You bought the flat for the light over the rooftops, the market on Saturday morning, and the spare key you planned to leave with a friendly neighbour. Then the French paperwork finds you in Kent, in Manchester, or wherever home still is. First comes the appel de fonds, the quarterly call for money from the syndic, the managing agent who runs the building, and the figure looks far higher than the estate agent ever mentioned. Then comes the convocation, the formal notice calling you to the yearly assemblée générale, the general meeting of flat owners, and buried on page three of the agenda sits a resolution to ban furnished holiday lets in the building. Your week on Airbnb, the income that pays the taxe foncière (the French property tax), is about to be voted away by neighbours you have never met, in a meeting you cannot easily attend.
This guide is written for a British owner of a second home in a French copropriété, the co-ownership structure that governs almost every block of flats in France, who lets the flat to holidaymakers or plans to do so. It explains, in plain English with every French term translated when it first appears, how your service charges are calculated and how to read the bill, how to challenge charges that break the rules, which majority your neighbours need to ban your Airbnb and the strict conditions that vote must meet, and how to get an unlawful ban annulled before the two-month deadline closes the door. Two court decisions from 2024 and 2026, a constitutional ruling from March 2026, and the current statute book are quoted word for word, so you can see exactly what the law says rather than what the agent told you it says.
I. Your French Copropriété Charges Bill After Brexit: What You Owe and How to Challenge It
A. How copropriété charges work and how to read your appel de fonds
A French copropriété is not a landlord and you are not a tenant. You own your flat outright, and together with the other flat owners you jointly own the common parts, the parties communes: the stairs, the lift, the roof, the courtyard, the boiler. Each owner pays a share of the collective costs, and the sharing rule is written into the règlement de copropriété, the building’s rulebook registered with the land registry, which allocates to every flat a quota, expressed in tantièmes, thousandths of the building. The statute that governs all of this is the law of 10 July 1965, and its Article 10 states the principle in these terms: “Les copropriétaires sont tenus de participer aux charges entraînées par les services collectifs et les éléments d’équipement commun en fonction de l’utilité objective que ces services et éléments présentent à l’égard de chaque lot, dès lors que ces charges ne sont pas individualisées.” In ordinary language, you pay for lifts, heating and shared equipment according to the objective benefit your flat draws from them, while the costs of preserving and managing the common parts are shared in proportion to the relative value of your flat. That single distinction answers the two questions British owners ask most often: yes, the ground-floor flat can lawfully pay nothing for the lift, because the lift is of no objective use to it, and no, you cannot refuse the roof bill on the ground that you live in England most of the year, because you own the same thousandths whether you sleep there or not. Read the full text of Article 10 of the law of 10 July 1965 before arguing either point with the syndic.
The bill itself arrives as an appel de fonds, literally a call for funds, normally four times a year. It is not a final invoice but a demand for advance instalments, provisions, against the provisional budget, the budget prévisionnel, voted each year by the general meeting, with a balancing adjustment once the real accounts are approved. Three lines on that demand deserve your attention every quarter. The first is the ordinary budget for day-to-day running costs: cleaning, lighting, insurance, the syndic’s fees. The second is the works fund, the fonds de travaux, a compulsory savings pot every building must build up for future major works, to which Article 10 requires you to contribute in proportion to your thousandths. The third is any exceptional call voted for specific works, a new roof, façade repairs, lift replacement, where the meeting should have fixed each owner’s share. Compare each line against the minutes of the meeting that voted it, the procès-verbal, the official written record of what was decided, and against your quota in the rulebook. The most common errors are depressingly simple: a flat billed for equipment it cannot use, a share calculated on the wrong thousandths after two flats were merged, or works charged to all owners when the rulebook reserves them to some. The government’s own guidance page on service charges and the provisional budget sets out the same mechanics in official terms and is worth keeping next to the syndic’s letter.
Do not ignore the demand while you investigate, however unfair it looks. Unpaid charges carry interest, the syndicat des copropriétaires, the legal entity formed by all the owners together, can obtain a fast-track court order against you, and persistent arrears can end with the forced sale of your flat. If money is tight, write to the syndic asking for time, pay what is plainly due, and dispute the rest through the formal routes described below. Living in Britain gives you no immunity and no extension: notifications sent by registered letter to your French flat or to the address you declared to the syndic are deemed received, and a 2026 ruling of the Cour de cassation, the supreme court for civil matters, confirmed that the two-month clock for challenging a meeting’s decisions runs even if you never collected the letter, a point developed in part I.B. Give the syndic a reliable postal and email address, mandate a neighbour or a local representative to attend meetings in your place, and diary every deadline from the date printed on the registered letter, not from the day you happen to open it.
B. How to challenge unlawful charges and force the tribunal to redo the répartition
Charges voted in breach of the rules are not a misfortune to be absorbed; they are decisions to be annulled. The remedy sits in Article 42 of the 1965 law, which provides: “Les actions en contestation des décisions des assemblées générales doivent, à peine de déchéance, être introduites par les copropriétaires opposants ou défaillants dans un délai de deux mois à compter de la notification du procès-verbal d’assemblée, sans ses annexes.” Three conditions, each of them a trap for the unwary British owner. First, you must have standing: only an owner who voted against the resolution, an opposant, or who was absent and unrepresented, a défaillant, may sue. If you voted in favour, even by mistake or by an ill-instructed proxy, you cannot challenge that resolution afterwards. Second, the two months run from notification of the minutes, and Article 42 requires the syndic to send those minutes within one month of the meeting. Third, the sanction is déchéance, loss of the right itself: one day late and even a plainly illegal decision becomes final against you. Read Article 42 of the law of 10 July 1965 in full, because the same article adds a protection owners often miss: where the court annuls a decision changing the allocation of charges, “le tribunal judiciaire procède à la nouvelle répartition”, the civil court itself draws up the corrected allocation. A successful challenge therefore ends not with confusion but with the judge rewriting your share. The official guidance on challenging a general meeting decision confirms the two-month rule, adds that representation by an avocat is compulsory before the tribunal judiciaire, the local civil court, and warns that without a challenge in time even an irregular decision becomes final.
The mailbox rule deserves emphasis because it was written for residents and punishes absentees. On 16 April 2026 the third civil chamber of the Cour de cassation, in case number 24-18.842, rejected an owner’s argument that the two-month period should only run from collection of the registered letter where the letter had actually been handed to him. The Court held: “ce délai court, dans tous les cas, à compter du lendemain du jour de la première présentation de la lettre recommandée, de notification du procès-verbal de l’assemblée générale, au domicile du destinataire.” The period runs, in every case, from the day after the postman’s first presentation of the registered letter at your address, whether you collected it or not. For a British owner who spends the winter in the United Kingdom, that means the clock can expire before you even know a meeting took place. The full decision, Cour de cassation, third civil chamber, 16 April 2026, number 24-18.842, repays careful reading, and its practical lesson is administrative rather than legal: keep your declared address current, authorise the syndic to notify you electronically where the meeting has approved that method, and ask for the minutes to be sent the week they are issued.
The grounds for annulment are wide, and charges disputes use all of them. Defective calling of the meeting, a convocation sent late, missing documents, or an agenda that hid the real question, is the commonest winner. Wrong majority is next: routine spending passes on a simple majority of those present or represented under Article 24 of the 1965 law, which provides that decisions are taken “à la majorité des voix exprimées des copropriétaires présents, représentés ou ayant voté par correspondance, s’il n’en est autrement ordonné par la loi”, while a change to the allocation of charges imposed by a change of use of a private area needs the heavier majority of all owners under Article 25 of the 1965 law. A resolution that taxed you under the wrong majority, counted votes that should have been excluded, or let owners with no right to vote on that item take part, falls on that ground alone. Substantive illegality is the third family: charges loaded onto owners who draw no objective benefit from the service, in breach of Article 10, or a redistribution of charges that the rulebook did not allow. Gather the calling notice with its proof of posting, the attendance sheet, the voting record resolution by resolution, the minutes, and the pages of the rulebook fixing your thousandths, then put the file before an avocat within days, not weeks. If the syndic never sent the minutes at all, the official guidance indicates a five-year period instead of two months, but do not gamble on proving a negative from abroad; act as if the short period applied and let your lawyer argue the long one in the alternative.
II. The Assembly Vote That Can Ban Your Airbnb After Brexit: Majorities and Challenges
A. The two-thirds vote, the résidence-principale limit and the clause d’habitation bourgeoise
Holiday letting in France sits at the crossing of two separate bodies of law, and British owners constantly confuse them. The first is planning and housing law, which asks whether you may turn a home into a short-stay let at all. The second is co-ownership law, which asks whether your building may forbid it even where the town hall allows it. You need to win on both fronts, and this section takes them in order.
A meublé de tourisme, a furnished tourist let advertised by the night, the week or the month to passing guests, is defined by Article L. 324-1-1 of the tourism code as follows: “les meublés de tourisme sont des villas, appartements ou studios meublés, à l’usage exclusif du locataire, offerts à la location à une clientèle de passage qui n’y élit pas domicile et qui y effectue un séjour caractérisé par une location à la journée, à la semaine ou au mois.” The same article requires every person offering such a let to declare it in advance on a national online portal, which issues an electronic acknowledgement with a declaration number that must then appear on every listing. Read Article L. 324-1-1 of the tourism code before touching a listing: platforms must display the number, towns can delist accommodation without one, and the declaration is the foundation on which every later authorisation rests. Declaring, however, is only the first step. Since the reform discussed below, Article L. 631-7 of the housing code states the decisive rule in plain terms: letting a residential furnished flat as a tourist furnished let “constitue un changement d’usage au sens du présent article”, is a change of use within the meaning of the article. In the towns covered by the scheme that change needs prior authorisation from the local authority. See Article L. 631-7 of the construction and housing code for the full mechanism, including the widened definition of homes deemed residential and the rule that a later planning permission alone never proves lawful use.
Two recent rulings of the Cour de cassation give that statute its teeth, and both read like warnings addressed to confident owners. On 27 June 2024, in case number 23-13.131, the third civil chamber quashed an appeal ruling that had treated an official star-rating classification as a substitute for the town hall’s change-of-use authorisation. The Court’s answer was blunt: “alors qu’une décision de classement en meublé de tourisme ne peut se substituer à l’autorisation de changement d’usage prévue à l’article L. 631-7 du code de la construction et de l’habitation, la cour d’appel a violé les textes susvisés.” A classification decision can never stand in for the authorisation, and the Bordeaux court’s contrary reasoning was a refusal to apply the statute. The decision, published in the Court’s Bulletin and available at Cour de cassation, third civil chamber, 27 June 2024, number 23-13.131, destroys the commonest reassurance heard on expatriate forums, that a registered, classified, tax-paying let must be lawful. Then, on 3 September 2026, in case number 25-16.157 (ECLI:FR:CCASS:2026:C300463), the same chamber quashed an Aix-en-Provence ruling that had excused an unauthorised seasonal let on the ground that the activity was civil in nature and permitted by the building’s rulebook. Restating the statute, the Court recalled: “Le fait de louer un local meublé destiné à l’habitation de manière répétée pour de courtes durées à une clientèle de passage qui n’y élit pas domicile constitue un changement d’usage.” Neither the civil character of the business nor a tolerant rulebook saves a let that lacks the prior authorisation. The financial stakes are set by Article L. 651-2 of the construction and housing code: “Toute personne qui enfreint les dispositions des articles L. 631-7 ou L. 631-7-1 A ou qui ne se conforme pas aux conditions ou obligations imposées en application des mêmes articles L. 631-7 et L. 631-7-1 A est condamnée à une amende civile dont le montant ne peut excéder 100 000 € par local irrégulièrement transformé”, pronounced by the president of the tribunal judiciaire on application by the commune, with a return-to-residential-use order backed by a daily penalty of up to 1,000 euros per day per square metre. One flat, one summer season, and the fine can exceed the year’s rental income many times over.
The second front is your own building, and here the ground moved twice in two years. Before November 2024, banning holiday lets meant amending the rulebook in a way that touched the use of private areas, which required unanimity: a single dissenting owner, very often the British second-home owner, could block the ban. The statute of 19 November 2024 known as the Le Meur law, Law number 2024-1039 of 19 November 2024, rewrote Article 26 of the law of 10 July 1965, in force in its new wording since 21 November 2024. Decisions are now taken “à la majorité des membres du syndicat représentant au moins les deux tiers des voix” on, among other things: “La modification du règlement de copropriété qui concerne l’interdiction de location des lots à usage d’habitation autres que ceux constituant une résidence principale” in tourist furnished lets as defined by the tourism code, leaving main homes outside the mechanism. In plain terms, the meeting can now ban tourist lets in second homes by a two-thirds vote of all owners, with no single owner able to veto it. Two safety nets come with the new power. First, the ban can only be voted in buildings whose rulebook already prohibits any commercial activity in flats not specifically designated for business, which is the classic clause d’habitation bourgeoise, the bourgeois-residential clause found in older city-centre buildings: “La modification prévue au d du présent article ne peut être décidée que dans les copropriétés dont le règlement interdit toute activité commerciale dans les lots qui ne sont pas spécifiquement à destination commerciale.” Second, where the two-thirds threshold is missed but the proposal still gathers at least one third of all votes, Article 25-1 of the 1965 law allows the same meeting to hold an immediate second vote at the lower Article 24 majority: “Lorsque l’assemblée générale des copropriétaires n’a pas décidé à la majorité des voix de tous les copropriétaires, en application de l’article 25 ou d’une autre disposition, mais que le projet a recueilli au moins le tiers de ces voix, la même assemblée se prononce à la majorité prévue à l’article 24 en procédant immédiatement à un second vote.” A ban that falls short at two thirds can therefore still pass minutes later on a simple majority of those voting. And the constitutional challenge failed: on 19 March 2026, in decision number 2025-1186 QPC, the Constitutional Council, in decision number 2025-1186 QPC of 19 March 2026, declared the fifth and sixth paragraphs of Article 26 conform to the Constitution, rejecting the arguments based on property rights and freedom of enterprise. See the Constitutional Council decision number 2025-1186 QPC of 19 March 2026 for the full reasoning.
B. How to challenge an unlawful Airbnb ban within the two-month deadline
An unlawful ban is annulled the same way as unlawful charges, through Article 42 within two months, but the checklist is specific to the Le Meur mechanism and every item on it has decided real cases. Work through the conditions in order, because the meeting only needed to get one of them wrong for the resolution to fall.
First, the prior commercial-activities ban. The two-thirds route exists only where the rulebook already forbids commercial activity in non-business flats. Ask for the full rulebook and its amendments and read the use clause yourself: many modern residences, purpose-built with tourism in mind, contain no such prohibition, and the 2026 commentary on the reform notes that syndics routinely put the resolution to the vote without checking. If the clause is absent or ambiguous, a ban voted at two thirds rests on air, and only a unanimous vote could have imposed it. Second, the résidence principale boundary. The ban can only cover homes that are not somebody’s main residence within the meaning of Article 2 of the law of 6 July 1989. A British owner who actually lives in the flat most of the year and lets it while travelling is outside the mechanism’s scope; a second-home owner is squarely inside it, and should not waste costs arguing the point. Third, the majority arithmetic. Count the votes against the register of thousandths, not against hands in the room: abstentions and unreturned postal votes count as no for a two-thirds majority of all owners, and the syndic’s tally is wrong more often than owners expect. Where a second vote was held, verify that the first vote genuinely reached one third, that it happened in the same meeting, and that the correct lower majority was then applied. Fourth, the calling and conduct of the meeting: late convocation, missing documents, a resolution sprung under miscellaneous business, or owners voting who had no right to vote on that item. Any of these defects, proved from the notice, the attendance sheet and the minutes, supports annulment independently of the merits of the ban.
Procedure matters as much as substance, and the British owner’s distance is the main danger. Vote against the resolution, in person, by proxy given to someone you trust, or by postal vote, so that you are recorded as an opposant; mere absence also preserves your rights as a défaillant, but an owner recorded as voting in favour cannot sue. The moment the minutes arrive, send them to your avocat: the two-month period of Article 42 runs from the day after first presentation of the registered letter, collected or not, exactly as the Cour de cassation confirmed in the 24-18.842 ruling quoted above. The action goes to the tribunal judiciaire where the building stands, representation by an avocat is compulsory, and the claim must name the precise resolution, the condition it breached, and the evidence proving it. Run the commune-side check in parallel: even if the building’s ban is annulled, letting without the change-of-use authorisation where the town requires one exposes you to the 100,000-euro civil fine and the return-to-residential-use order described above, and no annulment of a private ban cures a public-law breach. Conversely, holding the town hall’s authorisation never authorises you to defy a lawful building ban, as the 23-13.131 ruling established in the mirror situation. Owners who let furnished accommodation year-round should also read our companion guide on letting a French second home furnished, from registration to tax and fines, which covers the declaration, the tax treatment and the registration duties this article assumes you know.
Conclusion
A British second home in a French copropriété now carries two files that must never be mixed and never be neglected. The charges file is governed by Article 10’s objective-benefit rule and policed by Article 42’s two-month action, with the civil court empowered to rewrite an unlawful allocation and the supreme court counting the deadline from the postman’s first visit whether you were there or not. The holiday-let file is governed by the tourism code’s declaration, the housing code’s change-of-use authorisation backed by fines of up to 100,000 euros per home, and, since the Le Meur law of 19 November 2024 validated by the Constitutional Council on 19 March 2026, by a two-thirds building vote that can end your Airbnb where the rulebook already bans business use. The two rulings every owner should keep printed with the rulebook say the rest: a star-rating classification is not a planning authorisation, and the civil character of the letting changes nothing. Read the minutes the week they arrive, vote against what threatens your use, keep the registered letters, and put any suspect resolution before an avocat within days. In French co-ownership law, the owner who acts in the first fortnight usually keeps both the flat’s income and the flat’s value; the owner who waits for the next trip to France often keeps only the lesson.
Need a quick opinion on your case
Bring your appels de fonds, the meeting minutes and any Airbnb-ban resolution to an avocat before the two-month deadline expires. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an avocat of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen), or reach us through our contact page. We assist British owners and residents in Paris and across the Paris region as well as throughout France.