You have just collected the keys to a new-build flat in Lyon, a renovated stone house in the Dordogne, or an off-plan apartment near Paris. The paint looks fresh, the boiler is new, and the developer or builder shakes your hand. Six months later, cracks creep across the living-room wall, the shutters jam, the heat pump stops, and your emails go unanswered. For a foreign owner who lives abroad most of the year, this is the moment when a French purchase turns stressful.

French construction law answers this situation with three layered warranties that run from the day the works are accepted: a one-year perfect-completion warranty, a two-year equipment warranty, and the well-known ten-year warranty. The first two are the most useful and the most frequently wasted, because they expire fast and depend entirely on paperwork completed at handover. This guide explains, for non-resident and foreign buyers, how to lock in the first-year warranty at the acceptance visit, how to trigger repairs in writing, what the two-year warranty covers and excludes, and when a defect graduates to the ten-year regime. It reflects the Civil Code as in force on 23 September 2026 and recent rulings of the Third Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation. It is general information, not advice on your file, and it does not cover tax questions.

I. The first year after acceptance: make the builder fix everything reported

A. Acceptance day decides the next twelve months, so prepare it like a court date

In French law, the acceptance of the works, the réception (formal acceptance of the works), is the legal act that starts every warranty clock. Article 1792-6 of the Civil Code defines it in one sentence: La réception est l’acte par lequel le maître de l’ouvrage déclare accepter l’ouvrage avec ou sans réserves. (Acceptance is the act by which the project owner declares that the works are accepted, with or without reservations.) The maître de l’ouvrage (project owner who commissioned the works) may be you if you had the house built or renovated, or the developer from whom you buy, but the consequences of that day bind every later owner.

Acceptance takes place at the request of the most diligent party, either by agreement or, failing that, through the courts, and it must always be conducted adversarially, meaning both sides are heard. In practice, for a buyer of a new or newly renovated home, acceptance happens during the handover visit and is recorded in a written record, the procès-verbal de réception (signed handover report listing reservations). Everything you can see and do not write down on that report is presumed accepted without reservation, and that presumption is very difficult to undo later.

Foreign buyers face three specific traps on that day. First, distance: many sign a power of attorney and let the selling agent or the builder’s representative handle the visit, which means nobody with an interest in finding defects actually looks. Second, language: the report is in French, the discussion is technical, and pressure to sign quickly is constant. Third, absence: taking possession of the keys, moving furniture in, or paying the final balance without comment can be read by a court as implied acceptance, which starts the clocks on terms the builder chose, not you. If you cannot attend, appoint someone independent of the seller, ideally a building expert, and give written instructions to record every defect, however small.

When the parties cannot agree, the court can impose acceptance, and the Court of Cassation strictly supervises how. On 30 January 2025, the Third Civil Chamber recalled two principles in the same ruling: lorsqu’elle est demandée, la réception judiciaire doit être prononcée à la date à laquelle l’ouvrage est en état d’être reçu. (When it is requested, judicial acceptance must be set at the date on which the works were fit to be accepted.) That date matters because all warranties run from it, not from the later court decision. The same ruling adds that judicial acceptance can carry reservations: elle peut être assortie de réserves. (It may be accompanied by reservations.) And it explains which ones: Ces réserves correspondent aux désordres dont il est établi qu’ils étaient alors apparents pour le maître de l’ouvrage. (These reservations correspond to defects shown to have been apparent to the project owner at that time.) In plain terms, even a court-imposed acceptance does not wipe the slate clean: apparent defects must still be listed, and they remain the builder’s problem.

The reverse is equally strict. A defect you knew about but did not reserve is generally lost to the warranty regimes. On 5 September 2024, the Court of Cassation rejected the claim of owners who knew, from a site meeting and a signed settlement protocol, the full extent of basement flooding, had pumps installed, and then accepted the works without any reservation on 29 July 2009: ce désordre n’ayant pas été réservé lors de la réception, les conditions de mise en oeuvre de la garantie décennale n’étaient pas réunies. (As this defect had not been made the subject of reservations at acceptance, the conditions for implementing the ten-year warranty were not met.) For a foreign buyer, the lesson is blunt: a friendly side agreement with the builder to fix defects later is worthless unless the defect is written into the acceptance report.

Make your reservations precise, located, and photographed: diagonal crack, 1.2 metres, north bedroom wall above window, not cracks to check. Note missing items, wrong materials, and anything that differs from the plans or the sales brochure. Send a copy of the signed report to yourself the same day, keep the dated photographs, and if the builder refuses a joint inspection, have a commissioner of justice draw up a factual report. That file is the foundation of everything that follows.

B. During year one, every notified defect must be repaired, with no seriousness threshold

The one-year warranty, the garantie de parfait achèvement (perfect-completion warranty covering all reported defects for one year), is the broadest and shortest tool in the system. Article 1792-6 provides that the contractor is bound for one year from acceptance, and that the warranty covers repair of all defects reported by the owner, whether through reservations on the acceptance report or by written notification for defects appearing after acceptance. No proof of seriousness is required: a scratched worktop, a misaligned door, peeling render, or a leaking tap all qualify, provided they are reported in time and are not caused by normal wear or by your own misuse.

The procedure has four steps, and each one should leave a paper trail. First, notify in writing: registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, or any written medium whose delivery you can prove, addressed to the builder, describing each defect with its location and, ideally, photographs. Verbal complaints during a phone call do not count. Second, agree on repair deadlines with the builder, as the statute requires: Les délais nécessaires à l’exécution des travaux de réparation sont fixés d’un commun accord par le maître de l’ouvrage et l’entrepreneur concerné. (The time needed to carry out the repair works is set by mutual agreement between the project owner and the contractor concerned.) Third, if there is no agreement or the agreed deadline passes without work, serve a formal notice to perform, the mise en demeure (formal written demand setting a final deadline), and if it remains fruitless, have the works carried out at the defaulting contractor’s expense and risk. Fourth, record completion of the required works by mutual agreement or, failing that, through the court.

Two points deserve emphasis for owners living abroad. The one-year period runs from acceptance, not from your discovery of the defect, so a defect found in month eleven must be notified immediately, not on a later visit. And notification must reach the right person: the contractor who did the work, or the seller-developer who owes you the warranties, not the estate agent, the concierge, or the property manager, unless your contract says otherwise. A letter to the wrong recipient does not stop the clock.

Costs follow the defect, not the owner: repairs under the perfect-completion warranty are for the builder, and the mechanism allowing execution at the defaulting contractor’s expense and risk lets you commission another company after an unsuccessful formal notice, then claim reimbursement. In practice, get at least one detailed quotation before commissioning, keep the unpaid formal notice and proof of expiry of its deadline, and photograph the site before and after. Courts regularly reduce claims where the owner cannot show what was done, by whom, and for how much. If you need help organising notifications, deadlines, and the formal notice from abroad, the English-speaking real estate law team in Paris handles exactly this correspondence and can act before the year expires.

II. Equipment failures in year two and defects that turn structural

A. The two-year warranty covers separable equipment, but renovations added later fall outside it

After the first year, the perfect-completion warranty ends, but equipment that stops working properly is covered for one more year by the two-year warranty, the garantie biennale, more precisely called the guarantee of proper functioning. Article 1792-3 of the Civil Code states: Les autres éléments d’équipement de l’ouvrage font l’objet d’une garantie de bon fonctionnement d’une durée minimale de deux ans à compter de sa réception. (The other items of equipment of the building are covered by a proper-functioning warranty of a minimum of two years from acceptance.) It applies to separable components, meaning parts that can be removed or replaced without damaging the structure: shutters, taps, switches, a boiler, radiators, a garage door motor, or an interior door. By contrast, equipment inseparable from the structural shell, defined by Article 1792-2 as items whose removal would damage the load-bearing, foundation, framing, enclosure, or roofing works, falls under the ten-year warranty instead. The full text of that distinction is in Article 1792-2.

The two-year warranty requires only proof that the equipment no longer works normally; you do not need to show a structural danger. But its boundaries, drawn by the Court of Cassation, surprise many foreign owners of renovated houses. Equipment installed as a replacement or an addition on an existing building, which does not itself constitute a building work, is covered neither by the ten-year warranty nor by the two-year warranty, whatever the seriousness of the defects: ils ne relèvent ni de la garantie décennale ni de la garantie biennale de bon fonctionnement, quel que soit le degré de gravité des désordres, mais de la responsabilité contractuelle de droit commun. (They fall under neither the ten-year warranty nor the two-year proper-functioning warranty, whatever the seriousness of the defects, but under ordinary contractual liability.) That principle comes from a 21 March 2024 ruling concerning a replaced fireplace insert, and it governs ordinary contract claims instead, with different limitation periods and no compulsory builder’s insurance behind them.

The Court confirmed the rule on 11 December 2025 for a solar power unit added to an existing house: because the installation was equipment added onto the existing building, the complaints could not proceed under the ten-year warranty, the judges expressly recalling the March 2024 precedent. If you bought a character house whose seller modernised the heating, added air conditioning, or fitted solar panels shortly before the sale, those additions may sit outside both statutory warranties, and your remedy lies in ordinary contractual liability against the seller or installer, where you must prove fault and loss. Ask your lawyer early which regime each defective item belongs to, because suing under the wrong warranty wastes the short two-year window.

A 27 October 2016 ruling adds two practical refinements. First, a court cannot file a separable item under the two-year warranty without asking whether the defect makes the whole building unfit for its purpose, which would open the ten-year route instead: the judges had rejected a claim about a leaking cellar door as a mere two-year matter without examining that question, and were overruled. Second, limitation must be interrupted against the right defect: in that case, an urgent application for a court-appointed expert that did not mention the door had not stopped the clock for it. For an owner abroad, the message is operational: list every defective item separately in every writ and every expert request, and never assume that proceedings about the roof also preserve your rights about the boiler.

Act within the two years from acceptance, in court if necessary, not merely by complaint letter. An application to the urgent-applications judge for a technical expert assessment is the standard first step: it freezes the evidence, identifies the liable parties and their insurers, and interrupts limitation. Keep purchase invoices, installer certificates, maintenance records, and the acceptance report together, because the builder’s first defence is almost always that the failure comes from lack of maintenance or from your own contractor’s later intervention.

B. Cracks, energy performance, and sellers who renovated: when the ten-year warranty takes over

Some defects outgrow the first two warranties. Cracks that widen year after year, subsidence linked to a soil defect, the vice du sol (hidden soil defect affecting stability), or a house that cannot be heated at a reasonable cost may engage the ten-year warranty, the garantie décennale (ten-year strict liability for structural defects). Article 1792 of the Civil Code provides: Tout constructeur d’un ouvrage est responsable de plein droit, envers le maître ou l’acquéreur de l’ouvrage, des dommages, même résultant d’un vice du sol, qui compromettent la solidité de l’ouvrage ou qui, l’affectant dans l’un de ses éléments constitutifs ou l’un de ses éléments d’équipement, le rendent impropre à sa destination. (Every builder of a building work is strictly liable, towards the project owner or the buyer of the work, for damage, even resulting from a soil defect, that compromises the solidity of the work or that, affecting one of its constituent parts or items of equipment, makes it unfit for its purpose.) Liability is strict, meaning no fault needs to be proved, only the damage and its gravity.

Crucially for buyers of resales, the builder is not only the company that poured the concrete. Article 1792-1 deems a builder, among others: Toute personne qui vend, après achèvement, un ouvrage qu’elle a construit ou fait construire. (Any person who sells, after completion, a building work that they built or had built.) A vendor who built the house, or who had major renovation works carried out and then sells, can therefore owe you the ten-year warranty directly. And a developer selling off-plan or new-build is bound from acceptance to the same duties as the contractors themselves, with the warranties passing to successive owners, under Article 1646-1. If you bought from a renovator-flipper rather than the original builder, identify that seller’s own contractors and insurers at once, because the ten-year action can target each of them.

But gravity is judged strictly, and foreign buyers often overestimate evolving cracks. On 25 September 2025, the Court of Cassation partly quashed a ruling that had condemned a vendor-builder for facade cracks on the sole ground of a current risk: the appeal judges had noted acceptance on 25 August 2008, first cracks in 2016 worsening in 2019, yet also recorded that the expert found no immediate collapse risk and that the house was not currently unfit for habitation. The Court recalled the governing text: Selon ce texte, tout constructeur d’un ouvrage est responsable de plein droit, envers le maître ou l’acquéreur de l’ouvrage, des dommages, même résultant d’un vice du sol, qui compromettent la solidité de l’ouvrage ou qui, l’affectant dans l’un de ses éléments constitutifs ou l’un de ses éléments d’équipement, le rendent impropre à sa destination. (Under this text, every builder of a building work is strictly liable, towards the project owner or the buyer of the work, for damage, even resulting from a soil defect, that compromises the solidity of the work or that, affecting one of its constituent parts or items of equipment, makes it unfit for its purpose.) It then held that reasoning which did not establish that the defects had with certainty, within the ten years from acceptance, compromised solidity or fitness for purpose, violated the statute. Aesthetic or merely evolving cracks are not enough: an expert must be able to say the gravity threshold was reached, or would certainly be reached, inside the ten-year period. Commission a serious technical expert early, and ask the exact question the Court asks: solidity or fitness for purpose, with certainty, within ten years of acceptance.

Energy performance follows an even narrower rule since the 2015 energy-transition legislation. On 23 October 2025, the Court of Cassation quashed a decision that had condemned a deemed builder for poor insulation causing daily discomfort, unusable rooms in winter, and high bills, holding that discomfort and high bills are not enough: en matière de performance énergétique, l’impropriété à destination ne peut être retenue qu’en cas de dommages conduisant à une surconsommation énergétique ne permettant l’utilisation de l’ouvrage qu’à un coût exorbitant. (In energy-performance matters, unfitness for purpose can only be found where damage leads to energy overconsumption allowing use of the building only at an exorbitant cost.) If your renovated farmhouse costs a fortune to heat, you need metered consumption data, comparable benchmarks, and proof that the cost is exorbitant, not merely excessive, plus a parallel claim against the energy auditor if the diagnostic report was wrong.

Finally, the ten-year action must be denounced, that is formally brought, within the ten-year period. A 6 July 2011 ruling quashed judges who had admitted a claim against the compulsory construction-damage insurer without identifying any solidity-threatening or purpose-defeating defect denounced during the warranty period: sans relever qu’un désordre compromettant la solidité de l’ouvrage ou le rendant impropre à sa destination avait été dénoncé dans le délai de la garantie décennale. (Without noting that a defect compromising the solidity of the building or making it unfit for its purpose had been denounced within the ten-year warranty period.) Do not let the tenth anniversary pass while negotiating: file the writ, or at minimum an expert-application summons naming each defect and each defendant, before expiry.

For Paris and Ile-de-France owners, the practical channel is the judicial court of the property’s location, starting with an urgent application for a court-appointed expert, followed by a substantive claim once the report quantifies the works. Prepare the acceptance report with reservations, all written notifications with delivery proofs, the formal notice and its expiry, invoices, photographs, the seller’s brochures and plans, and the construction-damage insurance policy if one exists. Expect the builder to argue apparent defects accepted without reservation, later additions outside the warranties, or lack of maintenance: your file should answer each point before it is raised. The English-speaking real estate law team in Paris appears regularly before the Paris courts on these timetables and preserves limitation while you are abroad.

Conclusion

The French system rewards the buyer who writes things down and punishes the one who waits. At acceptance, record every visible defect precisely, because unreserved apparent defects are purged. Within the first year, notify every new defect in writing to the right contractor, agree on repair deadlines, and follow through with a formal notice and substitute works at the builder’s risk if needed. In the second year, pursue faulty separable equipment in court in time, while checking whether added or replaced installations fall under ordinary contractual liability instead. Beyond that, think ten-year warranty only with an expert able to certify compromised solidity or unfitness for purpose, with certainty, inside ten years of acceptance, and energy claims only at proven exorbitant cost. Keep one chronological file from the handover report to the last invoice: that file, more than any argument, is what wins construction cases in France.

Need a quick opinion on your case

If defects appeared after you took possession of a French property, a phone consultation within 48 hours can clarify which warranty still applies and what to notify first. Phone consultation: 80 EUR incl. VAT. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via the contact page.