You own a flat in France, you live in Britain or you have settled in France since Brexit, and you want the keys back. Perhaps you plan to sell the property, perhaps you want to move into it yourself, perhaps you want to house your daughter who has just taken a job in Paris. Your tenant, protected by one of the most tenant-friendly statutes in Europe, refuses to leave. This article explains, step by step, how a British landlord lawfully ends a French residential tenancy, what a valid termination notice must contain, and how the courts handle a tenant who stays put. In France the landlord is called the bailleur and the termination notice is called a congé, and almost every rule that matters sits in one statute: Law No 89-462 of 6 July 1989, which governs the relationship between landlord and tenant, and in the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings, which governs evictions. The same rules apply whether you hold a British passport, live in London or in Lyon, and whether you bought the flat before or after the United Kingdom left the European Union. What changes with distance is practical, not legal: every deadline runs from proof that the tenant actually received your notice, every formal defect can annul the whole procedure, and a tenant who challenges your notice has a clear and accessible path to a judge. Read this guide before you send anything, because a defective notice served today can cost you a full year.

The stakes are concrete. A notice served late restarts the clock until the next expiry of the lease. A notice that forgets the price, the name of the person moving in, or the compulsory information leaflet can be declared void, which means the lease continues as if nothing had been sent. A notice given for a false reason can expose you to a criminal fine and to damages claimed by the tenant in the criminal proceedings themselves. And even a perfectly valid notice does not authorise you to change the locks: only a court order, followed by a formal order to vacate served by an enforcement officer, allows an eviction, and the winter truce suspends most removals from 1 November to 31 March. The good news is that the procedure is predictable once you know it. This guide follows it in order: first, serving a valid notice to sell or to take the property back; then, obtaining the tenant’s departure through the courts when the tenant refuses to go.

I. How a British landlord serves a valid congé to sell or to take back a French home

French law starts from a simple proposition that surprises many British owners. The statute provides: “Lorsque le bailleur donne congé à son locataire, ce congé doit être justifié soit par sa décision de reprendre ou de vendre le logement, soit par un motif légitime et sérieux, notamment l’inexécution par le locataire de l’une des obligations lui incombant.” In other words, when you give notice, you must justify it either by your decision to take the property back or to sell it, or by a legitimate and serious reason, such as the tenant breaking one of the obligations of the tenancy. You cannot end a tenancy simply because you feel like it, and you cannot end it early: a landlord’s notice can only take effect at the expiry date of the lease, with six months’ warning. The same article states: “Le délai de préavis applicable au congé est de six mois lorsqu’il émane du bailleur.” That six-month period is the minimum shield that protects the tenant. Serve one day late and the notice rolls over to the next lease expiry, which for an unfurnished letting can mean waiting years. The full current text of these rules is published on the official statute site at Article 15 of Law No 89-462 of 6 July 1989, and everything that follows in this first part comes from that article as interpreted by the Court of Cassation.

Form matters as much as substance. The notice must be delivered by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, served by a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called the huissier de justice, or handed over in person against a signed receipt. The statute is explicit: “Le congé doit être notifié par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception, signifié par acte d’un commissaire de justice ou remis en main propre contre récépissé ou émargement.” (statutory notice formalities) For a British owner living in the United Kingdom, the safest route is service through a French commissaire de justice practising near the property, because the six-month clock runs from the day the tenant actually receives the letter. The English-language guidance of the French administration warns that if the letter is not delivered to an absent tenant and comes back to you, the notice period cannot start to run, and the same applies if the tenant never collects the letter held at the post office. An ordinary email is never valid service, even if the tenant replies to it. An electronic registered letter is accepted only where the tenant, being a private individual, has previously agreed to that method. Keep every proof of sending and receipt: in court, the date on the acknowledgement slip decides everything. The practical detail is set out in the administration’s English pages on notice given by the landlord, which walk through the same formalities in English.

A. The congé to sell (congé pour vendre): price, sale terms and the tenant’s right to buy

A sale notice does two jobs at once: it ends the tenancy at the expiry of the lease, and it offers the property to the tenant. Because of that double function, the law punishes vagueness with nullity. The statute states: “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.” (sale-notice price rule) Your notice must therefore state the asking price and the proposed terms of the sale, precisely, in the notice itself. A letter that says you may sell, or that gives a price to be confirmed, is not a sale notice. It continues: “Le congé vaut offre de vente au profit du locataire : l’offre est valable pendant les deux premiers mois du délai de préavis.” (sale offer timing rule) The notice counts as an offer of sale to the tenant, and that offer stays open during the first two months of the notice period. During those two months your tenant can decide to buy the flat on the stated terms, and you cannot sell to anyone else on those terms while the tenant’s option runs.

If the tenant accepts, the timetable is fixed by law and the lease is extended to accommodate the sale. The tenant who accepts has two months from sending the reply to complete the sale, extended to four months where the reply states that the purchase will be financed by a loan, with completion conditional on obtaining that loan. The tenancy is prolonged until the sale deadline expires. If the sale has not been completed by then, the acceptance becomes void by operation of law and, crucially, the tenant loses any right to remain in the property. That is the balance the statute strikes: a genuine chance to buy, then a clean exit. A second protection follows the tenant even after the notice period. Where you later decide to sell on terms or at a price more favourable to the buyer, the notaire, the French public officer who authenticates property sales, must notify those new terms to the tenant unless you have already done so, on pain of nullity of the sale. That notification counts as a fresh offer, valid for one month from receipt, with the same two-month, or four-month with a loan, completion timetable. And the statute adds a formality that traps careless landlords: the terms of those five paragraphs must be reproduced, on pain of nullity, in every notification. Copy them word for word and do not paraphrase. The official text of these sale-notice paragraphs sits in paragraph II of Article 15, and the matching English explanation appears on the administration’s page about selling a let dwelling.

Three further points complete the picture for a sale notice. First, a compulsory information leaflet about your obligations and the tenant’s remedies and compensation rights must be attached to the notice. The administration publishes the model, and omitting it gives the tenant an additional ground of challenge, so treat the leaflet as part of the notice itself rather than an optional extra. Second, special timing rules apply where you bought the property while it was already let, a common pattern for British investors who acquire tenanted Paris flats. Where the current lease ends more than three years after your purchase, you may give notice to sell at the end of the current lease. Where it ends less than three years after purchase, you must wait for the end of the first tacit renewal or first renewed term before the sale notice can take effect. Check the date on your acte de vente, the authentic deed signed before the notaire, before you count your six months. Third, remember that a sale notice is an offer with a price on it: if the tenant accepts and completes, you have sold at that price. Never state a price you would regret, and never serve a sale notice as a pressure tactic while quietly planning to re-let at a higher rent. A notice used as a threat is exactly what the criminal sanction discussed below was written to punish.

Owners sometimes ask whether a sale notice can be combined with a rent increase or served alongside other demands. Keep the notice clean and single-purpose. The statute allows the notice to be justified by your decision to sell, by your decision to take the property back, or by a legitimate and serious reason, and mixing motives in one letter hands the tenant arguments. If the tenant is also in arrears, pursue the arrears separately through a demand to pay, and let the sale notice speak only of the sale. Precision at this stage pays for itself later: the judge who hears a challenge will read your letter first, and a short, exact, fully documented notice is far harder to attack than a long, emotional one. If your situation is the mirror image, a tenant facing a notice from a British owner, the companion guide for British tenants renting in France explains the same procedure from the tenant’s side, including deposits, notices to leave and eviction defences.

B. The congé to take back (congé pour reprendre): who may move in and the real-and-serious test

A take-back notice, called a congé pour reprise, lets you recover the property so that it becomes someone’s main home. The circle of permitted beneficiaries is closed and narrow. The statute requires that the notice state, on pain of nullity, the alleged reason and, in a take-back, the surname and address of the beneficiary and the nature of the link between you and that person, who can only be yourself, your spouse, the partner with whom you are bound by a civil solidarity pact registered at the date of the notice, your publicly known partner of at least one year at the date of the notice, your parents or children, or those of your spouse, partner or publicly known partner. The exact wording is: “A peine de nullité, le congé donné par le bailleur doit indiquer le motif allégué et, en cas de reprise, les nom et adresse du bénéficiaire de la reprise ainsi que la nature du lien existant entre le bailleur et le bénéficiaire de la reprise qui ne peut être que le bailleur, son conjoint, le partenaire auquel il est lié par un pacte civil de solidarité enregistré à la date du congé, son concubin notoire depuis au moins un an à la date du congé, ses ascendants, ses descendants ou ceux de son conjoint, de son partenaire ou de son concubin notoire.” (permitted beneficiaries rule) Name the person, give the address, state the relationship, and make sure the relationship falls inside that list. A notice to house a friend, a business partner or a distant cousin is void. A notice served to house your adult son in his first Paris job, or to move back yourself after years in London, fits the list, provided you say so clearly in the letter.

Naming a permitted beneficiary is necessary but not sufficient. The statute adds: “Lorsqu’il donne congé à son locataire pour reprendre le logement, le bailleur justifie du caractère réel et sérieux de sa décision de reprise.” When you give notice to take the property back, you must show that your decision is genuine and serious. This is where most disputes are won and lost. A genuine plan means concrete evidence: electoral registration at the new address, renovation invoices for the flat, utility and internet contracts taken out in your name, a letter from an employer posting you to France, school enrolments for children. The Court of Cassation, the supreme court for civil matters, has clarified how this test works in practice. In a judgment of 12 October 2023, appeal No 22-18.580, landlords who had served a take-back notice to return to their home region after bereavement saw their notice upheld where the file showed registration on the electoral roll, major works invoiced after the tenants left, and water, gas, electricity, internet and tele-assistance contracts, together with notice given to the tax authorities. The Court approved the appeal judges’ statement of principle in these terms: “La cour d’appel a énoncé, à bon droit, que la prescription de la justification dans le congé du caractère réel et sérieux de la décision de reprise, à titre de condition de forme, n’est pas édictée à peine de nullité.” In plain terms, the notice itself does not have to prove the genuineness of your plan on pain of nullity; what matters is that you can prove it when the judge examines the case. Read the full reasoning at Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 12 October 2023, No 22-18.580. Build your evidence file from the day you decide to take the property back, not from the day the tenant challenges you.

The same Court has shown the other edge of the blade. Where the designated beneficiary dies before the notice takes effect, the notice falls. On 16 April 2026, in appeal No 24-13.191, a landlady had served a take-back notice to live in the flat herself, then died before the notice expired, and her son sought to enforce the same notice for himself. The Court quashed the enforcement and held: “Il s’en déduit que les conditions de la reprise du logement devant être appréciées en la personne de son bénéficiaire, le décès de celui-ci, survenu avant la date d’expiration du délai de préavis, prive d’effet le congé aux fins de reprise.” Because the conditions of the take-back must be assessed in the person of the beneficiary, the death of that person before the notice period expires deprives the take-back notice of effect. The heir could not simply inherit the notice; he would have to serve his own, designating himself. See Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 16 April 2026, No 24-13.191. For British families this matters twice over: first, check that the person named in the notice is alive, willing and genuinely moving in at the date the notice expires; second, if the owner dies mid-procedure, the heirs must restart the notice in their own names rather than continuing the deceased’s file. Probate in England does not transfer a French take-back notice.

Two shields protect certain tenants even against a genuine plan. The first covers older tenants of modest means. The statute provides that a landlord cannot refuse renewal by giving notice to any tenant over sixty-five whose annual income sits below the ceiling used for subsidised housing, without offering that tenant a replacement home suited to needs and means within a defined geographical area, and the same applies where the tenant supports a person over sixty-five living in the flat where the household’s combined income sits below the ceiling. The age is assessed at the expiry of the lease and income at the date of the notice. The Court of Cassation settled how that income is measured on 24 October 2024, in appeal No 23-18.067: “les ressources à prendre en compte pour calculer ce montant sont celles perçues par le locataire au titre des douze mois qui précédent la délivrance du congé.” The income to count is what the tenant received over the twelve months before the notice was served, a rolling twelve months, not the last tax year. The Court recalled the rule in these terms: “le bailleur ne peut s’opposer au renouvellement du contrat de location à l’égard de tout locataire âgé de plus de soixante-cinq ans et dont les ressources annuelles sont inférieures au plafond de ressources en vigueur pour l’attribution des logements locatifs conventionnés fixé par arrêté du ministre chargé du logement”. In that situation the landlord cannot refuse renewal without offering the tenant substitute housing suited to needs and means. Read Cass. 3rd civil chamber, 24 October 2024, No 23-18.067. There is one escape for the landlord: the shield does not apply where the landlord is a private individual over sixty-five or whose own annual income sits below the same ceiling. The second shield, added for beneficiaries of a specific disability-related allowance, works the same way. Before serving any notice, ask your tenant’s age only through lawful means, check your own position, and if the shield may apply, prepare a genuine rehousing offer rather than hoping the tenant will not notice. The governing paragraphs sit in paragraphs III and IV of Article 15.

Finally, never serve a notice you do not mean. The statute punishes pretence directly: “Le fait pour un bailleur de délivrer un congé justifié frauduleusement par sa décision de reprendre ou de vendre le logement est puni d’une amende pénale dont le montant ne peut être supérieur à 6 000 € pour une personne physique et à 30 000 € pour une personne morale.” A landlord who serves a notice fraudulently justified by a supposed decision to take back or sell faces a criminal fine of up to 6,000 euros for an individual and 30,000 euros for a company. It adds: “Le locataire est recevable dans sa constitution de partie civile et la demande de réparation de son préjudice.” The tenant can join the criminal case as a civil party and claim compensation for the loss suffered. The classic fraud is the take-back followed by a quick re-letting at a higher rent, or the sale notice followed by no genuine marketing. Tenants talk to neighbours, keep photographs of new occupants, and ask the notaire whether the property was ever really marketed. If your plans change honestly after a genuine notice, document the change. If the notice was a tactic from the start, the fine and the damages will cost far more than the rent increase you hoped for. The sanction sits in paragraph V of Article 15 of the same Law.

II. When the tenant stays: the winter truce, the court order and getting the flat back

A valid notice ends the tenant’s right to remain, but it never authorises you to recover the flat by force. French law reserves eviction to the courts, and the procedure that follows a refusal to leave has its own mandatory stages, its own minimum delays, and its own seasonal pause. Understanding this second phase before you serve the notice helps you set realistic expectations: even an unanswerable file takes months to enforce, and a winter expiry can push the physical removal into spring. The rules below come from the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings, the statute that organises how court orders are carried out, and from the administration’s English guidance on challenging a landlord’s notice, which usefully shows the tenant’s remedies so you can anticipate them.

A. No self-help eviction: the court order, the formal order to leave and the winter truce (trêve hivernale)

Changing the locks, cutting off utilities or moving the tenant’s belongings to the pavement is unlawful and can expose you to criminal liability as well as damages. The statute states the principle bluntly: “Sauf disposition spéciale, l’expulsion d’un immeuble ou d’un lieu habité ne peut être poursuivie qu’en vertu d’une décision de justice ou d’un procès-verbal de conciliation exécutoire et après signification d’un commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux.” Save for special provisions, eviction from a building or an inhabited place can only be pursued under a court decision or an enforceable mediated settlement, and after service of a formal order to vacate the premises. See Article L411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings. In practice this means that when the notice expires and the tenant remains, you must apply to the court for an order confirming the validity of the notice, ordering eviction, and fixing an indemnité d’occupation, a monthly occupancy payment that the unlawful occupier owes until actual departure. The competent court is the one where the property is located, so for a Paris flat that means the Paris court, and the tenant can defend the case by attacking the notice itself, which is why the precision demanded in Part I matters so much.

Once you hold the court order, the enforcement officer serves a commandement de quitter les lieux, a formal command to leave, and a minimum two-month clock starts. The statute provides: “Si l’expulsion porte sur un lieu habité par la personne expulsée ou par tout occupant de son chef, elle ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement” (two-month rule after the formal command), subject to further statutory provisions on delays and suspension. Where the eviction concerns a place lived in by the person expelled or by anyone occupying through that person, it cannot happen before two months have passed since the formal command, subject to the further statutory provisions on delays and suspension. Read Article L412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings. Those two months are a floor, not a ceiling. The judge who orders the eviction can reduce or remove the delay, particularly where the judge finds that the occupier acted in bad faith. The statute states: “Le délai prévu au premier alinéa du présent article ne s’applique pas lorsque le juge qui ordonne l’expulsion constate la mauvaise foi de la personne expulsée ou que les personnes dont l’expulsion a été ordonnée sont entrées dans les locaux à l’aide de manœuvres, de menaces, de voies de fait ou de contrainte.” A tenant who simply exercises a genuine defence is not in bad faith; bad faith means conduct such as manufacturing a defence, refusing any payment while able to pay, or sabotaging inspections. Conversely, where eviction would cause exceptionally harsh consequences, for instance because of the season or the weather, the judge can extend the two-month period by up to three months: “Lorsque l’expulsion aurait pour la personne concernée des conséquences d’une exceptionnelle dureté, notamment du fait de la période de l’année considérée ou des circonstances atmosphériques, le délai prévu à l’article L. 412-1 peut être prorogé par le juge pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois.” See Article L412-2 of the same Code. Ask the court for the occupancy payment to be set at a realistic level from the start, because it runs until the day the tenant actually hands back the keys.

Then comes the seasonal rule every British owner must diary. The winter truce, the trêve hivernale, suspends most evictions each year: “il est sursis à toute mesure d’expulsion non exécutée à la date du 1er novembre de chaque année jusqu’au 31 mars de l’année suivante, à moins que le relogement des intéressés soit assuré dans des conditions suffisantes respectant l’unité et les besoins de la famille.” All unexecuted eviction measures are stayed from 1 November each year until 31 March of the following year, unless the people concerned are rehoused in adequate conditions respecting the unity and needs of the family. See Article L412-6 of the same Code. In concrete terms, if your court order becomes enforceable in October and the tenant has nowhere to go, the physical removal waits until April. The truce does not cancel the debt, does not revive the lease, and does not stop the occupancy payment from accruing; it only pauses the forced removal. Narrow exceptions exist for squatters who entered by force or trickery and for occupiers who are properly rehoused, but an ordinary tenant holding over after a notice benefits from the stay. Plan your calendar around it: a notice expiring on 30 September can still mean a spring departure once court time and the truce are factored in, and any promise to a buyer or to a family member of vacant possession by Christmas should be drafted with that risk in mind. For flats in Paris and the inner suburbs, where court diaries are crowded and winter arrives with the 1 November deadline, starting the court application the moment the tenant signals refusal, rather than waiting for the notice to expire, is often the difference between enforcing in autumn and waiting until spring.

B. Recovering arrears and answering the tenant’s challenge: conciliation, proof and damages

Two money questions usually travel with the eviction: unpaid rent that built up before or after the notice, and the tenant’s counter-attack on the validity of the notice. Handle them as separate tracks. Arrears are a contractual debt and can be claimed in the same court application as the eviction, with interest and with the occupancy payment running from the expiry of the notice until departure. Keep a clean ledger: rents due under the lease until its expiry, then the court-fixed occupancy payment afterwards. Tenants sometimes stop paying once they receive a notice, calculating that departure is inevitable; the debt nevertheless accumulates and can be enforced against wages, bank accounts or, for tenants who later leave France, through European enforcement instruments. Conversely, never accept a partial payment without marking it as made under reservation where the characterisation of the sums matters to your file, and never agree orally to let the tenant stay on for a few months without writing down that the occupation is precarious and compensated. An informal tolerance, kindly meant, can be recharacterised in court as evidence that your take-back plan was not serious after all.

Expect the tenant to challenge the notice, because the administration hands every tenant a clear roadmap in English. The tenant can dispute the notice whether still in the flat or after leaving. The recommended path runs in three stages: first a registered letter to you seeking an amicable outcome; then, if that fails, conciliation before the departmental conciliation commission or a justice conciliator, or paid private mediation, with conciliation compulsory before going to court where the dispute reaches 5,000 euros; and finally, if disagreement persists, an application to the protection litigation judge of the court where the dwelling sits. The tenant does not have to hire a lawyer for that hearing. The administration’s page adds a warning that every landlord should read twice: the statute has never precisely defined a legitimate and serious reason, so where the tenant challenges the notice before the judge, the landlord will have to prove that the notice was valid. That burden shapes your whole file. The tenant will attack the missing price, the vague motive, the unnamed beneficiary, the absent leaflet, the unproven plan; you will answer with the registered slips, the precise letter, the loan offers or employment letters, the works invoices and the utility contracts. These stages are described step by step in the official English guidance on how to challenge a landlord’s notice, and reading the tenant’s playbook is the cheapest preparation a landlord can do.

Where the challenge succeeds, the consequences are severe. A notice declared void never ended the lease, so the tenant stays, the rent continues, and you restart from zero with a fresh six months. A notice found fraudulent opens the criminal fine described in Part I and the tenant’s civil-party damages on top. Where the tenant is over sixty-five or otherwise shielded and no genuine rehousing offer was made, the court will refuse to end the tenancy at all. Your defences are symmetrical and should be prepared with the same care: prove the reality of the sale with a genuine marketing mandate and viewings, or the reality of the take-back with the evidence file described above; show that the tenant’s income or age falls outside the shields, using the twelve-month measure the Court of Cassation confirmed; and demonstrate that every formality, from the price to the leaflet to the method of service, was observed. One procedural trap deserves emphasis for British owners managing from abroad. If your tenant raises the sixty-five-plus shield, the twelve months that count are the twelve months before the notice was served, and the age that counts is the age at the lease expiry. Serving early, before a tenant’s sixty-fifth birthday at expiry, or computing income on the wrong period, can flip the outcome. Diaries and dates win these cases.

A final word on distance and delegation. Nothing in the procedure requires you to live in France or to attend every hearing in person. A commissaire de justice can serve the notice and later the court papers; a French lawyer can file and plead the validation and eviction application; a property manager can handle the ledger and the keys. What distance forbids is improvisation. Give your representatives written instructions tied to the statutory checklist: correct expiry date, six months, exact motive, price and conditions for a sale, surname, address and relationship for a take-back, leaflet attached, lawful method of service, proof of receipt filed. Insist on receiving the acknowledgement slip or the officer’s report before you count any deadline. And keep the sale file or the take-back file alive throughout the procedure, because the judge can verify the reality of your reason at any stage, and the tenant’s lawyer will ask what has changed since the notice. A British landlord who serves one exact letter, keeps one complete file, and moves promptly to court when the tenant stays will usually recover the property. A landlord who serves a vague letter from abroad, waits, then changes the locks, will usually pay.

Conclusion

Recovering a French flat from a tenant who will not leave is a two-act procedure, and each act has its own discipline. The first act is the notice: six months before expiry, served by a method that proves receipt, stating a price for a sale or a named beneficiary for a take-back, with the leaflet attached and the evidence of your genuine plan already being assembled. The Court of Cassation’s recent judgments draw the boundaries clearly. The notice need not prove genuineness inside its own four corners, but you must prove it before the judge. The designated beneficiary must be alive and genuinely moving in when the notice expires. Older tenants of modest means can only be asked to leave with a genuine rehousing offer, measured on a rolling twelve months. Fraudulent notices draw fines and damages. The second act is enforcement: no self-help, a court order confirming the notice and fixing the occupancy payment, a two-month formal command to leave extendable or reducible by the judge, and the winter pause from November to March. Arrears and challenges run alongside, and the landlord who documents everything from the first letter usually prevails over the tenant who relies on delay alone. Start early, serve exactly, file completely, and diary the seasons. The keys come back to landlords who respect the procedure, and the procedure, for all its patience, is written down.