You have found the perfect Paris apartment, but there is a catch: somebody already lives there. For a foreign buyer, purchasing a French property with a sitting tenant is one of the most underestimated operations in French real estate law. The lease does not disappear at the notary’s desk, the tenant cannot simply be asked to leave, and any attempt to recover the flat must follow one of the few narrow paths laid down by statute, under penalty of nullity and even criminal fines. This guide explains, step by step, what a non-resident buyer inherits on completion, how long the wait can be before the property is free, and how the two lawful recovery routes work: selling with the tenant’s right of first refusal, and repossessing the flat to live in it.
French residential leases are governed mainly by Law No. 89-462 of 6 July 1989, whose Article 15 organises the landlord’s right to terminate the lease, and by the Civil Code, whose Articles 1743 and 1748 deal with the fate of the lease when the property is sold. The case law of the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation (Supreme Court for civil matters) polices every detail of these procedures, and recent rulings continue to refine them. A foreign buyer who understands this framework before signing the compromis de vente (preliminary sale agreement) negotiates a better price, avoids unpleasant surprises, and stays on the right side of the criminal provisions that punish fraudulent notices.
I. On completion day, the buyer inherits the tenant and the lease
The first reflex of many foreign buyers is to assume that ownership confers immediate possession. Under French law, it does not. The purchaser of a let property steps into the seller’s shoes and becomes the new landlord, with all the rights and obligations that status implies. Understanding exactly what is transferred, and for how long the buyer is bound, is the foundation of every sound investment in an occupied flat.
A. The lease survives the sale and binds the foreign buyer
The starting point is a venerable rule of the Civil Code. Article 1743 provides: “Si le bailleur vend la chose louée, l’acquéreur ne peut expulser le fermier, le métayer ou le locataire qui a un bail authentique ou dont la date est certaine.” In English: where the landlord sells the let property, the buyer may not evict a tenant whose lease is in notarised form or bears a certain date. In practice, almost every French residential lease satisfies this condition, so the buyer takes the property encumbered by the existing tenancy. Article 1748 adds only a narrow exception: a buyer who wishes to use a right reserved in the lease to expel the tenant on sale must still give notice in the customary local time frame, which in the residential sector governed by the 1989 Act is in reality superseded by the strict statutory notice regime described below. The official texts can be consulted here: Article 1743 of the Civil Code and Article 1748 of the Civil Code.
The courts apply this survival of the lease rigorously, including at auction sales, which interest foreign investors hunting for bargains. In a ruling of 16 January 2025, the Second Civil Chamber quashed an appeal decision concerning leases that an auction buyer wanted annulled, holding that “la cour d’appel, qui ne pouvait que constater l’opposabilité de ce bail à l’adjudicataire, a violé les textes susvisés.” In English: the court of appeal, which could only confirm that the lease was binding on the auction buyer, had breached the cited provisions. The lesson is blunt: a buyer who knew of the lease before the sale cannot later pretend it does not exist (Cass. 2e civ., 16 January 2025, No. 21-17.794).
What exactly does the buyer inherit? Everything attached to the landlord’s position: the right to receive the rent, but also the duty to maintain the dwelling, to refund the security deposit at the end of the tenancy, to account for service charges, and to answer for disputes that pre-date the sale. On the last point, buyers sometimes rely on a subrogation clause in the deed by which the seller transfers pending litigation to the buyer. The Third Civil Chamber set limits to this comfort in a decision of 16 May 2024: a tenant who had overpaid service charges to the former landlord before the sale could not be sent to claim only against the buyer simply because the deed contained a subrogation clause covering disputes arising after the transfer. The appeal court was quashed for shifting to the buyer sums the tenant had paid to the seller before the sale (Cass. 3e civ., 16 May 2024, No. 22-19.922). For the foreign buyer, the practical message is to have the notary settle the apportionment of rents, charges, insurance and the deposit precisely at completion, and to require the seller’s warranties on arrears and pending disputes rather than trusting a boilerplate subrogation clause.
The lease the buyer inherits also has its own lifespan, which no sale can shorten. Under the official service-public guidance, an unfurnished home is let for a minimum of three years, while a furnished home is let for a minimum of one year, reduced to nine months where the tenant is a student. At expiry, the lease renews itself by tacit agreement unless a valid statutory notice has been served. A foreign buyer must therefore read the existing lease before making an offer: its start date, its furnished or unfurnished nature, the rent and its revision clause, the inventory of fixtures, and the diagnostics file all determine the economics of the purchase. A flat whose unfurnished lease started eighteen months ago is a very different investment from the same flat whose lease expires in four months, as the next section shows. Foreign buyers unfamiliar with these mechanics often benefit from early advice from a real estate team in Paris before the offer becomes binding.
B. The compulsory waiting period before the buyer can give notice
Even where the buyer intends to live in the flat or to sell it on vacant, the law imposes a waiting period that depends on when the current lease ends relative to the purchase date. This timetable, set out in paragraph I of Article 15 of the 1989 Act, is one of the provisions foreign buyers discover too late. The official text is here: Article 15 of Law No. 89-462 of 6 July 1989, in force in its current wording since 29 July 2023.
Three situations must be distinguished where the buyer has acquired an occupied dwelling. First, where the current lease expires more than three years after the acquisition date, the buyer may give notice to sell at the end of the running lease. Second, where the lease expires less than three years after acquisition, the buyer may only give notice to sell at the end of the first tacit renewal or the first renewal of the running lease. Third, and most constraining, where the running lease expires less than two years after acquisition, a notice to repossess the flat for personal occupation takes effect only at the expiry of a two-year period counted from the acquisition date. In plain terms, someone who buys in September 2026 a flat whose lease ends in June 2027 cannot move in before September 2028, even with a perfectly drafted notice, and cannot force an early sale with vacant possession either.
A worked example makes the mechanism concrete. Imagine a foreign buyer completing the purchase of a Paris studio on 15 October 2026. The sitting tenant holds an unfurnished three-year lease that began on 1 February 2025 and therefore expires on 31 January 2028, which is less than three years but more than two years after acquisition. The buyer cannot give notice to sell at the January 2028 term with a six-month notice served in July 2027 and expect vacant possession on that date for a free sale: the notice to sell is only available at the end of the first tacit renewal, meaning the lease running until 31 January 2031, with notice served no later than 31 July 2030. A notice to repossess for personal occupation served for the January 2028 term would take effect only in October 2028, two years after acquisition. During the entire waiting period, the buyer remains the landlord, collects the rent, pays the non-recoverable charges, and must handle any works and disputes. Price negotiations should reflect these years of blocked enjoyment: a tenanted flat normally sells at a discount precisely for this reason, and the discount must be measured against the real timetable, not against the seller’s optimistic assurances.
Two further warnings complete the picture. First, the judge may verify of his own motion that the ground stated in the notice is genuine and that all statutory duties have been respected, and may invalidate a notice that is not supported by serious and legitimate grounds. A notice served by a buyer who never genuinely intended to sell or to move in is therefore fragile from the start. Second, where the building is subject to a safety or unsanitary-housing procedure, the landlord’s right to give notice and even the duration of the lease are suspended from the start of the adversarial procedure, which can freeze the buyer’s plans for months. The notary’s searches and the pre-purchase due diligence must cover these points: order to remedy unsanitary conditions, condominium disputes, and any administrative procedure affecting the building. In Paris and the inner suburbs, where most foreign buyers concentrate their searches, it is also prudent to attempt conciliation before the departmental conciliation commission in case of dispute, and to remember that eviction litigation goes before the judicial court of the place where the property sits, with hearings and enforcement delays that routinely stretch many months beyond the notice date.
II. The only two lawful ways to recover the flat, and the tenant’s rights at each step
Once the waiting period has been mapped, the buyer faces a binary choice: terminate the lease in order to sell the flat empty, or terminate it in order to live in it. French law recognises no third option such as paying the tenant to leave outside any framework, refusing renewal without reasons, or letting the lease simply lapse. Each of the two notices obeys its own strict formalities, and each grants the tenant protective rights that the buyer must respect to the letter.
A. Selling the flat free: the notice to sell and the tenant’s right of first refusal
The notice to sell, known as the congé pour vendre (notice to terminate for sale), is both a termination notice and a statutory offer to sell the flat to the tenant. Paragraph II of Article 15 states the rule: “Le congé vaut offre de vente au profit du locataire” (Article 15, paragraph II). In English: the notice itself constitutes an offer of sale in favour of the tenant. This duality shapes the entire procedure, and foreign sellers and buyers alike must understand that the tenant is not a passive spectator but a preferred buyer by operation of law.
Formally, a notice to sell must state, on pain of nullity, the price and the conditions of the planned sale. The Third Civil Chamber recalled this requirement with severity in a 2009 ruling: “lorsqu’il est fondé sur la décision de vendre le logement, le congé doit, à peine de nullité, indiquer le prix et les conditions de la vente projetée” (Cass. 3e civ., 18 February 2009, No. 08-11.615). In English: where the notice is based on the decision to sell the dwelling, it must state the price and conditions of the planned sale, failing which it is void. In that case, the notice was annulled because the sale offer covered only part of the leased premises, while the tenant was entitled to an offer matching the whole of what he rented. The principle remains fully current: describe the property incompletely, omit the price, or hide a condition of the sale, and the notice collapses.
The timetable then runs as follows. The offer embedded in the notice is valid during the first two months of the six-month notice period for an unfurnished letting. If the tenant accepts, he has two months from sending his reply to complete the sale, extended to four months where he declares that he will use a mortgage loan, with the lease extended until the sale deadline. If the sale is not completed in time, acceptance is retrospectively void and the tenant loses all right to remain. If the tenant declines or stays silent, he must vacate at the end of the notice period. But the tenant’s protection does not end there: where the owner later decides to sell at a lower price or on better terms for the buyer, the notary must notify the tenant of the new price and conditions, on pain of nullity of the sale itself. This subsidiary notification acts as a fresh offer valid for one month from receipt, with the same two or four-month completion mechanics. The full statutory wording of these five paragraphs must itself be reproduced in every notification, again on pain of nullity.
Three rulings illustrate how tightly the courts control this machinery. First, an inflated price can betray a fraudulent notice: in a 2022 decision, the Court quashed an appeal ruling that had validated a notice despite an allegedly excessive price, holding that the judges should have investigated whether “l’écart entre le prix proposé et celui du marché ne révélait pas le caractère frauduleux du congé délivré au locataire” (Cass. 3e civ., 9 February 2022, No. 21-12.179). In English: whether the gap between the offered price and the market price revealed the fraudulent character of the notice served on the tenant. A notice used as a pretext to remove a tenant, with a deliberately dissuasive price, exposes the landlord to invalidation and damages. Second, where the tenant exercises his subsidiary right of first refusal on the notary’s notification, the price cannot be loaded with an estate agency commission that the tenant never agreed to. In a 2023 case, tenants who had accepted the notary’s offer at 380,000 euros including a 10,000-euro agency fee sued the agency for restitution, arguing that “l’agent immobilier ne peut prétendre à une commission que lorsqu’il présente un acquéreur à un vendeur” (Cass. 3e civ., 1 March 2023, No. 21-22.073). In English: an estate agent may claim commission only where he introduces a buyer to a seller, which was not what happened when the sale resulted from the tenant’s statutory pre-emption. The Court of Cassation allowed the tenants’ appeal. Third, and symmetrically, not every irregularity kills the notice: in 2015 the Court confirmed that annulment of a notice to sell for breach of paragraph II requires proof of actual prejudice under Article 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure, so a commission included in the price that did not affect the exercise of the pre-emption right did not invalidate the notice (Cass. 3e civ., 8 October 2015, No. 14-20.666).
Finally, the criminal dimension must be taken seriously. Paragraph V of Article 15 punishes a landlord who serves a notice fraudulently justified by a decision to sell or repossess with a criminal fine of up to 6,000 euros for an individual and 30,000 euros for a company, with the tenant entitled to join the proceedings as a civil party and claim compensation. Foreign owners sometimes underestimate this provision because equivalent sanctions do not exist in their home system. Combined with the judge’s power to review the reality of the ground for the notice on his own motion, it means that a notice to sell should only ever be served for a genuine planned sale at a genuine market price, documented from the start.
B. Moving in yourself: the notice to repossess and its protected tenants
The second route is the congé pour reprise (notice to terminate for repossession), by which the landlord takes back the dwelling to live in it personally or to house a close relative. Paragraph I of Article 15 restricts the circle of lawful beneficiaries to the landlord himself, his spouse, his civil-union partner at the date of the notice, his established partner of at least one year, and their ascendants and descendants. The notice must state, on pain of nullity, the ground relied upon and, in repossession cases, the name, address and family link of the beneficiary. The notice period is six months, and the landlord must demonstrate the genuine and serious character of his decision to repossess.
Two recent decisions define the current boundaries. In October 2023, the Third Civil Chamber rejected tenants’ challenge to a repossession notice and confirmed the validation of the notice, the eviction order and the award of an occupation indemnity, while dismissing the claim for damages for fraudulent notice. The tenants had argued that “l’intention frauduleuse du bailleur ayant délivré un congé pour habiter doit s’apprécier au moment où le congé a été délivré” (Cass. 3e civ., 12 October 2023, No. 22-18.580). In English: the landlord’s allegedly fraudulent intention must be assessed at the moment the notice was served. The Court’s rejection of the appeal confirms that judges examine the reality and seriousness of the repossession plan as of the date of the notice, on the evidence as a whole, and that a landlord with a genuine, documented moving plan survives this review. Then, in April 2026, the Court delivered a ruling of immediate practical importance for buyers of tenanted flats: where the beneficiary of the repossession dies before the notice period expires, the notice loses all effect, because the conditions for repossession must be assessed in the person of the beneficiary. “le décès de celui-ci, survenu avant la date d’expiration du délai de préavis, prive d’effet le congé aux fins de reprise” (Cass. 3e civ., 16 April 2026, No. 24-13.191, published in the Bulletin). In English: the death of the beneficiary before the notice period expires deprives the repossession notice of all effect, because the repossession conditions are assessed with reference to the beneficiary himself. A foreign buyer planning that an elderly parent will occupy the flat must factor in this personal fragility, and sellers should never promise vacant possession dependent on a repossession notice whose beneficiary is in poor health.
The statute then shields certain vulnerable tenants altogether. Under paragraph III, a landlord may not refuse renewal against a tenant over sixty-five with annual income below the social-housing ceiling, unless substitute accommodation matching his needs and means is offered within the statutory geographical area; the same protection extends to a tenant supporting such a person at home. These age and income conditions are assessed at the lease expiry and notification dates respectively. A mirror protection in paragraph IV covers recipients of the disabled-childhood allowance under comparable income conditions. The only statutory escape is where the landlord himself is over sixty-five or below the same income ceiling. Before buying an occupied flat in Paris, the foreign investor must therefore establish the tenant’s age and means as far as lawfully possible, typically through the seller’s disclosures and the property manager’s file, because a protected tenant can block both sale-based and repossession-based recovery for years.
For the Paris and Île-de-France buyer, four practical points deserve emphasis. First, jurisdiction and procedure: disputes over notices belong to the judicial court of the property’s location, so a Paris flat means Paris proceedings, in French, with mandatory conciliation attempts before the departmental commission as a sensible first step. Second, realistic delays: between the six-month notice, the tacit-renewal mechanics, the two-year post-acquisition freeze in recent purchases, and court and enforcement lead times, recovery routinely takes one to three years, during which the buyer bears financing costs without use of the flat. Third, the file to assemble from day one: the running lease and its renewals, rent receipts, the tenant’s correspondence address for future notifications, the condominium (copropriété, co-ownership) documents, and written evidence of the genuine sale or moving plan. Fourth, tax awareness without improvisation: rental income received while waiting is taxable in France even for non-residents, and a later resale has its own capital-gains regime; these points require coordination with tax advice but must be budgeted from the purchase decision. Throughout, documented guidance from a real estate practice handling foreign buyers in Paris helps to sequence the notary, the property manager and the litigation timetable without missing a nullity deadline.
Conclusion
Buying a tenanted property in France is neither a trap nor a bargain in itself: it is a timed operation governed by mandatory rules. The lease survives the sale and binds the buyer, the law imposes a waiting period that can reach several years after acquisition, and only two exits exist, each with its own formalities, deadlines and judicial controls. The notice to sell offers the flat to the tenant first and exposes inflated prices to fraud review; the notice to repossess demands a genuine, personal and documented occupation plan and stops at protected tenants and at the death of its beneficiary. A foreign buyer who verifies the lease, prices the waiting years, serves notices exactly as the statute requires, and keeps proof of every step turns an occupied flat from a legal risk into a negotiated opportunity.
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