You bought off-plan in France, wired stage payments for two years, and now the developer’s letter tells you to come and collect the keys. For most foreign buyers, handover day feels like the end of the story: you walk through the flat, sign a form, and fly home. Under French law, it is closer to the beginning. The day you take possession sets running clocks that decide whether a cracked tile, a leaking shower, a missing parking space, or a facade that does not match the plans can still be fixed at the seller’s expense — or whether you will pay for them yourself. This guide explains the French handover of a vente en l’état futur d’achèvement (off-plan sale, known as VEFA) as a practical sequence: what happens at the delivery appointment, what to write on the handover report, when you may hold back the final five percent of the price, and how the one-year repair warranty and the longer construction warranties work after you have the keys, including the Paris and Île-de-France specifics that change how you prove your case.

Two distinctions run through everything that follows, and confusing them is the costliest mistake a foreign buyer can make. The first is between livraison (delivery, the handover of the property to you) and réception des travaux (acceptance of the works, the legal act between the developer and the builders). The second is between a defect that was visible on handover day and one that was hidden. French law treats these pairs with different rules, different deadlines, and different courts’ reasoning, and three recent rulings of the Cour de cassation (France’s highest civil court) show exactly where buyers win and where they lose.

I. Delivery Day: What French Law Requires and What to Write Down

A. Livraison Is Not Réception, and the Difference Decides Who Owes You What

When you buy off-plan, you sign a vente en l’état futur d’achèvement (sale in the future state of completion), a contract by which the developer undertakes to build and then deliver a finished home. The official French public-service guide, verified on 18 September 2026, defines delivery plainly: it is the stage at which the developer hands you the keys, and it is materialised by the key handover together with the signing of minutes or a handover report drawn up between the developer and you, which may contain reservations for apparent defects or finishes to be redone. The seller must summon you to the delivery appointment by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, and at that appointment you are entitled to be accompanied by a building professional or a commissaire de justice (judicial officer, formerly known as a court bailiff). That right to bring your own expert is not decoration: it is the procedural foundation of everything you will be able to claim later.

Delivery must not be confused with réception des travaux (acceptance of the works), which takes place earlier, between the developer as project owner and the construction companies, and which does not involve you at all. Article 1792-6 of the Civil Code states: “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 it accepts the works, with or without reservations.) In other words, acceptance is the developer telling the builders that the building is taken over, reservations or not. Your delivery happens afterwards, between the developer-seller and you. The two acts trigger different warranties: acceptance starts the builders’ one-year, two-year, and ten-year warranties, while delivery starts your own clocks against the developer-seller, including the short and strict deadline for apparent defects explained below.

English-language guides sometimes blur this line. A well-known expatriate property guide correctly warns that the handover report between builder and developer, the procès-verbal de réception (acceptance report), must be distinguished from your own delivery report, the procès-verbal de livraison (delivery report), and advises buyers to secure a contractual right to a copy of the builder-developer report when signing the VEFA contract. That advice is sound and worth following, because the acceptance report tells you what the developer already knew: which defects were spotted at acceptance, which reservations the builders are working through, and when the one-year warranty periods started running. But where general guides stop at practical tips, French case law adds teeth, as Part II shows.

Before the appointment, check three things. First, the contractual delivery date and the penalty clause: VEFA contracts routinely provide daily late-delivery penalties, and if the home is finished and habitable on the agreed date, no penalties are due, while a delay beyond that date in principle triggers them, subject to the contract’s clauses extending time for bad weather, strikes, or subcontractor failure. Second, whether the home is legally capable of being delivered: the dwelling counts as finished when the essential works and equipment for its normal use have been carried out — water, gas, electricity, heating, accessible stairs, a working lift, lit common areas — while minor imperfections such as paint marks or small door adjustments do not prevent delivery but may be recorded as reservations. Third, who holds the completion guarantee: the VEFA contract must state the delivery deadline and, where applicable, the financial guarantee backing completion, and Article L. 261-11 of the Construction and Housing Code requires the notarised contract to set out the description of the property, the price and payment terms, and the delivery deadline. Arrive with the plans, the technical specifications, and the developer’s brochures that have contractual value, because conformity is judged against those documents.

B. The Delivery Report, Reservations, and Holding Back the Final Five Percent

At the appointment, walk every room against the contractual documents and write down everything that is wrong, missing, unfinished, or different from what was promised. A reservation (réserve) is a written note on the delivery report describing a specific apparent problem — for example a scratched living-room window, a door that does not close, a missing shutter, paint splashes, a socket that does not work, a bathroom fitted differently from the plans. Precision matters more than volume: a precise entry such as living-room window, scratch on the lower pane, south side beats a vague windows to check. Photograph each item next to its description, keep the photos’ metadata, and if you brought a professional or a judicial officer, have them countersign or draw up their own report (constat), which carries special weight in court. Foreign buyers who accept the keys during a flying visit and plan to “send a list later” weaken their position considerably: defects noted contradictorily on the day are far harder for the developer to dispute than complaints raised months afterwards.

French law distinguishes apparent from hidden defects by a simple test confirmed by the public-service guide: a defect is apparent when an ordinary, non-professional buyer can spot it through simple checks, without technical investigation or an expert, because its appearance and consequences are immediately visible. Hidden defects are those discovered through use of the home or only after specialist examinations. The distinction is decisive because the two categories run on different clocks, and the apparent-defect clock is brutally short. Do not assume that a problem you could not evaluate counts as hidden: courts apply the test objectively, and a buyer who noticed damp patches but wrote nothing may find them treated as apparent.

Where reservations exist, you are entitled not to pay the developer the final balance directly but to deposit it with a third party — in practice the notaire (the public officer who authenticates French conveyances), or, if the parties cannot agree on where and how, the Caisse des dépôts et consignations (the state deposit institution). This consignation du solde du prix (deposit of the price balance, the final five percent) suspends direct payment while still letting you take delivery: the developer cannot refuse to hand over the dwelling on the ground that the balance has been deposited rather than paid into its hands. Use this lever whenever the reservations are more than cosmetic. Paying the full balance on the day against a vague promise that “the teams will come back” surrenders your strongest pressure point; the deposited five percent is what brings the finishing teams back. Note the boundary of this mechanism: it secures the repair of noted defects and non-conformities, not a general discount, and it must be released once the reserved works are done, a finding recorded jointly or, failing agreement, by a court.

One further consequence of delivery deserves attention because foreign owners often discover it through an insurer’s refusal: from delivery, custody of the home passes to you. You become its keeper, responsible day to day for its use, maintenance, and safety, so that if a tile falls from your balcony or your washing-machine hose floods the neighbour below, your liability can be engaged. Take out or activate your home insurance from the delivery date, and if the contract leaves you to carry out finishing works yourself — flooring, a fitted kitchen, sanitary fittings — understand that you bear the cost and the liability for those works, including damage they cause to common areas, without recourse against the developer.

II. After the Keys: Forcing Repair Inside the Warranty Architecture

A. Apparent Defects and the One-Month Plus One-Year Trap That Closes Fast

The seller of a building to be constructed cannot shed liability for apparent construction defects or apparent non-conformities before acceptance of the works, nor before one month has passed after you take possession. Article 1642-1 of the Civil Code provides: “Le vendeur d’un immeuble à construire ne peut être déchargé, ni avant la réception des travaux, ni avant l’expiration d’un délai d’un mois après la prise de possession par l’acquéreur, des vices de construction ou des défauts de conformité alors apparents.” (The seller of a building to be constructed cannot be discharged, either before acceptance of the works or before one month after the buyer takes possession, from apparent construction defects or apparent non-conformities.) The same article adds that there is no ground for cancelling the contract or reducing the price if the seller undertakes to carry out the repair — a sentence that has generated a whole body of litigation, examined below. The action itself must then be brought, on pain of forfeiture, within the year following the date on which the seller can be discharged from apparent defects, under Article 1648 of the Civil Code: “l’action doit être introduite, à peine de forclusion, dans l’année qui suit la date à laquelle le vendeur peut être déchargé des vices ou des défauts de conformité apparents.” (The action must be brought, on pain of forfeiture, within the year following the date on which the seller may be discharged from apparent defects or non-conformities.) In practice, the public-service guide translates this into a working rule: sue within one year of acceptance of the works, or within thirteen months of taking possession, whichever is later — and after that, the seller can no longer be held liable for apparent defects at all.

Two points in that machinery habitually surprise foreign buyers. First, “apparent” is judged without indulgence for distance or inexperience: if the defect could be seen on a normal walk-through, the short clock applies even if you live abroad and visited once. Second, the seller’s promise to repair blocks the price-reduction route — but only if the promise is genuine. In a ruling of 7 March 2019, the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation upheld a €30,000 price reduction granted to the buyer of a new house whose windows suffered from a particularly obvious defect linked to an architectural choice favouring facade aesthetics over interior comfort: Cass. 3rd civ., 7 March 2019, No. 18-16.182. The developer argued that its offer — exchanging the house for the neighbouring one, then repairing — barred any price cut under Article 1642-1. The court disagreed: the appeal judges had sovereignly found that the proposed replacement house was not shown to have the same characteristics and that, given the particularly obvious nature of the defect, the reliability of the repair proposal could reasonably be doubted, so it was neither relevant nor appropriate and did not constitute the repair undertaking that would have defeated the price-reduction claim. The lesson for buyers is symmetrical: demand repair first and in writing, but if the developer’s proposal is evasive, downgraded, or simply not credible, you may still ask the court for a price reduction — provided you act within the one-year forfeiture period.

The most powerful clarification of recent years concerns buyers who discover, after moving in, that a defect visible at delivery was actually known — or should have been known — much earlier, at acceptance between the developer and the builders. Developers used to argue that defects apparent when the buyer took possession fell exclusively under the short apparent-defect action, cutting off the ten-year warranty. The Cour de cassation closed that door on 14 January 2021: Cass. 3rd civ., 14 January 2021, No. 19-21.130. In that case, the owners’ association of a residence sold off-plan complained years later of persistent defects and unfinished common areas — entrance gate, smoke vents, paint finishes, chipped tiling, unconnected gutters, undersized garages, a sewage plant, rainwater runoff — and sued the developer-seller under the ten-year warranty. The appeal court had thrown the claims out as time-barred, reasoning that the problems were apparent at the date the buyers took possession of the common areas. The highest court quashed that ruling, holding that a buyer benefits from both the ten-year warranty action and the apparent-defect action concurrently, and that: “le caractère apparent du désordre s’apprécie en la personne du maître de l’ouvrage et au jour de la réception.” (Whether a problem is apparent is assessed with regard to the project owner, at the date of acceptance of the works.) It did not matter that the defects were visible when the buyers took possession; what counted was whether they were apparent to the developer, as project owner, when it accepted the builders’ works. For a foreign buyer, the practical meaning is considerable: a defect you could see on handover day is not automatically confined to the short one-year action. If it was hidden from the developer at acceptance — or if its seriousness only emerges later — the ten-year route under Articles 1646-1 and 1792 of the Civil Code may still be open, and the two actions can run side by side. That is precisely why obtaining a copy of the builder-developer acceptance report, with its reservations, matters so much: it reveals what the developer knew and when.

Concretely, once you spot an apparent defect after delivery, the sequence is: written notice to the developer describing each defect with photos, referring to the delivery report and the contractual documents; a formal demand (mise en demeure) by registered letter or judicial officer if nothing moves; and, if the one-year horizon approaches, proceedings before the competent court — for most Paris and Île-de-France VEFA disputes, the tribunal judiciaire (judicial court), with interim relief available from the summary judge (juge des référés) to order repair under penalty or appoint an expert. Never let the forfeiture deadline pass while negotiating: negotiation does not suspend it, and a developer who strings you along past the anniversary does so at your expense. If you live abroad, give a written mandate to someone in France — or instruct counsel — to send the formal notices and, if needed, file in time.

B. The One-Year Perfect-Completion Warranty, Then the Two-Year and Ten-Year Safety Nets

Alongside the apparent-defect action against the seller, a second mechanism covers all problems reported at or after acceptance, whoever you claim against: the garantie de parfait achèvement (one-year perfect-completion warranty). Article 1792-6 of the Civil Code provides that the contractor owes it for one year from acceptance, that it covers the repair of every problem reported by the project owner — whether through reservations on the acceptance report or by later written notice for problems revealed afterwards — and that: “En l’absence d’un tel accord ou en cas d’inexécution dans le délai fixé, les travaux peuvent, après mise en demeure restée infructueuse, être exécutés aux frais et risques de l’entrepreneur défaillant.” (Failing agreement on time limits, or if the works are not performed in time, they may, after a formal demand that goes unheeded, be carried out at the expense and risk of the defaulting contractor.) The warranty does not extend to wear and tear or normal use, and completion of the required works is recorded jointly or, failing that, by a court. Because Article 1646-1 extends the builders’ warranties to the off-plan buyer from acceptance, you benefit from this one-year warranty against the developer-seller as well: notify in writing every defect that appears during the first year — sticking doors as the building settles, seal failures, heating imbalances, ventilation faults — and each notified item must be repaired.

A 2018 ruling gives this warranty its sharp edge and corrects a persistent misunderstanding: reservations do not keep the construction contract alive. In that case, a swimming-pool owner whose contractor had gone into liquidation obtained an interim order forcing the company that had taken over the business to lift all the reservations noted at acceptance, on the theory that the contract was still running until the reservations were lifted. The Cour de cassation quashed the order: Cass. 3rd civ., 6 September 2018, No. 17-21.155, holding that “le contrat d’entreprise prend fin à la réception de l’ouvrage, avec ou sans réserves”, i.e. the construction contract ends upon acceptance of the works, with or without reservations.) A developer or contractor that answers your repair request by saying the file is still open and the teams will come is describing goodwill, not law. Once acceptance is pronounced, enforcement runs through the warranties — the one-year warranty first, by formal demand followed, if needed, by court-authorised repair at the defaulter’s expense and risk — not through an endless punch list. For the foreign buyer this is leverage with a deadline: send the formal demand early enough that a judge can still order the works within a useful time, and keep every exchange in writing, because the court will ask for proof of the unsuccessful demand before authorising repair at the other’s cost.

Beyond the first year, two further warranties take over, and your VEFA contract sits inside all of them through Article 1646-1, which expressly states that these warranties benefit successive owners of the building. The garantie biennale (two-year warranty on equipment that can be removed without damaging the structure — shutters, taps, radiators, electrical fittings) and the garantie décennale (ten-year warranty covering damage that threatens the building’s solidity or makes it unfit for its purpose, under Article 1792) both run from acceptance and both bind the developer-seller toward you. The 2021 ruling discussed above is the bridge between these layers: a problem that looked merely cosmetic at delivery — a poorly connected gutter, a defective sewage plant — can mature into unfitness for purpose, and the ten-year action is then assessed on what the developer knew at acceptance, not on what you saw at delivery. Notify the developer and, where the damage is serious, the developer’s ten-year insurer (assureur décennal) whose details appear in the sale file; French developers must carry ten-year liability cover, and the corresponding assurance dommages-ouvrage (pre-funded damage insurance taken out by the project owner) is designed to pay for repairs quickly without waiting for liability to be apportioned.

Paris and Île-de-France add practical layers worth building into your file from day one. Delivery appointments in large Parisian programmes are often organised in batches, with short slots and standard-form reports that leave little room for detailed reservations: insist on appending your own dated list and photographs, and consider having a commissaire de justice based in Paris attend or draw up a report the same week, since courts in the capital give decisive weight to contemporaneous independent findings. Common areas (parties communes) follow a separate delivery track through the owners’ association and its property manager (syndic), assisted where needed by an expert; if you buy in a residence with extensive common areas — underground car parks, green roofs, collective heating — coordinate with the association rather than pursuing façade or plant-room defects alone. Penalty clauses for late delivery deserve the same rigour: Île-de-France programmes frequently invoke contractual time-extension clauses for weather, strikes, or subcontractor failure, and contesting those extensions requires the site records, not impressions, so request the monthly site reports if delivery slips. Finally, a tax flag without tax advice: rental or resale plans for a new Paris property interact with French registration, value-added, and capital-gains rules for non-residents, including the appointed-tax-representative mechanism in some sales, so have the fiscal side reviewed separately rather than treating the VEFA file as purely a construction matter. Readers working through the wider purchase framework — financing, the notaire’s checks, co-ownership charges — will find the broader context in our guide to French real estate law for international clients in Paris, which maps how each stage of a Paris acquisition connects to the next.

Conclusion

Handover day rewards the buyer who treats it as a legal appointment rather than a celebration. Bring a professional, measure against the contractual documents, write every reservation precisely on the delivery report, photograph each one, and where the defects are more than trivial, deposit the final five percent instead of paying it over. Then work the clocks: the apparent-defect action closes one year after acceptance or thirteen months after possession and is never suspended by negotiation; the one-year perfect-completion warranty requires written notice followed, if ignored, by a formal demand before a court can order repair at the defaulter’s expense and risk; and the two-year and ten-year warranties stand behind both, judged on what the developer knew at acceptance rather than on what you saw with the keys in your hand. The three rulings examined here all point the same way: courts protect buyers who create a paper trail early — the contradictory report, the dated photographs, the registered letters — and show little mercy to those who trusted a verbal promise. Keep that file complete from the first visit, calendar every deadline the day you take possession, and escalate in writing the moment a promise slips, because in French off-plan law the best-protected buyer is simply the best-documented one.