Apartment renovation
prices.

Between 2024 and 2026 we priced seven apartment renovations in Savoie, estimates and project quotations combined. The lowest comes to about €26,000 excl. VAT, the highest to about €124,000 excl. VAT. The median quotation is around €47,000 excl. VAT, and three of them fall between €31,000 and €59,000.

It is not the price of materials that widens this gap, it is the scope. The lightest quotation redoes a kitchen and a shower room while leaving the partitions in place. The heaviest takes in the whole interior: new linings and ceilings, new partitions, a complete electrical installation, heating and ventilation, staircase, doors, kitchen and bathroom. Between the two, each project adds or removes trade packages.

So remember a method rather than an amount: list the trade packages your project touches, then look at what each weighs in our quotations.

For each trade package, the table gives the lowest and highest amount among our seven apartment quotations, taken from our 2024-2026 quotations in Savoie and Haute-Savoie. Amounts are excluding VAT and rounded to the nearest hundred. The last column shows how many quotations included that trade package.

Two readings stand out. First, the same trade package can vary tenfold depending on whether you rework a few electrical circuits or redo the whole installation, whether you repaint or reorganise the rooms. Second, the kitchen and the bathroom account for a large share of the budget as soon as they are in the project: in four quotations out of five, the supplied and fitted kitchen costs between €13,500 and €20,000 excl. VAT, the fifth being for an entry-level kitchen. Our pages on kitchen renovation also give the cost of the work that goes with it, in Aix-les-Bains, Annecy and Chambéry.

The reason is first of all factual: our quotations do not state the floor area of the home. They price square metres of partition, ceiling or floor, never the living area. Publishing a price per square metre for an apartment would amount to inventing a denominator.

The second reason lies in the weight of the wet rooms. A studio and a four-room apartment each get a kitchen and a bathroom, with comparable fittings. Brought down to the square metre, the studio then looks much more expensive, without being so for equal work. This is also why the per-m² ranges in our guide to house renovation prices cannot be transposed as they stand to an apartment.

To estimate your own budget, it is better to start from the quantities in your home and the prices per item of work below, then compare the total with the amounts per trade package.

Each of these prices is taken from the same quotations and detailed in a dedicated guide, which explains what the line includes and what makes it vary. Amounts exclude VAT, supply and installation included.

Electrics cannot be reduced to a price per square metre: everything depends on the condition of the installation and the number of points to be created. Our guide to electrical renovation details the stages and the budget.

The law of 10 July 1965 lets each co-owner use their private areas freely, provided they do not infringe either the rights of the other co-owners or the purpose of the building (Article 9). Redoing floors, paintwork, the kitchen, the bathroom or a non-load-bearing partition therefore does not require a vote.

Everything changes as soon as the work affects the common parts or the exterior appearance of the building. The general meeting must then authorise it, by the Article 25 majority: the majority of the votes of all the co-owners, not only of those present. Now, unless the deeds provide otherwise, the law deems the structural work of buildings and the shared pipework running through the apartments to be common (Article 3). Opening up a load-bearing wall, cutting through a slab to create a duplex or touching a drainage stack therefore requires a vote: our guide to opening up a load-bearing wall details the procedure with the managing agent (syndic).

Windows raise a similar question: they shape the façade. The co-ownership rules often set their appearance, and enlarging them requires the approval of the general meeting. Planning this vote from the start of the project prevents it from delaying the whole site.

An apartment is renovated among neighbours. The co-ownership rules often set working hours and rules for using the common parts: protection of the lift and the stairwell, parking, storage. We read them before pricing, because they weigh on how the site is organised: removing rubble down a narrow staircase or delivering a worktop to the fifth floor has to be planned.

Noise is the other sensitive subject. Replacing carpet with tiles or parquet can make footsteps more audible for the neighbour below: the rules sometimes require an acoustic underlay, and this should be checked before choosing the floor covering.

As for timescales, allow 4 to 8 weeks for a partial renovation (kitchen, bathroom, painting) and 10 to 16 weeks for a complete renovation with the rooms reorganised, as on our apartment projects in Aix-les-Bains. Our salaried craftsmen, each in their own trade, carry out every trade package themselves, from demolition to painting: a single point of contact answers to the managing agent and the neighbours.

In a home completed more than two years ago, improvement and fitting-out work is subject to 10% VAT, including kitchen and bathroom fittings built into the structure. Energy renovation work falls under the 5.5% rate. Our guide to VAT on building work sets out the boundary between the two.

For grants, the useful distinction is between your own unit and the building. Since 1^st September 2026, MaPrimeRénov' no longer funds insulation as a stand-alone measure: in your apartment, it goes through a major renovation (rénovation d'ampleur), reserved for homes rated E, F or G, with at least two insulation measures and the mandatory support of Mon Accompagnateur Rénov'. Work on the common parts, for its part, is decided at the general meeting. We detail these schemes on our RGE page.