You bought a charming two-bedroom in the 11th arrondissement, or a stone house with blue shutters an hour from Bordeaux, and the rental income is supposed to pay the taxe foncière (local property tax), the charges de copropriété (co-ownership charges) and the mortgage while the property gains value. Then the diagnostic de performance énergétique (energy performance certificate, universally called the DPE) comes back rated G, and your letting agent tells you the lease you were about to sign would be illegal. Since 1 January 2025, France bans the letting of G-rated homes, the F-rated wave follows in 2028, and the tenant you already have holds remedies that go as far as a court-ordered rent cut. The good news, and the reason this guide is published now, is that two recent developments change the picture for foreign owners: the DPE calculation itself was reset on 1 January 2026 in a way that improves many electrically heated homes, and Parliament is examining a bill, voted by the Senate on 8 July 2026, that would let many G-rated homes back onto the rental market while works are organised. This guide explains the ban exactly as it stands in September 2026, what your tenant can do to you, what the Cour de cassation decided this year about indecent homes and faulty diagnostics, and the concrete steps a non-resident owner should take before signing, renewing or defending a lease.
The first reflex is to understand that the ban is not a fine payable to the administration. It works through the civil law of leases: an energy-inefficient home is legally indecent, an indecent home breaches the landlord’s duty to deliver decent housing, and the tenant enforces that breach before the local judge with works orders and rent reductions. Your exposure is therefore inside the lease itself, and it survives the expiry of the initial term, because a tacitly renewed lease counts as a new lease for the calendar below. The second reflex is to treat the DPE as a living document rather than a one-off formality. The January 2026 recalculation, the collective DPE of your building, and the Senate’s pending reform all mean that a G rating printed in 2023 may no longer describe your property’s legal position in 2026. Owners who check these three layers before acting keep their rental income; owners who ignore them discover the ban through a summons.
I. The rental ban as it stands in September 2026
A. The calendar, the decency rule and the tenant’s weapons
France phases the ban by lease date, and every band is published on the official service-public fiche for decent housing. For a residential lease signed, renewed or tacitly renewed between 2023 and 2024, only a home consuming less than 450 kWh of final energy per square metre per year could be let. For a lease signed, renewed or tacitly renewed between 2025 and 2027, only homes rated A to F may be let, which is the provision that expelled class G from the rental market on 1 January 2025. For a lease signed, renewed or tacitly renewed between 2028 and 2033, only classes A to E will qualify, and for leases from 2034 onwards, only classes A to D. The government’s information service confirms the first step expressly: since 1 January 2025 it has been forbidden to put a G-rated home up for rent, these energy-hungry properties being deemed indecent, and the prohibition applies to leases signed from the start of 2025. The trap foreign owners miss is the word renewed: a lease that rolls over silently at the end of its term is a renewed lease, so a G-rated flat let continuously since 2022 becomes illegal to keep letting once its current term renews inside the 2025-2027 window.
The legal engine behind the calendar is the landlord’s duty to deliver decent housing. Article 1719 of the Civil Code obliges the landlord, by the very nature of the contract and without any special clause, to deliver the rented thing and, where it is the tenant’s main home, a decent home, adding that where rented residential premises are unfit for that use, the landlord cannot rely on the nullity of the lease or its rescission to demand the occupant’s expulsion. The implementing standard for decency, including the minimum energy-performance criterion, is set by regulation, and the service-public fiche cited above is its public timetable. A foreign landlord should therefore read a G rating not as an administrative label but as a contractual breach in waiting: the day the tenant seizes the judge, the landlord is defending a failure of the delivery obligation, not contesting a fine.
The tenant’s remedies are codified and muscular. Where the rented home does not satisfy the decency provisions, the tenant may demand that the owner bring it into compliance without affecting the validity of the current contract, and the judge seized by either party determines the works to be carried out and their deadline, may reduce the rent or suspend its payment, with or without earmarking, along with the duration of the lease, until the works are done, and forwards the decision to the State’s representative in the département. That is the content of Article 20-1 of the Act of 6 July 1989 as restated by the Cour de cassation this year: « le locataire peut demander au propriétaire sa mise en conformité sans qu’il soit porté atteinte à la validité du contrat en cours » (if the rented home does not satisfy the provisions of Article 6, the tenant may require the owner to bring it into compliance without affecting the validity of the current contract) (Civ. 3rd, 4 June 2026, No. 24-16.993, published in the Bulletin). Note the three separate levers: a works order with a deadline, a rent reduction or suspension that lasts until compliance, and an automatic report to the préfet, which means the dispute can attract the attention of the authorities beyond the two parties. A rent reduction granted on this ground is not capped by statute today, a point the pending reform proposes to change, as explained below.
Before counting on any of this as a buyer, understand what the DPE itself is in law. Article L. 126-26 of the Construction and Housing Code defines the energy performance diagnostic as the document stating the quantity of energy actually consumed or estimated, in primary and final energy, with the induced greenhouse-gas emissions, for standardised use, plus a classification against reference values, ventilation information, improvement recommendations and the theoretical cost of the listed uses, drawn up by a qualified person. It is that document, annexed to the sale file and to the lease, that decides which side of the ban your property falls on. Which is why the January 2026 recalculation matters so much: the same flat, with the same boiler and the same windows, can carry a different legal destiny depending on whether its DPE was drawn up under the old or the new arithmetic.
The recalculation is official, dated and favourable to electric heating. By an order published in the Journal officiel, the primary-energy conversion factor for electricity in the DPE formula was cut from 2.3 to 1.9 with effect on 1 January 2026, aligning France with the updated European value and recognising electricity that is largely decarbonised through nuclear and renewable generation. The ecology ministry states that the change will improve the DPE of electrically heated homes, that no home will see its label downgraded, and that DPEs issued in 2025 and earlier remain valid while being updatable free of charge, without a new visit from the diagnostician, on the Ademe DPE-Audit observatory website. For a foreign owner, the operational consequence is immediate and cheap: before budgeting tens of thousands of euros of works, or before accepting a tenant’s claim that the home is a G, get the existing DPE re-run under the 2026 method. A property that was G by a hair under the old factor may now be F, which is lettable until 2028, and the updated document costs nothing through the official channel.
One more layer exists for flats: the collective building DPE. Since 2026, every collective residential building whose building permit predates 1 January 2013 must hold a building-level DPE, kept available by the syndic (managing agent) and annexed to the building’s maintenance log. Article L. 126-31 of the Construction and Housing Code requires that collective diagnostic and its ten-year renewal cycle. Ask your syndic for it before any lease decision: under the reform voted by the Senate, that collective rating could become your shield, as Part II explains. Foreign owners who manage from abroad through an agent should put this request in writing now, because syndics respond to dated written requests and the document takes weeks to obtain in large copropriétés.
B. The eviction shortcut the courts have just closed
Confronted with an indecent home and a tenant demanding works and a rent cut, some landlords reach for what looks like the emergency exit: terminate the lease for legitimate and serious grounds, citing a renovation project, recover the empty flat, do the works, and re-let at a higher rent. The Cour de cassation shut that exit on 4 June 2026 in a ruling every foreign landlord should read before serving any notice. A landlord had let a studio whose main room measured 8.84 square metres; a final 2019 judgment had held the unit indecent and unfit for habitation; the landlord then served notice for legitimate and serious grounds based on a works project and rent arrears, and obtained validation and eviction on appeal. The Third Civil Chamber quashed that validation, holding: « ne constitue pas un motif légitime et sérieux de congé la réalisation de travaux par le bailleur destinés à remédier à l’indécence du logement dont il avait connaissance lors de la conclusion du bail » (works by the landlord intended to cure the indecency of a home of which it was aware when the lease was signed cannot constitute legitimate and serious grounds for notice) (Civ. 3rd, 4 June 2026, No. 24-16.993, published in the Bulletin).
The reasoning matters more than the outcome. The Court recalled that the landlord must deliver a decent home free of manifest risks to health and safety and meeting the minimum energy-performance criterion, and that the tenant of a non-compliant home may seek compliance, a rent reduction or a suspension from the judge. A landlord who knew of the indecency when signing cannot manufacture legitimate grounds out of the very works the law already obliges it to perform. For a foreign buyer, the message runs in both directions. As a landlord, never serve a works-based notice on a home whose DPE or surface defects you knew about at the outset; the notice will be annulled and you will pay costs. As a buyer of an already-let G-rated flat, price the file accordingly: the sitting tenant cannot be removed through this shortcut, the rent can be cut by the judge, and the works bill is yours from the day of the authentic deed.
None of this means every notice is doomed. The statute keeps distinct tracks for sale and for repossession to live in the property, each with its own notice periods, protected-tenant shields and formal contents, and a notice that genuinely rests on those grounds, properly served and honestly motivated, remains available. But the June 2026 ruling draws the line exactly where tempted landlords cross it: curing your own known breach is a duty, not a ground for eviction. If you own through a société civile immobilière (non-trading property company) or from abroad, instruct your manager in writing never to serve a works-based notice on an F- or G-rated unit without prior legal review of the DPE history, because the notice, once served, creates the very paper trail the tenant will use.
Where does that leave the landlord of a G-rated home today, while the Senate’s reform is still pending? The honest procedural posture has three limbs. First, do not sign, renew or allow the tacit renewal of a lease on a G-rated home without advice, since each of those events falls inside the ban. Second, if the tenant seizes the judge, defend on diligence and proportionality: document every feasible improvement already made, every copropriété refusal, every architectural or heritage constraint, because the judge sets the works and the deadline and the current uncapped reduction rewards the well-documented file. Third, open the works track in parallel through the copropriété: vote insulation, glazing, ventilation and heating items at the general meeting, because the pending reform’s coming grace periods will run from dated works contracts, and owners who can show a voted, contracted programme on the day the reform enters into force will be first through the door. Our real estate team in Paris sees these files weekly, and the landlords who fare best are invariably those whose paper trail predates the dispute.
II. Buying, diagnosing and selling around the ban
A. The diagnostics file that moves the price
In France, the sale file carries its own energy truth, and it is delivered twice: at the preliminary contract and at the authentic deed. Article L. 271-4 of the Construction and Housing Code requires the seller to annex a technical diagnostics file to the promise of sale or, absent a promise, to the authentic deed, containing, under the provisions governing each, the lead-risk report, the asbestos statement, the termite condition report, the interior gas installation report and the further documents the article lists, including the DPE. For a foreign buyer, the compromis is therefore already an energy commitment: the DPE rating shown there frames the price negotiation, the financing, and, where the property will be let, the entire rental business plan. Never treat the diagnostics as boilerplate forwarded by the agent; they are the seller’s statutory representations, and the courts give them teeth.
The teeth were sharpened twice in the last twelve months. First, the diagnostics shown at the preliminary contract do not freeze the file: where the underlying risk changes before completion, the file must be refreshed, and the price can move with it. On 19 February 2026 the Cour de cassation held that where, after the promise of sale, the plot falls inside an area covered by a prescribed or approved natural-risk prevention plan, the technical file is completed at the signing of the authentic deed with a risk statement or an update of the existing one, failing which the buyer may seek resolution or a price reduction, and that where a prescribed plan mentioned in the promise is approved before the authentic deed, the file must be updated to reflect the approved plan, which ranks as a public-utility easement: « le dossier de diagnostic technique est complété, lors de la signature de l’acte authentique de vente, par un état des risques ou par une mise à jour de l’état existant, l’acquéreur pouvant, en cas de non-respect de ces dispositions, poursuivre la résolution du contrat ou demander au juge une diminution du prix » (the technical diagnostics file must, on pain of resolution of the sale or reduction of the price, be completed with an update of the risk statement resulting from the approved plan ranking as a public-utility easement) (Civ. 3rd, 19 February 2026, No. 24-10.524, published in the Bulletin). The case concerned flood risk on building land, not energy, but the method transfers directly: a DPE or risk statement that was accurate at the compromis and stale at the deed exposes the seller to resolution or a price cut, so buyers should demand a refreshed file at completion and sellers should volunteer it.
Second, an erroneous diagnostic is not a harmless paperwork error; it guarantees the buyer against the risk it covers. On 25 September 2025 the Court confirmed, for termites, that the technical diagnostic protects the buyer against infestation risk, so that losses flowing from a wrong diagnosis are certain and compensable, while reports on non-mandatory wood-decay agents only alert the buyer and sound in loss of chance: « le diagnostic technique garantit l’acquéreur contre le risque d’infestation par les termites » (the technical diagnostic guarantees the buyer against the risk of termite infestation) (Civ. 3rd, 25 September 2025, No. 23-21.683). A foreign buyer reading this should draw the practical parallel with energy: where a diagnostic states a reassuring rating or misses a material defect the diagnostician was bound to detect, the liability chain runs from the buyer back through the seller to the diagnostician and its insurer, and courts quantify the loss rather than dismissing it as hypothetical. Commission an independent reading of the DPE’s input data where the rating sits on a class boundary, keep the invoice trail of any post-purchase energy surprise, and act within the limitation periods rather than waiting for the next heating bill.
Hidden defects complete the buyer’s arsenal where the problem is not paper but the building itself: damp behind fresh paint, a cracked drain, a heating system that cannot physically deliver the consumption the DPE assumed. Article 1641 of the Civil Code holds the seller liable for hidden defects that render the thing unfit for its intended use or diminish that use so far that the buyer would not have bought, or would have paid less, had it known. Article 1643 adds that the seller answers for hidden defects even unknown to it, unless it stipulated exemption from all warranty: « Il est tenu des vices cachés, quand même il ne les aurait pas connus » (it is liable for hidden defects even if it did not know of them). The exemption clause every notaire inserts is therefore the hinge of the dispute, and on 23 October 2025 the Cour de cassation restated its boundary between professionals: a clause limiting or excluding hidden-defects warranty is enforceable against a professional buyer of the same specialty as the seller, so that « la clause limitative ou exclusive de garantie des vices cachés est opposable à un acheteur professionnel de même spécialité que celui qui lui vend la chose » (the clause limiting or excluding hidden-defects warranty is enforceable against a professional buyer of the same specialty as the one selling it the thing) (Civ. 3rd, 23 October 2025, No. 23-18.469). The appeal court had been quashed for merely asserting the buyer’s lack of asbestos expertise without checking whether the buyer, a property investment company, practised the same specialty as the seller. A private foreign buyer is not that professional and keeps the full warranty; but a foreign buyer purchasing through a property-trading structure should assume the exemption clause will be enforced against it and price the technical audit accordingly.
Apply this to the concrete purchase of an F- or G-rated property in 2026. The rating itself is disclosed, so it is not a hidden defect; the discount for the label belongs in the negotiated price, not in a later lawsuit. What remains actionable after completion is the gap between the paper and the reality: insulation that the DPE assumed and the walls do not contain, a boiler older than the file states, humidity the report should have flagged. Structure the compromis in three moves: a DPE drawn up or updated under the 2026 method as the reference document, a financing and works-costing contingency sized on real contractor quotes rather than the DPE’s theoretical amounts, and a completion-date refresh of the whole diagnostics file, with a price-adjustment clause for any material adverse update. That is how a disclosed G becomes a negotiated opportunity instead of a litigated surprise.
B. The reform that could reopen the market, and what to do meanwhile
The hardest question owners ask in September 2026 is whether the Senate’s bill changes anything today. The honest answer is no, not yet, and any adviser who tells you otherwise is selling comfort. The government-backed bill to revive private rental investment was voted by the Senate on 8 July 2026; it is to be examined by the National Assembly in autumn 2026 for application at the end of 2026 or the start of 2027. Until promulgation, the G ban, the tenant’s uncapped remedies and the closed eviction shortcut described above are the whole of the law. But the bill’s content, reported in detail by the professional press, tells a diligent owner exactly which paper to start assembling now, because every grace mechanism in the text runs from documents you can create today.
The core of the project is a broadened set of exceptions that would keep most G-rated homes, and later F-rated homes, legally lettable. Alongside the existing impossibilities, prohibitions and copropriété blockages, which already require the owner to show all feasible improvements were made, the reform would add disproportionate cost, works programmes engaged by the copropriété, by a single owner or for a house, a collective DPE rated F, and tenant opposition to works, with the disproportionate-cost threshold expected around works exceeding half the property’s market value as assessed by a professional. It would give primacy to the collective DPE: a top-floor studio rated G would count as decent and lettable where the building’s collective rating meets the required level. It would grant compliance stays running from the works contract, five years where the copropriété contracts works and three years for single-owner and house programmes, during which energy decency is deemed satisfied. And it would reshape sanctions: no rent reduction at all inside an exception case, since the home would count as decent, and outside the exceptions a judge-ordered reduction calibrated on the landlord’s diligence and capped at the tenant’s extra energy cost, illustrated by the official example of a 25-euro monthly gap between a G home’s and an F home’s heating cost. None of this is in force; all of it rewards owners whose files already contain voted works, signed contracts, copropriété minutes and professional valuations.
Around that core sit two further moving parts worth watching without building your budget on them. The private-landlord tax incentive created in early 2026 would be simplified and extended, including to older houses, to pull investors back into affordable rental supply; treat that as a signal to model, never as a promise, and take tax advice in your country of residence before structuring anything around it. And the DPE arithmetic itself would be revised again in 2027 to penalise all-electric homes less, continuing the 2026 reset’s direction; the practical upshot is that electrically heated flats are the segment where patience plus a free Ademe recalculation most often pays. What is not moving, and should anchor your planning, is the calendar’s direction of travel: the F wave of 2028 and the E wave of 2034 remain the horizon, so works that lift a G to F merely buy time unless the programme aims higher.
Translate all of this into a foreign owner’s checklist for the next ninety days. First, inventory: list every unit you own, its current DPE with its date and method, its lease status and renewal dates, and the collective building DPE obtained in writing from the syndic. Second, recalculate: run every pre-2026 DPE for an electrically heated home through the Ademe observatory’s free 2026-method update before spending a euro on works. Third, freeze the risk: take no new lease and accept no tacit renewal on a confirmed G without advice, and put any works-based notice project on hold pending review of the June 2026 case law. Fourth, build the reform file in advance: table energy works at the next copropriété general meeting, collect contractor quotes, have disproportionate-cost valuations prepared by a professional where relevant, and keep every refusal, from the copropriété, the architect or the heritage authority, in dated writing. Fifth, negotiate purchases with the ban inside the price: a G-rated flat is worth its rent net of the works, the void periods and the litigation risk the tenant’s remedies represent, and the compromis should carry the refreshed-diagnostics and price-adjustment machinery described above. Owners who work through these five steps with their manager and their Paris real estate counsel convert a frightening acronym into an administered file; owners who wait for the reform to save them will discover that grace periods only protect the prepared.
Conclusion
France’s energy rental ban is neither a scarecrow nor a death sentence for foreign landlords; it is a procedural system with published dates, codified tenant remedies and a judiciary that enforces both sides’ duties. The dates say G since 2025, F from 2028 and E from 2034, with tacit renewals caught at every step. The remedies say works orders, rent reductions and prefect referrals for the tenant, and no eviction shortcut for the landlord who knew of the indecency when signing. The courts of 2025 and 2026 say diagnostics must be refreshed at completion on pain of resolution or a price cut, wrong diagnoses compensate certain loss, and exemption clauses only shield sellers against same-specialty professionals. And September 2026 says the DPE arithmetic has already improved many electric homes for free, while a Senate-voted reform promises exceptions, multi-year stays and capped sanctions that only the well-documented will capture. Check your ratings under the 2026 method, freeze risky lease events, build the works paper trail, and negotiate every purchase price with the ban inside it. The landlords who prosper through the energy transition are not those with the warmest flats today but those with the most complete files tomorrow.
Need a quick opinion on your case
If your French property is rated F or G, or your tenant is demanding works or a rent reduction, our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an attorney of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page with your DPE, your lease and the dates of your next renewal.