usufruct and the bare ownership given, for example, to the children – which initiates the transmission -, to provide in the statutes that the usufructuary will keep the power of management, that is to say the right to sell, to reinvest in another asset… “The dismemberment of the property can be calibrated to the amount of the allowances, so as not to generate gift duties, or for a low amount”, says Guillaume Berthiaux
The operation has a cost. The contribution of a good is assimilated to a sale. The capital gain realized between the acquisition price and the contribution price to the company (economic value of the bare ownership) is subject to capital gains tax.
Diversification. “On retirement, many landlords no longer want to take care of management, have unpleasant surprises (renovation of the facade, change of the boiler, etc.), suffer the vagaries (departure of a tenant, vacancy, rent control, etc.) ), note Guillaume Berthiaux. They turn to buying SCPI shares after selling the property. » Shares which yielded an average of 4.5% gross in 2022 and can also be dismembered, the owner retaining the usufruct while the bare ownership is given to the children. “As leases provide for indexation of rents, SCPIs generate income growth over time”, adds Jean-Marc Peter, CEO of Sofidy. Another advantage: the diversification of the real estate portfolio in several properties, even several types of assets (offices, logistics, etc.), which pools the risk.
Others sell and turn to life insurance in order to reduce the wealth tax on the ownership of real estate, to reduce the inheritance taxes that their heirs will have to pay or to make a generational leap. by passing on part of the capital to the grandchildren§
Max BAUWENS/RéA FOR “LE POINT”