You own a stone cottage in the Dordogne, a flat in Nice or a farmhouse in Normandy. Since Brexit you travel on a British passport, you hold no French residence card, and every arrival at Calais, the Eurotunnel terminal or Nice airport brings the same anxious moment at the booth. The officer scans your passport, counts the stamps, and decides on the spot whether you may enter. Many British owners discover the arithmetic only when it is too late: the European Union allows you to spend no more than 90 days out of any rolling 180-day period in the whole Schengen area, and France counts every one of those days whether you spent them at your own house, on a beach in Spain or visiting grandchildren in Germany. Overstay that limit and the consequences run from a refused entry stamped in your passport to a removal order signed by the préfet, the state official who administers each French département, and even a ban on returning to the Schengen area for up to three years. This article explains, in plain English, how to count your 90 days correctly before the officer does, what happens when the count goes wrong, which long-stay visitor visa and visiteur residence card, meaning a temporary residence card marked visitor, lets you spend the winter lawfully at your French house, and how to challenge a visa refusal, a refused extension or a removal order before the French courts. Every French term is explained at first use, and every decisive rule is quoted from the official text.

I. How Long You May Stay in Your French Second Home After Brexit Without a Visa

A. How to Count Your 90 Days Out of Any 180-Day Period Before the Officer Does

The starting point is simple and is confirmed by the British government’s entry requirements for France: travel without a visa to the Schengen area, which includes France, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period for tourism, family visits, business meetings and short-term study. The Schengen area, known in French as the espace Schengen, is the zone of European countries that have abolished controls at their shared borders, and time spent in any of them counts towards the same allowance. A fortnight in your Dordogne cottage in April, ten days in Spain in May and a month at your French house in June add up to roughly 64 days, and all of them sit inside the same rolling window. The 180-day window is not a calendar half-year. Each time you present yourself at the border, the officer looks backwards over the 180 days that precede that very day and adds up every day you were present anywhere in the Schengen area. Days of arrival and departure both count, and the count covers the whole zone, not France alone.

French domestic law points to exactly the same European rule. Article L312-1 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the French code governing entry and residence of foreign nationals, usually shortened to CESEDA, provides: “Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de court séjour, dans les conditions prévues à l’article 6 du règlement 2016/399 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016.” In English: any foreign national who wishes to enter France for a stay of no more than three months must apply to the French diplomatic and consular authorities for a short-stay visa, under the conditions laid down in article 6 of regulation 2016/399 of 9 March 2016, which is the Schengen Borders Code. British citizens are exempt from the visa itself, which is why the same paragraph continues to matter for you: the exemption spares you the application, not the arithmetic. The 90 days out of 180 ceiling in article 6 of the Borders Code applies whether or not you needed a sticker in your passport.

Entry itself is conditional even for travellers who need no visa. Article L311-1 of CESEDA states: “Pour entrer en France, tout étranger doit être muni : 1° Sauf s’il est exempté de cette obligation, des visas exigés par les conventions internationales et par l’article 6, paragraphe 1, points a et b, du règlement (UE) 2016/399 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016 concernant un code de l’Union relatif au régime de franchissement des frontières par les personnes (code frontières Schengen) ; 2° Sous réserve des conventions internationales, et de l’article 6, paragraphe 1, point c, du code frontières Schengen, du justificatif d’hébergement prévu à l’article L. 313-1 , s’il est requis, et des autres documents prévus par décret en Conseil d’Etat relatifs à l’objet et aux conditions de son séjour et à ses moyens d’existence, à la prise en charge par un opérateur d’assurance agréé des dépenses médicales et hospitalières, y compris d’aide sociale, résultant de soins qu’il pourrait engager en France, ainsi qu’aux garanties de son rapatriement”. Put in practical terms, the officer at Calais or the airport may lawfully ask you for four things beyond your passport: proof of accommodation, proof of money for the stay, travel and medical insurance covering emergency costs, and a return or onward ticket. The British government’s travel advice for France confirms the same four checks at French border control: proof of travel insurance for emergency costs, proof of enough money for the stay, proof of accommodation and a return or onward ticket.

For an owner, proof of accommodation is straightforward but must be carried, not assumed. The officer cannot know from your passport that you own the cottage whose address you recite. Carry your titre de propriété, the notarial deed proving ownership, or at minimum your latest taxe foncière bill, the annual French property tax assessed on owners, together with a recent utility bill in your name. If you stay with family or friends rather than at your own house, a different document may be demanded: article L313-1 of CESEDA provides that “Tout étranger qui déclare vouloir séjourner en France pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois dans le cadre d’une visite familiale ou privée doit présenter un justificatif d’hébergement qui prend la forme d’une attestation d’accueil, signée par la personne qui se propose d’assurer le logement de l’étranger, ou son représentant légal.” An attestation d’accueil is a formal welcome invitation that your host must obtain in advance from the mayor’s office of the place where you will sleep, and the British guidance is explicit that your host must send you the original document before you enter France. Owners who alternate between their own house and relatives’ homes should therefore travel with both sets of papers: deeds for their own place, attestation for the guest nights.

Counting itself deserves a worked method, because most overstays are accidents of arithmetic rather than deliberate defiance. Take a blank calendar and mark every day you were inside the Schengen area during the last 180 days, counting both the day you arrived and the day you left. Add them. If the total is 90, you must leave and stay out until old days start dropping out of the backwards-looking window. Two common traps catch British owners. First, the window moves every day, so a stay that was lawful when you arrived in March can become an overstay if you remain into April while February days have not yet fallen away. Second, transit counts: a night in Amsterdam airport hotels between two flights, a weekend driving through Belgium to reach the Tunnel, a week skiing in Italy all consume the same allowance as a month at your own house. Passport stamps are the officer’s evidence, and since the United Kingdom never joined Schengen, your passport is stamped in and out, which makes the count easy for the administration and hard to dispute afterwards. Keep your own diary of entries and exits, photograph every stamp on the day, and reconcile the two before each trip. The owners who are turned away are very often the ones who counted France only, forgot Spain, and arrive believing they have weeks in hand when the system shows they have none.

B. What Happens When You Get the Count Wrong: Refused Entry, the Three-Year Ban and the Removal Order

The lightest sanction is also the most public: refusal of entry at the border, recorded in your passport with a standard Schengen stamp. The officer who finds that your presence would exceed 90 days in the current 180-day window must refuse you, and the airline or ferry company that carried you faces its own penalties for boarding a passenger who does not meet the entry conditions, which is why carriers now check counts before departure. A refusal stamp does not itself ban you, but it sits in your passport for every future officer to read, it forces you to explain the episode on every subsequent visa application, and it starts the paper trail that later decisions will cite against you.

The heavier sanction falls on owners who are already inside France when the limit expires. The British government’s warning is blunt: overstaying the 90-day visa-exempt limit may lead to a ban from entering Schengen countries for up to three years, as stated in the official entry requirements for France. That ban, called an interdiction de retour, meaning a prohibition on returning, is normally attached to the central French removal measure, the obligation de quitter le territoire français, universally shortened to OQTF, meaning the order to leave French territory. Article L611-1 of CESEDA gives the préfet the power in these terms: “L’autorité administrative peut obliger un étranger à quitter le territoire français lorsqu’il se trouve dans les cas suivants : 1° L’étranger, ne pouvant justifier être entré régulièrement sur le territoire français, s’y est maintenu sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour en cours de validité ; 2° L’étranger, entré sur le territoire français sous couvert d’un visa désormais expiré ou, n’étant pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, entré en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour ou, le cas échéant, sans demander le renouvellement du titre de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuel qui lui a été délivré”. The second case is drafted for people exactly like you: a British owner who needed no visa, entered more than three months ago, and holds no titre de séjour, meaning no residence card, can be ordered to leave. The OQTF normally allows thirty days for voluntary departure, but it can set no delay at all where the administration considers you a risk of absconding, and it is routinely paired with an interdiction de retour of up to three years.

An OQTF poisons future travel far beyond the departure deadline. The official service-public.fr guidance on long-stay visas warns that no visa is issued to a foreign national who was ordered to leave France less than five years earlier and cannot prove timely departure, except in humanitarian circumstances. In other words, an OQTF less than five years old, where you cannot prove you left in time, blocks any new visa except on humanitarian grounds. An owner who shrugs off a removal order, stays on at the cottage, and leaves quietly months later may therefore discover that the consulate in London refuses the very long-stay visa that would have solved everything, precisely because of the ignored OQTF. This is why every control, every registered letter from the préfecture, the local office representing the state in your département, and every stamp in the passport must be treated as the beginning of a file, not as an anecdote. Keep the envelopes, note the dates of notification, and keep boarding passes proving when you actually left, because the burden of proving timely departure will fall on you five years later.

There is one emergency valve for owners caught inside France by events rather than by design. The British guidance states that travellers who cannot return to the United Kingdom before their visa-exempt limit expires should contact the nearest local prefecture in France. Illness, a hospitalised spouse, a cancelled ferry during storms, a house made uninhabitable by flooding: these are the situations where the préfecture can extend a short stay rather than punish it. European law provides the mechanism, and French courts police its boundaries strictly, as the second part of this article explains. The practical lesson is to present yourself to the préfecture before the 90 days expire, with documents in hand, rather than after an arrest or an identity check has already generated an OQTF. An application filed in time creates a file and a receipt; an overstay discovered by the police creates a removal order. The same facts produce opposite outcomes depending on which office you walk into first.

II. How to Stay Longer Lawfully and How to Challenge a Refusal or a Removal Order

A. Which Long-Stay Visitor Visa and Visiteur Card Lets a British Owner Spend the Winter in France

British owners who want more than 90 days in any 180 have one natural route, and it is designed for them: the long-stay visitor route. Article L312-2 of CESEDA provides: “Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée supérieure à trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de long séjour dont la durée de validité ne peut être supérieure à un an. Ce visa peut autoriser un séjour de plus de trois mois à caractère familial, en qualité de visiteur, d’étudiant, de stagiaire ou au titre d’une activité professionnelle, et plus généralement tout type de séjour d’une durée supérieure à trois mois conférant à son titulaire les droits attachés à une carte de séjour temporaire ou à la carte de séjour pluriannuelle prévue aux articles L. 421-9, L. 421-11 et L. 421-13-1 à L. 421-24.” A visa de long séjour, meaning a long-stay visa, valid for up to one year, can therefore authorise a stay of more than three months as a visiteur, the legal status of a person who lives in France without working there. You apply at the French consulate in London before travelling, through the France-Visas portal, and the visa, once issued, exempts you from applying for a residence card at the préfecture for its whole duration. The official guidance confirms the shape of the deal: during its validity you are exempt from seeking a card, at its end you must return to your country of origin, and the visa allows neither work nor welfare benefits.

The conditions for the visiteur card itself set the bar you must clear, and they are financial before anything else. Article L426-20 of CESEDA states: “L’étranger qui apporte la preuve qu’il peut vivre de ses seules ressources, dont le montant doit être au moins égal au salaire minimum de croissance net annuel, indépendamment de l’allocation aux adultes handicapés mentionnée à l’article L. 821-1 du code de la sécurité sociale et de l’allocation supplémentaire mentionnée à l’article L. 815-24 du même code, se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ” visiteur ” d’une durée d’un an. Il doit en outre justifier de la possession d’une assurance maladie couvrant la durée de son séjour et prendre l’engagement de n’exercer en France aucune activité professionnelle.” Three cumulative tests therefore decide your file: resources at least equal to one year of the net statutory minimum wage, the SMIC, excluding disability allowances; health insurance covering the whole stay; and a written undertaking to carry on no professional activity in France, since the card expressly does not authorise work. For a retired couple living on British pensions and rental income, the arithmetic is usually comfortable, but the evidence must prove regularity, not a momentary balance, a point on which the courts show no indulgence.

The leading court statements on visitor visas make exactly that distinction between a healthy bank balance on one day and reliable resources over a year. In CAA Nantes, 2 March 2021, no. 20NT00299, the administrative court of appeal recalled the breadth of the administration’s discretion: “les autorités françaises disposent d’un large pouvoir d’appréciation à cet égard, et peuvent se fonder non seulement sur des motifs tenant à l’ordre public mais sur toute considération d’intérêt général.” French authorities enjoy a wide discretion over visas and may rely not only on public-order grounds but on any consideration of the general interest, which is why a consulate never has to issue a visitor visa however sympathetic the applicant. On the facts, the court upheld the refusal because “la seule production de relevés de comptes bancaires, dont le solde a un caractère provisoire, et de tableaux difficilement lisibles relatant, sans les justifier, des revenus tirés de la location de biens immobiliers et d’intérêts bancaires, ne suffisent pas à établir l’existence d’une source de revenus réguliers de nature à couvrir les frais de trois personnes durant leur séjour de longue durée en France.” Bank statements whose balance is by nature provisional, plus hard-to-read tables asserting rental and interest income without proving it, do not establish a regular source of income capable of supporting the family throughout a long stay. British owners should read this as a checklist written in the negative: produce twelve months of pension statements, tenancy agreements and tax returns for rental income, and translated HMRC assessments rather than a single flattering screenshot of a current account the week before the appointment.

The same court shows the other face of the control where the file is genuinely solid. In CAA Nantes, 6 May 2025, no. 24NT00809, the judges examined declared taxable income of 131,542 euros for the household, medical cover of 30,000 euros, and close family settled in France, and held that “la commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France a entaché sa décision d’une erreur manifeste d’appréciation en refusant de délivrer à M. D… le visa sollicité pour les motifs énoncés au point 2.” The appeals commission against visa refusals, known as the CRRV, had committed a manifest error of assessment, the standard of review for discretionary visa decisions, by refusing the visa on the stated grounds. The court then ordered the administration to issue the visa: “Il y a lieu d’enjoindre au ministre de l’intérieur de délivrer ce visa dans un délai de deux mois à compter de la notification de l’arrêt.” The minister was ordered to deliver the entry and long-stay visa within two months of the judgment. The contrast between the two rulings is the whole strategy in miniature: provisional balances lose, documented regular income at comfortably above the SMIC level, full-year health insurance and coherent family ties win, and the judge can order the visa itself, not merely a re-examination, where the error is clear.

Two practical warnings complete the picture for owners. First, the visitor route forbids work in France, including remote work performed from the cottage for a British employer, and it opens no right to French healthcare beyond your private insurance, so budget the insurance premium honestly and do not describe yourself as planning to work from home. Second, time spent under a long-stay visitor visa still counts for Schengen circulation: the service-public guidance notes that the visa allows movement throughout the Schengen area provided you do not exceed 90 days there during its validity, so winters split between your French house and a Spanish apartment must still be counted. Owners who want to live in France permanently, rather than winter there, need a different card altogether, but for the classic second-home pattern of four to eight months a year, the visiteur visa renewed annually from London is the lawful answer to the 90-day ceiling. For the full panorama of routes, from visitor and retirement options to family reunion and the Withdrawal Agreement card, see our hub guide to which long-stay visa and which carte de séjour a British newcomer needs after Brexit.

B. How to Challenge a Visa Refusal, a Refused Extension or an OQTF Before the French Courts

Every refusal the administration can issue has a matching remedy, but each runs on a short fuse and each starts with the paper you were handed. A consular refusal of a long-stay visa must first go to the CRRV, the commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France, within two months of the refusal. Only after the commission confirms the refusal, expressly or by silence, can you seize the tribunal administratif de Nantes, the single administrative court competent for visa litigation wherever in the world the consulate sits. The judge reviews for erreur manifeste d’appréciation, meaning a manifest error of assessment, over resources, insurance, accommodation and migratory risk, exactly the review exercised in the two Nantes rulings discussed above. Frame the CRRV appeal as a complete second file, not a protest letter: add the missing insurance schedule, the twelve months of statements, the translated tax assessments, the deeds of the French house and a dated covering table that walks the reader from each ground of refusal to the exhibit answering it. Most files won at this stage are won because the second file is objectively better than the first, not because the commission changes its philosophy.

Where a short stay needs stretching for genuine emergency reasons, European law offers the prolongation of the visa itself. Article 33 of regulation 810/2009 of 13 July 2009 establishing a Community Code on Visas, the Visa Code, provides: “La durée de validité et/ou la durée de séjour prévue dans un visa délivré est prolongée si les autorités compétentes de l’Etat Membre concerné considèrent que le titulaire du visa a démontré l’existence d’une force majeure ou de raisons humanitaires l’empêchant de quitter le territoire des Etats membres avant la fin de la durée de validité du visa ou de la durée du séjour qu’il autorise.” Validity or authorised stay is extended where the holder demonstrates force majeure, an irresistible external event, or humanitarian reasons preventing departure before expiry. The French courts apply this strictly against vague medical certificates. In CAA Nantes, 19 June 2020, no. 19NT05013, the court accepted that the applicant had been hospitalised and produced certificates prescribing months of convalescence, yet held that “ces documents, au contenu peu circonstancié, ne suffisent pas à démontrer l’impossibilité pour Mme B… de voyager sans risque vers l’Algérie ni d’y bénéficier effectivement d’un traitement approprié à sa pathologie. Ils ne permettent dès lors, de démontrer ni la force majeure ni l’existence de raisons humanitaires empêchant la requérante de quitter le territoire français.” Documents with thin detail do not prove inability to travel safely or to obtain suitable treatment at home, and therefore prove neither force majeure nor humanitarian grounds. An owner who falls ill in France should therefore obtain a hospital certificate stating expressly fitness to fly or its absence, the treatment unavailable in Britain within the required time, and the precise period of immobility, then file the prolongation request at the préfecture before the 90 days run out, keeping the receipt as proof of a pending file if the police later ask questions.

An OQTF already notified is challenged before the tribunal administratif of the département where it was signed, usually within 30 days where a voluntary departure period was granted and within far shorter limits, down to 48 hours or 96 hours, where the order was issued without delay or alongside detention. The judge examines legality of the entry on the file, reality of the overstay count, proportionality, private and family life, and procedural defects such as a missing personal hearing or an unsigned notification slip. Removal orders do get annulled. In CAA Lyon, 27 November 2018, no. 17LY03705, the court held: “Le jugement n° 1701912-1701913 du magistrat délégué du tribunal administratif de Lyon du 17 octobre 2017 et l’arrêté du préfet du Puy-de-Dôme du 15 octobre 2017 sont annulés.” Both the first-instance judgment and the préfet’s removal order of 15 October 2017 were annulled, with 1,500 euros awarded against the state for costs. The lesson for British owners is procedural as much as substantive: challenge within the deadline stated on the notification slip, attach proof of every entry and exit date, bank and insurance evidence showing you can support yourself, deeds proving the house is a genuine second home rather than clandestine settlement, and boarding passes proving any departure the administration claims never happened. Ask the judge in the alternative for suspension where removal is imminent, because an OQTF challenged but not suspended can still be enforced while the case waits its turn.

Three final lines of defence deserve emphasis because owners overlook them. First, the passport count itself can be wrong: stamps misread at 23:55, a day counted twice, a Spanish week attributed to a period outside the window. Reconstruct the count independently, demand the administration’s own calculation in the file, and put your dated diary and photographs of stamps before the judge. Second, family life counts even for the visa-exempt: a British owner married to a French national, or parent of French-resident children, enjoys reinforced protection, and any OQTF must survive review for disproportionate interference with private and family life. Third, never let a refusal or an OQTF go unanswered by silence. An unchallenged OQTF becomes final, triggers the return ban, and, as the service-public warning quoted above recalls, blocks fresh visas for five years absent proof of timely departure. A timely challenge, even if it ultimately fails, suspends enforcement in most configurations, preserves the voluntary-departure record, and keeps the consulate door open for next winter’s visitor application. In this field more than most, the file you build in the first fortnight decides the next five years.

Conclusion

Brexit turned British second-home owners into guests of the Schengen area, and guests must watch the clock. Ninety days out of any rolling 180 is the whole of the visa-exempt allowance, counted across every Schengen country and proved by the stamps in a British passport; beyond it lie refusal of entry, a removal order from the préfet and a return ban of up to three years that will haunt visa applications for five. The lawful winter is the long-stay visitor visa applied for in London, backed by regular resources above the SMIC, full-year health insurance and a genuine second home proved by deeds, and every refusal along that road has a judge at the end of it: the CRRV then Nantes for visas, the préfet then the administrative court for extensions, the local tribunal for removal orders. Count before you travel, carry the deeds, insure the full stay, and challenge in time, and the cottage keys will keep turning for decades.