You bought the stone house in the Dordogne before Brexit, when a British passport meant coming and going as you pleased. Since 1 January 2021 you are a third-country national at the French border, and every night you spend under your own roof eats into a quota: 90 days in any 180-day period, counted across the whole Schengen area, with no reset button at Christmas. Miscount by a week and the consequences stop being theoretical. Border officers can refuse you entry and put you on the next flight home, a prefect can order you to leave France with a formal removal order, and an overstay can earn you a ban from the entire Schengen zone of up to three years. This guide is written for the British second-home owner who travels on a UK passport without a visa. It shows you how to count your days without making the three classic mistakes, when to switch to a long-stay visitor visa and a carte de séjour visiteur (a temporary residence card for visitors) instead of gambling on another short trip, what happens if you are stopped at the border or told to leave, and exactly how to challenge a refusal of entry, a visa refusal or a removal order with a file a judge can accept.

I. Your 90 days in any 180: how the count works for a British second-home owner

A. How to count your days without a visa, and what counts as a day

The starting point is simple and is confirmed by the British government itself: you can travel without a visa to the Schengen area, which includes France, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period when you come as a tourist, to visit family or friends, or for business meetings and events, as the official GOV.UK entry requirements for France explain. The French side of the same rule sits in the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (the Code governing entry and residence of foreign nationals, universally called the CESEDA), which provides that “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”. British citizens are exempt from that short-stay visa requirement, but the reference to Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399, the Schengen Borders Code available on EUR-Lex (the official EU law portal), matters enormously, because that Article sets the 90/180-day maximum and the entry conditions that apply to you even without a visa.

The count works on a rolling window, and this is where most second-home owners go wrong. The question is never how many days you have spent in France since 1 January. On every single day you are present in France, you look backwards over the preceding 180 days and you count every day of presence in any Schengen country. If the total is over 90, you are overstaying. Take a realistic pattern: two weeks at Easter in the Lot, six weeks across July and August in your own house, ten days in Barcelona in October, then Christmas and New Year in France from 20 December to 5 January. Each trip felt short. Added together inside a single 180-day window, the summer, Spanish and Christmas days stack, and the January tail of the Christmas trip is examined against the previous 180 days, which include most of the summer. Owners who think in calendar halves, who believe the counter resets on 1 January, or who assume days in Spain or Italy do not count, are the ones who discover the arithmetic at the border desk at Bergerac or Limoges.

Three further counting rules catch people out. First, the day of entry and the day of exit both count as full days of presence, even for a morning arrival or an evening departure. A weekend trip that touches Saturday and Sunday costs two days, not one. Second, days spent in France under a French residence permit or a long-stay visa do not count towards the 90-day visa-free limit, as GOV.UK expressly confirms — but the reverse is equally true, and just as useful: once that permit or visa expires, every new visa-free day starts counting again from zero only in the sense of the rolling window, not with a clean slate. Third, only physical presence counts, yet presence is now recorded with increasing precision. Your passport should be stamped on entry and exit, and the European Entry/Exit System (the electronic registration of third-country entries and exits, known as the EES) is being rolled out across the Schengen area, with GOV.UK warning travellers to allow extra time at the border for registration. Keep your own ledger regardless: boarding passes, ferry bookings, Eurotunnel confirmations and a printout of the European Commission’s short-stay calculator for the trip in question. When an officer’s screen and your memory disagree, the paper with dates on it wins.

At the border itself, visa exemption is not a right of entry. The CESEDA states the general rule bluntly: “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”. In plain terms, the officer can ask for four things: proof of the purpose of your stay, proof of accommodation, proof of means of subsistence, and proof of medical cover and repatriation. For an owner heading to his own house, the strongest accommodation proof is ownership itself. GOV.UK advises that you may need to show evidence of ownership or tenancy of your property, such as a tax or utility bill: carry the latest avis de taxe foncière (the French property tax bill), a recent electricity bill in your name, and the attestation d’assurance habitation (the home insurance certificate) for the house. Travellers who arrive with nothing but a passport and an address invite the deeper interview.

If family or friends travel with you to stay in your house, a different document can enter the picture. French law requires visitors coming for a family or private stay of under three months to hold a specific hosting certificate: “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”. That attestation d’accueil (the validated hosting certificate) is signed by the host and validated by the town hall, and the host undertakes to bear the guest’s living costs if the guest cannot, since the certificate “est présentée pour validation au maire de la commune du lieu d’hébergement ou, à Paris, Lyon et Marseille, au maire d’arrondissement, agissant en qualité d’agent de l’Etat” and carries the host’s financial undertaking. The practical procedure is described step by step on the official service-public.fr page for the attestation d’accueil. As the owner staying in your own home you do not need one for yourself, but if you host non-EU relatives who do not share your roof rights, arrange it at the mairie several weeks before their flight: consulates and airlines both check it.

B. When 90 days are not enough: the long-stay visitor visa and the visiteur residence card

Sooner or later many owners outgrow the quota. A retired couple who want March to June in the Charente, an owner supervising six months of renovation works, or a family splitting the school year between Kent and the Languedoc cannot fit inside 90 days in 180, and stretching the count is the single most dangerous option. French law offers a purpose-built route instead: the long-stay visa for visitors, followed by a one-year visitor residence card. The Code states the gateway clearly: “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”, and that visa expressly covers stays en qualité de visiteur, as a visitor. The architecture around it is strict. Article L. 411-1 lists the documents that alone authorise a stay of more than three months — long-stay visa, temporary card, multi-year card, resident card and a few others — while Article L. 411-2 warns that “A l’expiration de la durée de validité de son document de séjour, l’étranger doit quitter la France, à moins qu’il n’en obtienne le renouvellement ou qu’il ne lui en soit délivré un autre”, adding that where any residence document is refused or withdrawn, the foreigner must leave. And the bridge between visa and card is compulsory: “la première délivrance d’une carte de séjour temporaire ou d’une carte de séjour pluriannuelle est subordonnée à la production par l’étranger du visa de long séjour mentionné aux 1° ou 2° de l’article L. 411-1”. You cannot arrive visa-free, fall in love with the lifestyle, and apply for a visitor card from inside France. The long-stay visa must be obtained from the French consulate covering your home in the United Kingdom before you travel, and our companion guide to which long-stay visa and which carte de séjour a British newcomer needs walks through that consular stage in detail.

The visitor card itself, the carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention “visiteur”, is defined by Article L. 426-20 of the CESEDA, and every word of that Article deserves attention: “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. Par dérogation à l’article L. 414-10, cette carte n’autorise pas l’exercice d’une activité professionnelle”. Three conditions, three frequent refusals. First, resources: you must prove you can live on your own means at a level at least equal to the net annual minimum wage, the SMIC, and the figure is assessed per person, from durable income or genuinely available savings — a state or private pension paid into a UK account, rental income documented by tax returns, investment income with statements, or savings high enough to cover the year. Second, health insurance covering the whole stay: a travel policy with a defined ceiling and exclusions is routinely judged insufficient, while full private medical cover for twelve months, or registration in the French system where available, satisfies the requirement. Third, the written undertaking not to work in France, which the Article reinforces by expressly barring professional activity even by derogation. Owners who keep answering London emails from the poolside should understand the trap: salaried remote work for a UK employer performed from France can be treated as work in France, and it sits badly with a status whose legal definition is to live on one’s own resources without working.

Consulates refuse visitor visas more often than applicants expect, and the courts uphold those refusals where the file is thin. The administrative court of appeal of Nantes confirmed the framework in a 1 April 2025 judgment concerning a long-stay visitor visa for a child, CAA Nantes No 24NT01244, published at legifrance.gouv.fr/ceta/id/CETATEXT000051418916. The court recalled the two governing texts and then stated the decisive principle: “L’étranger désirant se rendre en France et qui sollicite un visa de long séjour en qualité de visiteur doit justifier de la nécessité dans laquelle il se trouve de résider en France pour un séjour de plus de trois mois. En l’absence de toute disposition conventionnelle, législative ou réglementaire déterminant les cas où ce visa peut être refusé, et eu égard à la nature d’une telle décision, les autorités françaises, saisies d’une telle demande, disposent, sous le contrôle du juge de l’excès de pouvoir, d’un large pouvoir d’appréciation et peuvent se fonder non seulement sur des motifs tenant à l’ordre public, tel que le détournement de l’objet du visa, mais aussi sur toute considération d’intérêt général. La commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France peut légalement fonder sa décision de refus sur les motifs tirés de ce que le demandeur ne justifie pas disposer des moyens d’existence suffisants pour faire face aux dépenses liées à son séjour en France ou posséder une assurance maladie couvrant la durée de son séjour.” In that case the family produced company registration extracts without any detail of actual income, a grandfather’s financial guarantee the court called insufficient, and an accident-only policy that did not prove medical cover — and the refusal survived. The lesson for a British owner is direct: a guarantee letter from a relative, a portfolio valuation without income evidence, or a credit-card travel policy will not carry a visitor file. Twelve months of bank statements showing pension or rental income landing regularly, a tax return tying the income to your name, a full medical insurance certificate naming each applicant and the covered period, and title deeds or a twelve-month lease for the French address are the documents that answer the exact grounds the commission uses.

One timing point decides many files. Because the first card requires the long-stay visa, and because consular appointments, commission appeals and prefecture renewals each take months, apply for the visitor visa while you still have quota left, not after an overstay has already poisoned the file. An overstay recorded in the system transforms the next consular interview from a routine means test into an examination of your credibility. Owners who plan the switch early — visa-free spring, consular application in London in summer, long-stay arrival in autumn, prefecture renewal before the first anniversary — never meet the officers described in the second half of this guide.

II. Stopped at the border or told to leave: refusals, holding areas and removal orders

A. Refusal of entry, the waiting zone and the removal order after an overstay

Two different measures, taken by two different authorities, punish two different mistakes, and owners constantly confuse them. The refusal of entry (refus d’entrée) is a border measure, taken the day you arrive, when the officer judges that you do not meet the entry conditions — insufficient means, no credible accommodation, no insurance, or, increasingly, a stay history showing you have already exhausted your 90 days. The Code gives that decision immediate teeth: “La décision de refus d’entrée sur le territoire français dont l’étranger fait l’objet peut être exécutée d’office par l’autorité administrative”. It is a written, reasoned decision, and it states the remedies against it, but it is enforceable at once: the carrier that brought you is obliged to take you back, and arguing at the desk changes nothing. Where return on the same day is impossible, the traveller refused entry may be held in a waiting zone (zone d’attente), the closed transit accommodation at the airport, port or international station. The Code defines it precisely: “L’étranger qui arrive en France par la voie ferroviaire, maritime ou aérienne et qui n’est pas autorisé à entrer sur le territoire français peut être placé dans une zone d’attente située dans une gare ferroviaire ouverte au trafic international figurant sur une liste définie par voie réglementaire, dans un port ou à proximité du lieu de débarquement ou dans un aéroport, pendant le temps strictement nécessaire à son départ”. Holding beyond the initial hours requires a judge’s authorisation, and a lawyer can intervene at that hearing — which is why the telephone number of a solicitor or advocate who answers in English should be in your phone before you fly, not searched for from inside the zone.

The removal order, the obligation de quitter le territoire français universally shortened to OQTF, is the inland measure, taken by the prefect when you are already in France and your stay has become unlawful. For a British visitor the most relevant legal ground is written for exactly your situation. The Code provides that “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”. Read the second limb slowly: a visa-exempt Briton who entered more than three months ago and holds no residence document is within the text. In practice the prefecture rarely hunts owners at home; the OQTF typically follows a police or gendarmerie check — a roadside control, an incident at the mairie, a denunciation after a neighbour dispute — where the passport stamps show day 91 and beyond with no card to justify them. The decision must be reasoned and individual: “La décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français est motivée. Elle est édictée après vérification du droit au séjour, en tenant notamment compte de la durée de présence de l’étranger sur le territoire français, de la nature et de l’ancienneté de ses liens avec la France et des considérations humanitaires pouvant justifier un tel droit”. Owning a house for twenty years does not immunise you, but the prefect must at least examine the length of your presence, your ties and any humanitarian considerations — and a decision that recites nothing about your file is vulnerable before the court.

Both measures can carry a forward-looking sting. The OQTF is frequently accompanied by an order to leave within a short voluntary departure period or immediately, and by a re-entry ban (interdiction de retour) forbidding return to France for up to three years. The administrative court of appeal of Lyon illustrated the full package in a 3 November 2021 judgment, CAA Lyon No 20LY03732, published at legifrance.gouv.fr/ceta/id/CETATEXT000044344410, where an OQTF without voluntary departure and a one-year return ban were both challenged. The court noted that the applicant did not dispute that “une obligation de quitter le territoire français sans délai pouvait être ordonnée à son encontre en application du 2° du I de l’article L. 511-1 du code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile” — the former numbering of the overstay ground now found in Article L. 611-1 — and it upheld the one-year ban, holding that “le préfet de la Côte-d’Or n’a pas commis d’erreur d’appréciation en assortissant sa mesure d’éloignement d’une interdiction de retour d’une durée d’un an sur le territoire français”, after weighing years of presence, family ties and the absence of humanitarian circumstances. The proportionality review is real but demanding: a recent relationship, no children, no particular integration and years of adult life spent in the home country did not suffice to overturn either measure. Add the Schengen-level warning that GOV.UK prints in plain language — overstay the 90-day visa-free limit and you may be banned from entering Schengen countries for up to three years — and the arithmetic of one extra month in the sun becomes stark: it can cost you the next three years of springs, summers and Christmases in your own house.

B. How to challenge a refusal, a removal order or a ban, and protect your next trips

Every one of these decisions can be challenged, but each travels down its own procedural track with its own short deadline, and taking the wrong track wastes the time you do not have. Start with the consular visa refusal, the decision most owners meet first. A refusal of a French visa must be contested through a compulsory prior appeal to the commission that reviews visa refusals, the commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France sitting in Nantes, before any court will hear you — the Nantes judgment discussed above shows the full ladder, from the consulate in Manila to the commission’s implied refusal, to the administrative court of Nantes, to the court of appeal. Your refusal letter states the appeal route and the time limit: diary it on receipt and treat it as absolute. The appeal must answer the exact boxes the consulate ticked, and the Nantes case teaches what fails. Where the ground is means of subsistence, send twelve months of statements showing regular pension, rental or investment income in your name, the corresponding tax return, and, for savings-based files, balances large enough to fund the whole stay at a credible daily rate: registration extracts and bare guarantees without income detail were judged insufficient. Where the ground is insurance, send a certificate naming each traveller, the full period and medical cover including hospitalisation and repatriation: an accident-only policy was judged not to prove medical cover. Where the ground is purpose, send the title deeds or the twelve-month lease, the property tax bill and the home insurance certificate. A fresh application with a repaired file is often faster than a contested appeal against a refusal whose grounds were factually correct — a lawyer’s first job is to tell you honestly which of the two you have.

The OQTF goes directly to the administrative court, and speed matters even more. The Code opens the judicial door in one sentence: “La décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français ainsi que la décision relative au séjour, la décision relative au délai de départ volontaire et l’interdiction de retour sur le territoire français qui l’accompagnent, le cas échéant, peuvent être contestées devant le tribunal administratif selon la procédure prévue à l’article L. 911-1”. The time limit is counted in days or weeks depending on whether a voluntary departure period was granted, so the rule is simple: see a lawyer the day the order is served, with the order itself, the passport with its stamps, and every document proving lawful presence and ties. Three lines of attack carry weight. First, legality of the stay calculation: produce the dated travel evidence — boarding passes, ferry and tunnel bookings, the calculator printout — and show that within the relevant 180-day window the count stayed at or under 90, or that days under a valid permit or long-stay visa were wrongly included. Second, defective reasoning: hold the prefect to the statutory duty to verify the right of residence and to weigh duration of presence, nature and age of ties with France, and humanitarian considerations, and ask the court to annul a decision that examines none of them. Third, proportionality and personal circumstances: long ownership, a spouse or partner in France, children in French schools, medical treatment underway, each proved by documents rather than asserted in a letter. The re-entry ban must be challenged alongside the OQTF, on its own duration and reasoning — the Lyon judgment shows judges calibrating the ban year by year against presence, ties and history, which means a documented twenty-year ownership with deep local roots argues differently from a first-year file, provided the evidence is in the bundle.

Two practical moves protect future trips whatever track you are on. The first is to regularise forward: the Lyon case itself ended with the prefecture issuing a residence document that extinguished the dispute, the prefect explaining that the title he had delivered had the effect of abrogating the contested removal decisions. An OQTF is not a life sentence; a well-founded application for the right status — a visitor card supported by real resources and insurance, or any other card matching your situation — can dissolve the litigation by removing its object. Our guides to the long-stay visa route for British newcomers and to renewing a Withdrawal Agreement residence card cover the two neighbouring statuses owners most often hold. The second move is never to travel while a ban or an unexecuted removal order may be live without advice: carriers face penalties for boarding inadmissible passengers, border systems share alerts, and a second refusal compounds the first. If you must travel, carry the court receipt (récépissé de recours), the suspension order if one was granted, and the lawyer’s letter — and keep copies with someone in the United Kingdom who can send them at an hour’s notice.

A final word on behaviour at controls, because files are won and lost in the first ten minutes. Answer precisely, in dates: when you entered, through which port, when you leave, how many days that makes in the window. Volunteer the folder before it is demanded: passport, tax bill, utility bill, insurance certificate, return booking, calculator printout. Sign nothing you do not understand — you may ask for an interpreter — and keep every document handed to you, photographing each page. The refusal or order you challenge is the paper the officer writes that day; its boxes, dates and reasoning are the skeleton of your appeal. Owners who keep calm, count aloud and keep paper get decisions that can be beaten. Owners who argue, estimate and travel light get decisions that stick.

Conclusion

The 90/180-day rule is not hostile to British second-home owners, but it is indifferent to good faith. It counts days, not intentions: every Schengen day in the rolling 180-day window, entry and exit days included, visa-free days only, with stamps and electronic records doing the remembering for you. Count before each trip with the calculator, carry ownership and insurance proof that answers Article 6 at the border, and arrange hosting certificates for guests in good time. When your life in France outgrows 90 days, take the visitor road early — consular long-stay visa first, then the resource-backed, insured, work-free visitor card — because credibility spent on an overstay cannot be recovered at the next interview, and consulates lawfully refuse thin files. If the border or the prefecture moves against you, move faster: compulsory commission appeal for visas, immediate court challenge for removal orders and bans, each argued from dated documents rather than assurances. Your house survived Brexit. Give its calendar the same care you give its roof, and it will keep welcoming you for decades.