Taux d'usure from 1 October: the mortgage ceiling is 5.4% over 20 years

The numbers

New legal maximum rates for home loans apply from 1 October 2026. Service-Public published them on 30 September, based on a Banque de France notice dated 25 September:

Type of loan	Ceiling
Fixed rate, term under 10 years	4.09 %
Fixed rate, 10 to under 20 years	4.68 %
Fixed rate, 20 years and over	5.4 %
Variable rate	5.52 %
Prêt relais (bridge loan)	6.49 %

What taux d'usure is — and why it is not "the rate you get"

The taux d'usure is the legal maximum above which a lender may not grant credit. It is not the rate a bank will offer you; it is the line beyond which a rate counts as usurious.

Here is the detail newcomers routinely miss: what gets compared against the ceiling is not the nominal interest rate but the TAEG — taux annuel effectif global. Besides interest, the TAEG includes:

• frais de dossier — the arrangement fee;
• frais d'intermédiaire — an intermediary's fee, a broker's commission for instance;
• compulsory insurance and guarantee costs.

The TAEG on your credit cannot exceed the taux d'usure. Which produces a consequence more important in practice than the figures themselves: a file can hit the ceiling not because of the interest rate but because of the insurance. Assurance emprunteur is a compulsory component, and its cost depends heavily on age and on the medical questionnaire. The rules provide that all of it adds up into a single TAEG, and that whole figure is measured against the threshold.

If the computed TAEG lands above the ceiling, the bank simply cannot lend on those terms. From the borrower's side this does not look like "expensive" — it looks like a refusal with no clear reason given.

Why the ceiling moves every quarter

The thresholds are set and published by the Banque de France, which revises them quarterly. The current values cover the quarter starting 1 October; on that logic, the next revision falls on 1 January.

A little background makes the mechanism legible. A quarterly step is the norm, but in a period of fast-rising rates it began to get in the way: the ceiling lagged the market, and some files stalled until the next quarter. So from 1 February 2023 the Banque de France temporarily switched to a monthly recalculation, so that loans would not pile up at the threshold waiting for a new date. That was not permanent: as rates stabilised, the calculation went back to quarterly from 1 January 2024.

There is a practical takeaway in that history. The signing date matters: a file priced at the end of a quarter is measured against that quarter's ceiling, not the next one's.

What is usually relevant for a recent arrival

• Ask the bank and the broker for the TAEG, not the nominal rate. Comparing offers on the nominal rate is meaningless, since fees and insurance sit outside it.
• Keep in mind that a broker's frais d'intermédiaire also land inside the TAEG and move the file closer to the ceiling.
• Remember the ceiling depends on the term: a 25-year loan and a 15-year loan face different limits (5.4 % against 4.68 %).
• The prêt relais is its own category with the highest ceiling, 6.49 %. It bridges the gap between buying a new home and selling the old one, and it is expensive by design.

We do not assess individual credit files, and we do not advise on choosing a bank or an insurer — that is work for a courtier and a bank adviser.

Source: Service-Public.gouv.fr, "Crédit immobilier : quels sont les plafonds du taux d'usure à compter du 1er octobre ?", published 30 September 2026. The background on the 2023 monthly recalculation comes from Banque de France press releases.