You land at Bergerac or Limoges after months away, drive to the stone house in the Dordogne or the village flat in the Lot that you have owned for years, and something is wrong before you even reach the door. The shutters you left closed are open. There is washing on a line you never put up. A stranger looks out of your bedroom window and tells you, through the glass, that he lives there now. For a British second-home owner in France, this is the nightmare that distance makes worse: the house sits empty for eight or nine months a year, the neighbours assumed the lights meant you had returned early, and by the time you understand what has happened the occupants have kettle, mattresses and a story about having nowhere else to go.
English reflexes will betray you in the hours that follow. In England and Wales you would expect the police to remove an intruder from a residential property at once, and you might be tempted to force the door yourself, change the locks while the occupants are out, or cut off the electricity to make the place uninhabitable. In France every one of those shortcuts is forbidden and can turn you from victim into defendant. French law gives you two structured weapons instead, and they work well when used in the right order: a fast administrative track in which the préfet, the State’s representative in the département (the county-level administrative area), can order the occupants out within days of a break-in, and a judicial track in which the emergency civil judge orders expulsion and makes the occupiers pay for every month they stole from you. Since the statute of 27 July 2023 strengthening protection against unlawful occupation, your furnished second home counts fully as your domicile, your legally protected home, even though you live most of the year in Britain. Brexit changed none of this procedure, but it means every form, hearing and deadline must be handled from across the Channel, which is why this guide is written for the owner sitting in the United Kingdom. Part I explains how to prove the squat and trigger the préfet procedure in the first days; Part II explains how the court expels occupants without title and how you recover occupation payments, repair costs and criminal damages.
I. Strangers Are Living in My French House: Is This Squat and What Do I Do in the First 48 Hours?
A. How Do I Prove the House Is Mine and That the Occupation Is a Squat?
French criminal law defines squatting narrowly, and that narrow definition is your friend, because it carries heavy penalties and unlocks the fastest remedies. Under article 226-4 of the Criminal Code: “L’introduction dans le domicile d’autrui à l’aide de manoeuvres, menaces, voies de fait ou contrainte, hors les cas où la loi le permet, est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d’amende.” In plain terms, getting into someone else’s home by deceit (manoeuvres), threats, physical force (voies de fait) such as breaking a lock, or coercion is punishable by three years’ imprisonment and a 45,000-euro fine. The same provision adds: “Le maintien dans le domicile d’autrui à la suite de l’introduction mentionnée au premier alinéa, hors les cas où la loi le permet, est puni des mêmes peines.” Simply staying on after forcing entry carries the identical penalty. These penalties were raised from one year and 15,000 euros to their current level by Law No 2023-668 of 27 July 2023 on the protection of homes against unlawful occupation, Law No 2023-668 of 27 July 2023 on the protection of homes against unlawful occupation, and that same statute extended explicit protection to secondary residences.
The decisive point for British owners is that an empty second home still counts as a domicile. The statute says so directly in the same article 226-4: “Constitue notamment le domicile d’une personne, au sens du présent article, tout local d’habitation contenant des biens meubles lui appartenant, que cette personne y habite ou non et qu’il s’agisse de sa résidence principale ou non.” Any residential premises containing furniture belonging to you is your protected home whether you live there or not, and whether it is your main residence or not. Your furnished farmhouse with your beds, table and tools inside qualifies even if you spend ten months a year in Surrey. The criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation confirmed this reading on 3 June 2025 in decision No 23-81.916, holding that: “Seul constitue un domicile, au sens de ce texte, le lieu où une personne, qu’elle y habite ou non, a le droit de se dire chez elle, quels que soient le titre juridique de son occupation et l’affectation donnée aux locaux, ledit texte n’ayant pas pour objet de garantir d’une manière générale les propriétés immobilières contre une usurpation.” Only a place where a person is entitled to call herself at home counts, whatever her legal title and whatever the use of the premises. Keep that sentence for your file: it means the occupants cannot defeat your complaint by arguing that the house was empty, unfurnished-looking, or merely a holiday home.
Before spending money, check that your situation is genuinely a squat, because three common situations look similar but follow different procedures. A tenant whose lease has ended but who stays on without your agreement is not a squatter. A person you once accommodated as a favour who now refuses to leave is not a squatter. An unauthorised sub-tenant remaining after the sub-lease ends is not a squatter. The official service-public guide What to do when squatters occupy housing draws this line explicitly, and each of those cases goes through the ordinary tenant-eviction machinery described in our companion guide for British landlords recovering unpaid rent. Your case is a squat only where strangers entered by force, deceit, threats or coercion, or where guests of a short furnished letting refuse to leave when the booking ends, which the same guide treats as the second squat scenario. If the locks are forced, a window is broken, or the booking platform shows a stay that ended weeks ago, you are in squat territory.
Your first 48 hours should follow a strict sequence, organised from Britain by telephone and email. First, do not touch the locks, do not enter by force yourself, and do not cut water or electricity: the guide states plainly that forcing squatters out yourself is forbidden, and self-help exposes you to a criminal complaint and destroys the clean procedural posture your lawyer needs. Second, file a plainte, a formal criminal complaint, for violation de domicile (home invasion) at the local commissariat (police station) or gendarmerie (the military-status police force covering rural areas). If you cannot travel, a lawyer, a relative, or a neighbour holding a written authority can present the facts and lodge the complaint in the first instance while you confirm it, and the complaint reference number becomes the key that opens every later door. Third, assemble proof of ownership from your British files: the latest avis de taxe foncière (the local property-tax bill that identifies you as the liable owner), electricity or water invoices in your name, the home-insurance schedule, the purchase deed reference from your notaire (the public officer who handled the conveyance), and a short written statement from a neighbour confirming the house is yours and stood empty. If you are locked out and cannot produce these, the procedure does not stop: the préfet must ask the tax administration within 72 hours to identify the owner of the premises. Fourth, have the occupation formally recorded, a step called the constat (an official written record of observed facts). This is done by an officier de police judiciaire (a judicial police officer), by the mayor, or by a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice), who will attend, note the forced entry and the presence of strangers, and give you a report. The commissaire de justice must provide a personalised quotation before intervening and his fee is yours to pay, so ask for the quotation in writing and keep it for the damages claim. Photograph everything from outside, keep every invoice, and note names, dates and registration numbers: from now on, your file is your case.
A brief English comparison helps you reset expectations. In England and Wales, squatting in a residential building is a criminal offence carrying up to six months’ imprisonment, as explained on GOV.UK’s squatting and the law pages, and owners expect rapid police action. France reaches a similar destination by a different road: the conduct is criminal, with far heavier maximum penalties, but removal runs through the préfet and the judge rather than through the police acting alone. Once you accept that road, it moves quickly.
B. How Do I Get the Préfet to Order Them Out Within Days?
The préfet procedure is the fastest lawful route back into your house, and it was designed for exactly your situation: an owner, often absent, discovering a break-in. It is an administrative evacuation track that runs alongside, not instead of, the courts, and it can put you back in possession within days where the judicial route takes weeks. The applicant, who may be the owner-occupier, the tenant, a person acting on their behalf, or the owner of the squatted property, asks the préfet of the département for a mise en demeure (a formal order to leave) followed by forced evacuation. Three conditions must already be met before you apply: you have filed the plainte for home invasion, you have proved the property is your home or your property, and the squat has been formally recorded as an entry by deceit, threats, assault or coercion with continued occupation. This is why the checklist in the previous section matters: each document it produces is a ticket for this application. A French lawyer can draft and file the request while you remain in Britain, and the request should attach the complaint receipt, the ownership documents, the constat report, photographs, and a precise address with cadastral references if you have them.
Once seized, the préfet must decide within 48 hours of receiving the request, taking into account the personal and family situation of the occupants. That 48-hour clock is the heart of the procedure, and it is genuinely fast by French administrative standards. If the préfet refuses, the refusal must state its reasons, which gives your lawyer something concrete to challenge rather than silence. If the préfet agrees, he issues the mise en demeure ordering the occupants to leave. For a squatted home the minimum period is 24 hours; in other cases it is at least seven days, so make sure the file shows the premises are your furnished domicile to benefit from the shorter period. The order is notified to the occupants, displayed at the mairie (the town hall) and on the building itself, and a copy is sent to you. If the occupants do not leave within the period fixed, the préfet must proceed with evacuation by the police without delay, unless you have objected. In practice this means officers attend, the commissaire de justice oversees the recovery of the premises, the locks are changed lawfully, and you receive the keys. From discovery to recovery inside a week is realistic where the file is complete, which is why experienced practitioners file the préfet request and the court summons in parallel rather than waiting to see which track moves first.
Two features of this track matter enormously to British owners. The first is the winter truce, the trêve hivernale, the annual 1 November to 31 March suspension of evictions that terrifies every foreign landlord who has heard of it. For squats it does not apply. Article L412-6 of the Enforcement Procedures Code provides that: “Nonobstant toute décision d’expulsion passée en force de chose jugée et malgré l’expiration des délais accordés en vertu de l’article L. 412-3, il est sursis à toute mesure d’expulsion non exécutée à la date du 1er novembre de chaque année jusqu’au 31 mars de l’année suivante, à moins que le relogement des intéressés soit assuré dans des conditions suffisantes respectant l’unité et les besoins de la famille.” Then comes the exception that decides your case: “Par dérogation au premier alinéa du présent article, ce sursis ne s’applique pas lorsque la mesure d’expulsion a été prononcée en raison d’une introduction sans droit ni titre dans le domicile d’autrui à l’aide de manœuvres, de menaces, de voies de fait ou de contrainte.” Where the expulsion follows an unlawful entry into someone’s home by deceit, threats, assault or coercion, the winter suspension simply does not operate, and forced evacuation can proceed in January as in July. Quote those two sentences in any correspondence where an official hesitates in winter: they are the reason second-home squats are treated more severely than ordinary tenant cases.
The second feature is what to do if the préfet refuses or stays silent. A reasoned refusal can be challenged by a recours gracieux (an informal request to the same authority to reconsider) and a recours hiérarchique (an appeal to the higher authority, the Minister of the Interior), and persistent refusal or inertia can be taken before the tribunal administratif (the administrative court) in emergency proceedings. Deadlines in administrative litigation are short and the paperwork is technical, so instruct your lawyer the day the refusal arrives rather than the week after. Keep every envelope, every receipt and every display certificate from the mairie: challenges turn on proof of dates. And keep the judicial track moving in the meantime, because a court expulsion order enforces independently of the préfet and often concentrates administrative minds.
II. From the Court Order to the Front Door: How Does the Judge Expel Occupants Without Title and How Do I Recover My Losses?
A. Which Judge Do I Seize and What Will the Expulsion Order Contain?
Civil law starts from your ownership. Article 544 of the Civil Code states: “La propriété est le droit de jouir et disposer des choses de la manière la plus absolue, pourvu qu’on n’en fasse pas un usage prohibé par les lois ou par les règlements.” Ownership is the most absolute right to enjoy and dispose of a thing, and strangers living in your house without any title are the textbook negation of that right. The judge’s job is to restore it, and the emergency procedure called the référé (an urgent hearing before a single judge for swift provisional measures) is built for occupations without any right or title (occupation sans droit ni titre). Two provisions share the work. Article 834 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides: “Dans tous les cas d’urgence, le président du tribunal judiciaire ou le juge des contentieux de la protection dans les limites de sa compétence, peuvent ordonner en référé toutes les mesures qui ne se heurtent à aucune contestation sérieuse ou que justifie l’existence d’un différend.” In every urgent case the president of the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary civil court) may order measures that face no serious dispute. Where the occupants raise arguments, article 835 takes over: “Le président du tribunal judiciaire ou le juge des contentieux de la protection dans les limites de sa compétence peuvent toujours, même en présence d’une contestation sérieuse, prescrire en référé les mesures conservatoires ou de remise en état qui s’imposent, soit pour prévenir un dommage imminent, soit pour faire cesser un trouble manifestement illicite.” Even faced with a serious dispute, the judge may order whatever is needed to stop a manifestly unlawful nuisance (trouble manifestement illicite), and living in someone else’s house without title is the classic example. Your summons (assignation), served by the commissaire de justice, should therefore ask expressly for a finding of manifestly unlawful nuisance, for expulsion, for a daily penalty payment (astreinte) for each day of delay, for a monthly occupation payment (indemnité d’occupation), and for the reduction or removal of the standard two-month grace period discussed below.
Eviction in France always needs a court title plus a formal order to leave. Article L411-1 of the Enforcement Procedures Code states: “Sauf disposition spéciale, l’expulsion d’un immeuble ou d’un lieu habité ne peut être poursuivie qu’en vertu d’une décision de justice ou d’un procès-verbal de conciliation exécutoire et après signification d’un commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux.” No eviction without a court decision or enforceable conciliation record, and only after service of a commandement de quitter les lieux, the bailiff’s formal order to vacate. After that order, article L412-1 imposes a pause where the place is inhabited: “elle ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement,” meaning physical eviction can only occur once two months have passed since the order. In squat cases your lawyer must therefore ask the judge, in the same proceedings, to reduce or remove that period, pointing to the forced entry, the absence of any title, your own loss of use, and the winter-truce exception already quoted. Judges also hold a general power under article L412-3 to grant renewable grace periods where rehousing is genuinely impossible, so expect the occupants’ representative to plead hardship, children in school, or winter, and make sure your file answers each point: forced entry, no lease, no rent ever paid, your booked flights and cancelled stays, and the furnished domicile finding. Courts show little indulgence to occupiers who broke in, but the argument must be made, not assumed.
The resulting order typically contains five elements: a declaration that the occupation is without right or title and constitutes a manifestly unlawful nuisance, the expulsion itself, an astreinte running per day of continued occupation, an indemnité d’occupation backdated to the start of the occupation, and authorisation to call on public force with the assistance of a locksmith. Enforcement then belongs to the commissaire de justice: service of the commandement de quitter, request for concours de la force publique (police assistance for enforcement) through the préfet, lawful entry, inventory and supervised removal of the occupants’ belongings, and handover of the keys. Never short-circuit this chain. Only the officer armed with the court decision and the State’s support may put occupants out, and any private attempt restarts the dispute with you in the wrong.
B. How Do I Get Damages, Backdated Occupation Payments and Criminal Follow-Up From Britain?
Recovering the house is half the victory; making the episode cost its authors, not you, is the other half, and French law gives you three complementary money routes. The civil route starts from a single sentence. Article 1240 of the Civil Code provides: “Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer.” Any act that causes another person loss obliges the person at fault to repair it. Forced entry into your home is fault, and every euro that flows from it is recoverable: the indemnité d’occupation, usually set by reference to the local rental value for the whole period from entry to departure, the broken door, shutters and boiler, missing furniture and tools, the locksmith and commissaire de justice invoices, the cancelled holidays and hotel bills, and the travel costs of your forced trips. Where the occupants damaged the building deliberately, the criminal provision on damage backs your civil claim: article 322-1 of the Criminal Code states that: “La destruction, la dégradation ou la détérioration d’un bien appartenant à autrui est punie de deux ans d’emprisonnement et de 30 000 euros d’amende, sauf s’il n’en est résulté qu’un dommage léger.” Destruction or damage of another person’s property carries two years’ imprisonment and a 30,000-euro fine except for purely minor harm. Photograph every room on recovery, keep every invoice, and ask the commissaire de justice to record the state of the premises in a second constat: judges compensate documented loss generously and undocumented loss barely at all. Your summons should also claim legal costs, because the losing party is routinely ordered to contribute to the winner’s lawyer and officer fees.
The criminal route runs in parallel and costs you nothing to trigger beyond the complaint. Your plainte for violation de domicile can lead to prosecution before the tribunal correctionnel (the criminal court for mid-level offences), where the three-year, 45,000-euro maximum hangs over the defendants. By registering as partie civile (a civil party joined to the criminal case claiming damages), you ask the criminal court itself to award your financial losses, and a criminal conviction then anchors any remaining civil enforcement. If the prosecutor closes the file without action, your lawyer can still set the prosecution in motion by a direct summons or a complaint with civil-party constitution before the investigating judge, depending on the amounts and the evidence. Occupants are frequently insolvent, so treat the criminal route as pressure, deterrence and moral vindication, and the astreinte and indemnité d’occupation as the realistic money, enforced by seizure of bank accounts or earnings where traceable. A judgment obtained in France can then be taken across the Channel for enforcement against United Kingdom assets through the post-Brexit recognition machinery, on which you should take specific advice if the sums justify it, since our general guide to enforcing judgments between England and France explains the reverse direction of the same corridor.
Three practical files must be opened from Britain while the lawyers work. First, the insurance file: notify your French multirisque habitation (comprehensive home insurer) of the break-in and occupation immediately, check the policy wording for break-in, vandalism and unlawful-occupation cover with its notification deadlines, and send the complaint receipt, both constats and the photographs. Insurers reject late or bare declarations, so declare first and argue coverage second. Second, the security file: once the house is lawfully recovered, change every lock, service the alarm or install monitored protection, fit timer switches and gravel that crunches, appoint a local gardien (a caretaker) or management agent with keys and instructions to visit monthly, and ask a neighbour to report any light or van. A house that looks watched is burgled less and squatted less. Third, the challenge file: every refusal in this story has a remedy, and every remedy has a deadline. A préfet refusal is challenged administratively, an unfavourable référé order is appealed within the short period printed on the served order, and an insurer’s rejection is contested through the policy’s complaints ladder then the insurance mediator. Diarise each deadline the day the document arrives, and never let a refusal sit while you are back in Britain hoping it resolves itself.
Finally, think beyond the episode. Some owners discover through a squat that the empty-house model no longer suits them: letting the property furnished for part of the year keeps it occupied, insured on occupation terms, and watched by paying guests, though it brings registration, tax and co-ownership rules of its own. Others decide to sell, in which case our guide for British leavers selling a former French home maps the exemption windows and treaty tail that decide the final bill. Whichever future you choose, the squat file you built, complaint, constats, orders and invoices, serves again as proof of non-occupation periods, of forced expenses and of your diligence.
Conclusion
A squat in your French second home feels like the end of ownership, but French procedure treats it as a well-mapped emergency with a beginning, a middle and an end. Act in the first 48 hours: complaint for home invasion, ownership proofs assembled, occupation formally recorded, and never a hand laid on the locks yourself. Trigger the préfet track at once, because a reasoned decision within 48 hours and a 24-hour order to leave can restore your house within days, untouched by the winter truce that the statute expressly sets aside for forced entries into a domicile. Run the court track alongside it, because only the judge’s expulsion order with its daily penalties, backdated occupation payments and damages makes the victory complete and bankable. Your furnished house is your protected home in the eyes of the Criminal Code even when you live in Britain, the Court of Cassation says so in terms your opponents cannot wriggle out of, and Brexit changed not one line of these remedies. Distance is the only real enemy, and it is beaten by paper: mandates to your lawyer, dated photographs, kept invoices and challenged refusals. Start the file today, from the United Kingdom, exactly as this guide describes, and the next drive from the airport will end at your own front door, opened with your own key.
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