Buying property in France 🇫🇷

A simple guide on how to buy a property in France as a primary residence, such as a house, apartment or plot of land.

Key steps

A typical property purchase transaction will include all of these steps usually executed in this sequence:

Decide what you want, your “project“
Find a property that meets your needs
Make an offer
Sign an agreement to purchase
Complete the purchase

Your project 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦

It is common for the estate agent accompanying you on a visit to ask “quel est votre project ?“. What they really want to know is:

What do you expect from this property? Who will live here? How will you use it?
Do you expect to move straight in to a habitable home, renovate first, or move in then renovate?
How much are you willing to spend? Will you be borrowing money? If so, do you already have an agreement with your lender?
What else is important to you? This could be a view of something (lake, mountain, woods), a certain amount of land, parking and garages.

Find a property 🏚

Scan for candidate properties from all agents
Contact the estate agent for each property that you want to know more about or visit.

The most efficient way to find a property is to use a property listing aggregator – essentially one place on the web or a single app on your device that lists all of the properties from all estate agents in France. At the time of writing (start of 2023) the most popular and useful is Bien’ici.

Such services and apps allow you to search and filter through hundreds and thousands of properties efficiently, showing you only those that are in the areas that you want to be, within a price range, surface area, and other criteria. You can then save the properties that might be a good match in a list of favourites. You can be alerted to new properties that match your criteria as soon as they are listed.

You’ll need to contact the estate agent for each listing that you want to find out more about or arrange a visit to. This is where all the efficiency stops and the old world of agents takes control again.

This part of finding a property can be desperately frustrating. Agents provide very little in the way of useful description and even worse photos. I can only assume that they think this encourages you to contact them. If that’s the case, I think they are wrong.

When you’ve found a property you like

Price

Work out if the price near the market price. You will be provided with the habitable surface area in m3. Divide the asking price by the area to give the price per m3. Now look at nearby properties on demande de valeur foncière to see what prices have been recently paid per m3. If the price varies by much, you can ask the agent why this might be.

Also consider asking the agent: how long has the property been on the market? Have there been other offers? The answers to these will help you decide if there might be room for negotiation, or if there is something that other buyers did not like that you have not yet discovered. If in doubt, ask.

State of the property

A survey (diagnostic immobilier) is obligatory and normally paid for by the seller. They can ask for costs to be shared or entirely borne by the buyer. It is carried out by a surveyor (un diagnostiqueur professionnel) who must be impartial and independent of the seller and the agent. It will state:

Energy performance (la performance énergétique (DPE))
Lead exposure risk (le risque d’exposition au plomb)
Asbestos presence (la présence ou l’absence d’amiante)
State electrics installations older than 15 years (l’état de l’installation électrique si elle a plus de 15 ans)
State gas installations older than 15 years (l’état de l’installation au gaz si elle a plus de 15 ans)
Any natural and technical risk to the property (l’état des risques naturels et technologique)
The presence or otherwise of termites (la présence ou non de termites)
The state of the sewer if it is not share with other properties (l’état de l’installation d’assainissement non collectif pour les maisons individuelles)
If the property is within a designated airport zone, the a noise (bruit) analysis must also be provided

The results will be provided in a dossier de diagnostic technique (DDT).

Other important factors affecting the property

Ask about any shared or co-ownership charges, particularly for an apartment (Sollicitez le montant des charges de copropriété pour un appartement notamment.)
Find out how much local taxes are for the property, in particular the property tax (similar to the UK Council Tax) that is paid annually by whomever was the owner on 01 January (Renseignez-vous sur le montant des impôts locaux (taxe foncière en particulier).
Ask the local council (la mairie) about any local projects that may affect the property and the urban development plan (PLU) that will apply should you wish to extend or modify the property (Rapprochez-vous de la mairie pour prendre connaissance de projets urbains susceptibles d’impacter le quartier mais aussi du plan local d’urbanisme (PLU) qui conditionne la construction d’une extension par exemple.)

If any mandatory information is missing when you make an offer, you can retract your offer after the information is made available to you, should you wish to.

Make an offer 🫱🏼

Simply make an offer to the seller, via the agent if there is one appointed. You may offer a price at or below the asking price. State how long the offer is valid for – two weeks is normal. The seller can make a counter-offer. You may accept or reject this offer as you wish.

Agreement to purchase 👍🏽

It is recommended to sign an agreement to purchase (une promesse de vente). This pre-contract clearly states any terms and conditions of the sale. It is similar to the Exchange of Contracts in a UK property purchase transaction. There is a 10-day cooling-off period after both parties have signed the agreement. The buy is normally required to pay a deposit of 10% of the purchase price. This amount is either considered part payment of the agree price if the sale completes, or is retained by the seller as a penalty paid if the buyer decides to not complete the purchase.

There are two ways to establish the agreement: directly with the seller with no official witness (acte sous seing privé / acte sous signature privée), or through a notary (Acte authentique) – the highly recommended approach.

The agreement usually prevents the seller from offering the property to any other buyer. It can include conditional clauses related to obtaining finance (such as a mortgage) or planning permission. This can protect the buyer against penalties if the conditions are not met.

Complete the purchase 🗝

At the final major step you will sign the sales contract (Signer l’acte de vente), binding you to complete the purchase of the property. This contract will be established with a notary. Both parties can use the same notary, or each can use a different one. The total fees paid are the same whether one or two notaries are used.

The keys to the property are handed over once the contract is signed, the balance of the purchase price paid, and the taxes and legal fees (frais notariés) settled. Calculate these in advance to avoid any surprises (estimation de frail d’achat).

You are now the legal owner of the property and can proceed to organise for services and administration related to the property. You notary will continue with the registration of the property deeds. Once issued in your name they are held by the notary.

More to learn

How to select a notary

How to find out if a house can be extended

A bit of context

I live and work in France. While I have lived in a number of different countries, my property purchasing experience before buying in France was limited to the United Kingdom. I was used to a highly speculative market controlled by some of the least respected professionals (estate agents – the 5th least trusted profession in the UK in 2019; only politicians, advertising execs, ministers and journalists are trusted less). Buying a home in France allowed me to learn everything I could about the customs and laws, as well as learning the specific language that goes with this type of trade.