You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your French company — a société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or a société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited liability company) — rents an office in Paris, a shop in Lyon or a warehouse near Roissy. The company is immatriculated, meaning registered, at the Registre du commerce et des sociétés (RCS, the trade and companies register kept by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court), and its Kbis extract — the official identity card of a French company — shows a French address. One morning your property manager forwards a letter: the landlord refuses to renew, increases the rent by 40%, or serves a payment order (commandement de payer) threatening termination. Everything must be handled from abroad, in French, under deadlines counted in months, and a single missed formality can cost you the premises or the compensation that goes with them.

This guide explains, in English and for a business reader, the French commercial lease (bail commercial) as it applies to a company run from abroad: how to sign it without boarding a plane, what it really costs, how to leave it early, and how to defend the right to stay or to be paid indemnité d’éviction, the eviction compensation. Every decisive rule below is anchored in the Code de commerce (Commercial Code) as in force on 2 October 2026, verified article by article on Légifrance, the official French legal database, and in judgments of the Cour de cassation, the French supreme court for civil and commercial matters, read in full for this article. French acronyms are explained on first use: greffe (court registry), RCS (trade and companies register), RNE (Registre national des entreprises, the newer national business register), INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, the statistics institute that publishes rent indices), ILC (indice des loyers commerciaux, the commercial rents index), ILAT (indice des loyers des activités tertiaires, the tertiary-activities rents index), TJ (tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court), and BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the gazette where company and business-sale notices are published).

I. How do you sign and pay for a French commercial lease when you live abroad?

A. How do you get the 3/6/9 lease signed without flying to Paris?

The 3/6/9 lease is not a marketing nickname. It describes the standard French commercial lease: nine years minimum, with the tenant allowed to leave at the end of each three-year period. Article L. 145-4 of the Commercial Code states: “La durée du contrat de location ne peut être inférieure à neuf ans.” The same article continues: “Toutefois, le preneur a la faculté de donner congé à l’expiration d’une période triennale, au moins six mois à l’avance, par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception ou par acte extrajudiciaire.” In plain English: the tenant (preneur) may give notice (congé) at each three-year mark, at least six months ahead, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt or by acte extrajudiciaire, a formal notice served by a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice). From abroad, the registered letter works, but keep the proof of sending and receipt: French courts count the six months from receipt, and a letter lost between Dubai and Paris has destroyed more than one termination.

Before signing anything, check that your situation falls inside the protective statute at all. Article L. 145-1 provides: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre s’appliquent aux baux des immeubles ou locaux dans lesquels un fonds est exploité”, and the article then requires that the business (fonds de commerce, the going concern: customers, lease right, stock, trade name) belong to a trader or industrialist registered at the RCS, or to a craft business registered at the RNE. Three practical consequences follow for a foreign-run group. First, the lease must be taken in the name of the French operating company that will actually run the business from the premises and that owns the fonds, not in the name of a foreign parent, a mere representative office, or an empty French holding with no activity on site. Second, if you interpose a French property-holding company (société civile immobilière, SCI) between the landlord and the operating subsidiary and let the SCI sublet to the operator, the protection can collapse: in a judgment of 24 June 2015 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 14-17.021), the Cour de cassation upheld the reasoning that the tenant itself must operate a business it owns, and that a clause authorising subletting does not cure the absence of that condition. Sign the lease with the company that exploits, or restructure before you sign. Third, premises used exclusively as offices, and certain storage premises, may lawfully contain contrary stipulations — Article L. 145-4 expressly allows it — so a Paris office lease can validly waive the three-year exit right. Read that clause before assuming you can leave at year three.

Foreign founders are often offered a short lease first, typically one or two years, presented as a trial. French law knows this instrument: the bail dérogatoire, the lease that derogates from the protective statute. Article L. 145-5 states: “Les parties peuvent, lors de l’entrée dans les lieux du preneur, déroger aux dispositions du présent chapitre à la condition que la durée totale du bail ou des baux successifs ne soit pas supérieure à trois ans.” Two traps come with it. If the tenant stays on past expiry — even one month, while the landlord tolerates it — the same article provides that a new lease governed by the full protective statute arises automatically. And the parties may not sign a second derogating lease for the same business in the same premises. A two-year trial that drifts into year four without paperwork is therefore not an extension of the trial: it is a fresh 3/6/9 lease with a nine-year horizon, whether the landlord understood that or not. If you want a genuine trial, calendar the expiry eleven months ahead, decide in month eighteen, and either leave or convert consciously.

Signing itself does not require your physical presence. French practice accepts three routes: signature by a duly empowered representative holding a written power of attorney (pouvoir), signature by the company’s legal representative (représentant légal: president of the SAS, gérant of the SARL) who travels once, or electronic signature with a qualified certificate. Whatever route you take, the landlord will ask for the Kbis extract of less than three months, the articles of association (statuts), the identity document of the signatory, and the power of attorney with a recent date. Powers of attorney signed outside France should carry an apostille under the Hague Convention of 1961 where applicable, with a certified French translation, because a landlord who doubts the authority of the signatory can later dispute the lease itself. Insist that the lease state the exact corporate name, RCS number and registered office as shown on the Kbis: mismatches between the lease, the Kbis and the premises’ actual occupant are the raw material of litigation about who the tenant really is. For the broader incorporation sequence — capital deposit, Kbis issuance and first registrations — the companion pillar guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder walks through the bank account, the Kbis and the first hires, while the specific question of the company’s address is covered by the guide on registered office and domiciliation from abroad: domiciliation gives you an address, only a lease or sublease gives you premises to exploit.

One clause deserves attention before you countersign: assignment. Article L. 145-16 declares: “Sont également réputées non écrites, quelle qu’en soit la forme, les conventions tendant à interdire au locataire de céder son bail ou les droits qu’il tient du présent chapitre à l’acquéreur de son fonds de commerce ou de son entreprise ou au bénéficiaire du transfert universel de son patrimoine professionnel.” Any clause forbidding the tenant from transferring the lease together with the business is deemed unwritten — legally void. The landlord may still require to be invited to the transfer deed (acte de cession) and commonly imposes a joint-and-several guarantee (garantie solidaire) of the buyer by the seller, but it cannot lock you into the premises forever by banning the sale of your French business with its lease. For a founder who may exit France in year five, that freedom is the real value of the 3/6/9 system.

B. How much will the premises really cost: deposit, rent, charges and three-year revision?

The headline rent is barely half the story. A Paris or Île-de-France lease (Île-de-France being the Paris region) typically stacks five layers: the annual base rent, often quoted per square metre; the security deposit (dépôt de garantie); the service charges and property taxes passed through to the tenant; the rent revision every three years; and the bank guarantee many landlords demand from foreign-owned tenants with no French track record. Unlike residential leases, commercial law sets no maximum for the deposit: one quarter is the old custom, but six months or a full year appears regularly in Paris retail and logistics deals. Negotiate it, because the deposit sleeps interest-free for nine years. Ask for restitution within one month of the exit inventory (état des lieux de sortie) if all sums are settled, set off the last charges against it in writing, and photograph everything at entry: the entry inventory is your only evidence that the stained carpet and the cracked window predate you.

Charges are where foreign tenants bleed quietly. Since the Pinel Act of 18 June 2014 (Law No. 2014-626 on crafts, commerce and very small enterprises), Article L. 145-40-2 requires: “Tout contrat de location comporte un inventaire précis et limitatif des catégories de charges, impôts, taxes et redevances liés à ce bail, comportant l’indication de leur répartition entre le bailleur et le locataire.” The lease must therefore contain a precise, closed list of charge categories with their allocation between landlord and tenant — a vague clause passing “all charges, present and future” to the tenant no longer survives. The same article obliges the landlord to send an annual summary statement (état récapitulatif annuel) and to disclose new charges during the lease, and, at signature then every three years, a three-year forecast of planned works with a provisional budget plus a summary of works carried out over the previous three years with their cost. In multi-tenant buildings the lease must allocate charges and works by exploited surface area, and taxes passed to the tenant must strictly match the occupied premises. From abroad, enforce this machinery: demand the annual statement every year, reconcile it with actual invoices, and challenge any charge category missing from the contractual inventory. Major structural works under Article 606 of the Civil Code (gros œuvres: walls, roof, foundations) and certain taxes can no longer be loaded onto the tenant by a pre-printed clause; if your draft lease tries, strike it before signing, because renegotiating it in year six, from another continent, is close to impossible.

Rent movement follows two different tracks that founders constantly confuse: contractual indexation (indexation or clause d’échelle mobile) and statutory revision (révision triennale). Indexation is a private clause adjusting the rent each year to an index; revision is a statutory right, for either party, to bring the rent back toward the rental value (valeur locative) every three years. Article L. 145-38 provides: “La demande en révision ne peut être formée que trois ans au moins après la date d’entrée en jouissance du locataire ou après le point de départ du bail renouvelé.” And the same article caps the result: “la majoration ou la diminution de loyer consécutive à une révision triennale ne peut excéder la variation de l’indice trimestriel des loyers commerciaux ou de l’indice trimestriel des loyers des activités tertiaires mentionnés aux premier et deuxième alinéas de l’article L. 112-2 du code monétaire et financier, intervenue depuis la dernière fixation amiable ou judiciaire du loyer.” In practice the ILC governs shops and commercial premises, the ILAT governs offices and service activities, and the older ICC (indice du coût de la construction, construction-cost index) survives only in leases that still name it. Check which index your draft names: an ICC clause in a 2026 logistics lease is usually a landlord-friendly fossil worth renegotiating toward the ILC.

At renewal, the principle is that rent returns to rental value. Article L. 145-33 states: “Le montant des loyers des baux renouvelés ou révisés doit correspondre à la valeur locative.” The article then lists the five yardsticks — characteristics of the premises, destination of the premises, respective obligations of the parties, local commerciality factors, and prices commonly charged in the neighbourhood — detailed by decree. But Article L. 145-34 immediately caps the movement for leases of nine years or less: “le taux de variation du loyer applicable lors de la prise d’effet du bail à renouveler, si sa durée n’est pas supérieure à neuf ans, ne peut excéder la variation, intervenue depuis la fixation initiale du loyer du bail expiré, de l’indice trimestriel des loyers commerciaux ou de l’indice trimestriel des loyers des activités tertiaires”. The cap — plafonnement — breaks only on proof of a notable modification of the first four yardsticks, and even then yearly increases are smoothed: the statute provides that the resulting variation cannot produce increases of more than 10% of the previous year’s rent per year. A Paris landlord demanding plus 40% at renewal must therefore prove either a notable change (rezoning, new metro station, major change of the neighbourhood’s commerciality) or accept the smoothed path. Ask for the justification in writing the day you receive the renewal offer; the burden of proving de-capping (déplafonnement) sits with the party who invokes it.

Late payment from abroad is the fastest way to lose everything. Almost every lease contains a termination clause (clause résolutoire) providing that one unpaid quarter ends the lease automatically. Article L. 145-41 frames it strictly: “Toute clause insérée dans le bail prévoyant la résiliation de plein droit ne produit effet qu’un mois après un commandement demeuré infructueux.” The termination takes effect only one month after a payment order that remained unpaid, and: “Le commandement doit, à peine de nullité, mentionner ce délai.” The order must state that one-month period on pain of nullity — check every commandement your manager forwards for that sentence first. The same article adds that judges may grant grace periods (délais de grâce): “Les juges saisis d’une demande présentée dans les formes et conditions prévues à l’article 1343-5 du code civil peuvent, en accordant des délais, suspendre la réalisation et les effets des clauses résolutoires”. But grace is a leash, not a pardon. On 26 November 2013 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 12-25.534), the Cour de cassation quashed a decision that had spared a tenant who failed to honour the court-ordered instalments: the judges had suspended the termination clause and ordered payment in three monthly instalments on top of current rent, the tenant missed them, and the supreme court held the clause had therefore taken effect one month after the original payment order. If a Paris judge grants your company schedules while you wire funds from abroad, treat each instalment date as sacred: one missed transfer revives a termination you thought buried. Note also that since the Economic Life Simplification Act No. 2026-403 of 26 May 2026, grace for unpaid rent is conditioned on the tenant’s capacity to clear the rental debt and on resuming full payment of current rent before the first hearing — a court considering your file from London will look at bank statements, not promises.

II. How do you leave, renew or fight eviction from abroad?

A. How do you exit early, assign the lease or sell the business with it?

The ordinary exit is the three-year notice. Reproduce the Article L. 145-4 formula exactly: notice at the end of a three-year period, at least six months before, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt or by acte extrajudiciaire. From abroad, the commissaire de justice route is usually safer than the post: service is proved by the officer’s report, the date is certain, and no one can claim the letter arrived during the Paris office’s August closure. There is no exit at will between two three-year marks — the lease binds for the running period — except by assigning the lease with the business, by subletting where the lease allows it (rare and usually capped), or by negotiating an agreed early termination (résiliation amiable) against compensation. Price that negotiation honestly: the landlord loses a paying tenant in a market where re-letting a suburban warehouse can take a year, so expect to pay several months’ rent plus the restoration of any alterations you made without written consent.

Assignment (cession du bail) with the sale of the business is the standard escape, and as seen, a clause banning it is void. The procedure still has teeth: most leases require the landlord to be summoned to the transfer deed so it can verify the buyer’s solvency, and the seller routinely stays jointly liable for the buyer’s rent for a time through the garantie solidaire clause. Organise the file from abroad through your French counsel: draft deed, three years of the buyer’s accounts, proof of the buyer’s registration project at the RCS, and the summons served on the landlord in due form. The sale of the fonds de commerce itself is then published and, where required, announced in the BODACC, which protects you against the seller’s creditors and starts objection periods running. Never hand over the keys against a private promise to “take over the lease informally”: without a proper deed joined by the landlord, you remain the tenant, the rent keeps running, and the termination clause keeps ticking while your successor trades rent-free on your lease.

One final warning before any exit: do not close the business first and negotiate afterwards. In a judgment of 16 March 2017 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 16-10.143), a tenant in judicial liquidation returned the keys and had ceased operating for four months because the business had disappeared with the liquidation; the liquidator then claimed eviction compensation after the landlord’s refusal to renew, and the courts rejected the claim for want of any prejudice caused by the non-renewal — there was no longer a fonds to lose. The lesson travels directly to foreign founders winding down a French site: keep the business operated, the staffed premises open and the registration alive until the renewal negotiation or the compensation claim is secured. An empty shop with a surrendered Kbis activity is worth nothing in an eviction fight, however strong the legal right looked on paper.

B. How do you answer a refusal to renew and win eviction compensation?

At the end of nine years — or at the end of a tacit prolongation (tacite prolongation, the automatic extension that arises when neither party acts) — three outcomes exist: express renewal, silent continuation, or a notice (congé) with or without an offer of renewal. Article L. 145-9 governs the notice: “Par dérogation aux articles 1736 et 1737 du code civil, les baux de locaux soumis au présent chapitre ne cessent que par l’effet d’un congé donné six mois à l’avance ou d’une demande de renouvellement.” Without notice or renewal demand, the written lease continues tacitly past its term, and during that extension either party must give at least six months’ notice expiring on the last day of a calendar quarter. The formal requirements are severe: “Le congé doit être donné par acte extrajudiciaire.” A simple letter or email is not a congé. And: “Il doit, à peine de nullité, préciser les motifs pour lesquels il est donné et indiquer que le locataire qui entend, soit contester le congé, soit demander le paiement d’une indemnité d’éviction, doit saisir le tribunal avant l’expiration d’un délai de deux ans à compter de la date pour laquelle le congé a été donné.” Every notice you receive must state its grounds and must warn you, under penalty of nullity, that you have two years from the notice’s effective date to go to court. When your Paris manager forwards a congé, check those two sentences before anything else: a notice without grounds or without the two-year warning is void, and void notices have saved tenants who read them carefully on the day of receipt rather than six months later.

If the landlord refuses renewal, the default rule is compensation. Article L. 145-14 states: “Le bailleur peut refuser le renouvellement du bail.” It continues: “Toutefois, le bailleur doit, sauf exceptions prévues aux articles L. 145-17 et suivants, payer au locataire évincé une indemnité dite d’éviction égale au préjudice causé par le défaut de renouvellement.” The compensation equals the loss caused by the refusal: in practice the market value of the fonds de commerce assessed by trade custom, plus standard removal and reinstallation costs, plus transfer duties and costs for an equivalent business — the statute lists these heads expressly. The exceptions in Articles L. 145-17 and following cover cases where the landlord owes nothing or may buy back the premises: serious and legitimate grounds against the tenant (motifs graves et légitimes, typically sustained non-performance), demolition and reconstruction of an insalubrious building, or repossession for residential use of accessory dwelling space. A landlord invoking serious grounds must prove them; unpaid rent cured within the one-month payment order, or trivia such as a late insurance certificate, does not qualify. From abroad, assemble the counter-file immediately: proof that all rent, charges and contractual obligations were met, photographs of compliant premises, and the accounts showing the going concern’s value — because the landlord’s file, prepared locally in Paris, will already be complete.

Deadlines decide these cases more often than the merits, and three supreme-court rulings draw the map. First, the two-year clock in Article L. 145-9 is a guillotine. On 23 April 2013 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 12-15.836), a tenant whose landlord had offered eviction compensation and obtained a court-ordered valuation still lost: its compensation action, brought after the two-year period, was declared time-barred, the offer and the pending expert assessment changing nothing. Second, on 23 September 2021 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 20-10.026), a tenant served with notice in June 2013 challenged expulsion years later and failed: the Court of Cassation rejected its appeal and the expulsion ordered below stood. Third, and most useful to a founder three time zones away, on 2 June 2010 (Third Civil Chamber, No. 09-13.075), the Court approved that even a writ filed before the wrong judge interrupts the two-year period, applying the general civil rule that a court application interrupts time limits even when brought before an incompetent court. The combined message is blunt: sue within two years of the notice’s effective date even if the landlord seems conciliatory, even if an expert valuation is running, even if you are unsure which Paris court is competent — file first, fix the direction later. In Paris, eviction and rent litigation goes before the TJ de Paris, where a judge may appoint a judicial expert (expert judiciaire) to value the fonds; instruct counsel the week you receive the notice, not the month the deadline expires.

Paris and Île-de-France add local texture worth pricing into your decisions. Market values of fonds de commerce in central Paris retail streets support eviction bills that dwarf provincial amounts — which is precisely why Paris landlords fight renewal with demolition-reconstruction projects, buyout offers (indemnité de rachat) or allegations of serious grounds rather than paying. Conversely, the depth of the Paris re-letting market makes negotiated departures realistic: a landlord who genuinely wants the unit for redevelopment often prefers paying an agreed exit sum now over a five-year valuation lawsuit. Weigh every offer against the two anchors of Article L. 145-14 — the going-concern value plus reinstallation costs — minus the litigation risk and the years of procedure. And remember the territorial division of labour inside your own file: this article covers the premises; the people inside them belong to employment counsel, the company’s filings to the corporate calendar, and the address on the Kbis to domiciliation — each with its own deadlines, none of which waits for the others.

Conclusion

A French commercial lease rewards the tenant who reads dates and the landlord who reads premises. Signed in the name of the operating company, with the deposit negotiated, the charge inventory closed, the index modernised and the assignment freedom preserved, the 3/6/9 lease is a durable platform for a foreign-run business: nine years of stability, an exit every three, and a saleable lease right. Handled from abroad without a calendar — a tolerated short lease drifting into year four, a payment order answered by email, a refusal to renew left unchallenged past two years, a business closed before compensation is claimed — the same lease becomes a trap with no second chance. No official finding of fault, no accident and no damage beyond the contract is presumed here; signed contracts prevail over general analysis, and only the court decides the compensation. Keep the business running, answer every formal notice in form and on time, sue within two years when renewal is refused, and let each deadline be met where it must be met: in French, in writing, and before a Paris court if that is where the premises lie.