PDS and Registration Duty Changes in Mauritius (2026)

What exactly changed

The 2026 budget doubled two taxes that apply specifically to non-citizen real estate transactions:

• Registration duty on a non-citizen buyer: from 5 percent to 10 percent of the purchase price.
• Land transfer tax on a non-citizen seller: from 5 percent to 10 percent of the sale price.

Who is affected

The new rates apply to any non-citizen buying or selling residential property in Mauritius under the open schemes. This includes:

• Foreign individuals buying a PDS villa or apartment.
• Foreign individuals buying under RES, IRS or Smart City.
• Foreign individuals buying an apartment in a qualifying ground+2 building above MUR 6M.
• Foreign-owned companies and trusts buying property under approved structures.

What it means in money terms

On a USD 500,000 PDS villa, the registration duty alone moves from USD 25,000 to USD 50,000. Add notary fees of around 1 to 1.5 percent and you are looking at total acquisition costs of around USD 60,000 to 65,000 instead of the previous USD 32,000 to 38,000.

On a MUR 12M ground+2 apartment, registration duty moves from MUR 600,000 to MUR 1.2M. Notary and small fees on top take total acquisition cost to about MUR 1.4M, up from MUR 800,000.

How sellers are reacting

On the seller side, the doubled land transfer tax bites directly into proceeds. A foreign owner selling a USD 800,000 villa now pays USD 80,000 in land transfer tax instead of USD 40,000.

Some sellers are absorbing the increase. Others are passing all or part of it through in higher asking prices, which then get pushed back by buyers facing their own higher acquisition costs. Net effect: prices in the foreign-buyer segment have softened modestly while sellers and buyers absorb the change.

Should you accelerate or postpone?

For most buyers the answer is: do not let tax timing drive a long-term decision on where to live. The increase is real but is a one-off cost spread across the full holding period. On a 7 to 10 year horizon, the difference is small relative to property value movements.

For investors with a shorter horizon, the math is tighter. The combined 10 percent buy and 10 percent sell rate, plus notary, is a 20 percent plus round-trip friction that needs to be earned back through capital growth or yield. Run the numbers carefully.

What is unchanged

The fundamentals of the schemes are unchanged. PDS, RES, IRS and Smart City still allow non-citizens to buy freehold. The residence permit threshold is still USD 375,000 on PDS, IRS and Smart City. Apartment ground+2 still works above MUR 6M. The notary process is the same.

For Mauritian buyers, nothing changed on the registration side. The 5 percent registration duty for citizens still applies.

Practical advice for buyers

A few things to do before signing on a foreign-buyer transaction in 2026:

• Get the full landed cost in writing from your notary or your agent before the promise of sale.
• Check whether the seller is a Mauritian citizen or non-citizen. The transfer tax difference is paid by the seller but it can show up in the asking price.
• For new builds, confirm whether registration duty is calculated on the land share only or on the full price. This affects the bill significantly.
• For investors, run the round-trip math at realistic capital growth assumptions before committing.