You have found the flat, signed in English over email, transferred the deposit from your British account, and collected the keys in Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux. Since Brexit, your residence paperwork has changed completely, but your position as a tenant has not: French tenancy law applies to you exactly as it applies to a French national, and it is one of the most protective systems in Europe. The statute that governs almost every residential letting is the Act of 6 July 1989, known as the loi du 6 juillet 1989, and its rules on the lease, the deposit and eviction are largely a matter of public policy, which means a landlord cannot contract out of them even if you agreed to something different in writing. Most disputes British tenants bring to a lawyer follow the same three scripts: money is kept back from the deposit at the end of the tenancy, a notice to leave arrives and the deadline looks impossibly short, or rent arrears build up and a formal warning called a commandement de payer lands in the letterbox. Each of these situations has its own timetable, its own formal requirements, and its own way to challenge an abusive decision, and missing a deadline or accepting an informal arrangement is usually what turns a winnable file into a lost one. This guide explains, first, what your lease must contain and how the deposit and the inventory work while you live in the flat, and second, how to leave properly and what happens when rent goes unpaid, including the eviction process and the remedies that can stop it.
I. Signing the lease and living in the flat: the checks that protect a British tenant
A. Is this the lease you think it is? Duration, compulsory contents and clauses the landlord cannot impose
Start with the document itself. In France a residential lease, called a bail d’habitation, must be drawn up in writing and must follow a standard form, a contrat type, defined by decree. Article 3 of the Act of 6 July 1989 lists everything that document must state: the identity of the landlord and any agent, your identity, the start date and the duration, the description and permitted use of the dwelling, its habitable surface area, the private and shared rooms and equipment, the precise rent and its method of payment, and the inventory, the état des lieux, which is addressed below. If you were handed a two-page agreement in English with none of this detail, you do not have a compliant lease, and that matters because the missing information usually hides the points on which a landlord later tries to overcharge you, from the surface area used to calculate the rent to the equipment whose repair is disputed at the end of the tenancy. Ask for the French lease, read it with a translation if needed, and keep a full signed copy: in every later dispute, the court starts from that paper.
Duration is the second surprise for tenants used to twelve-month assured shorthold tenancies. Article 10 of the 1989 Act provides, in its own words, that “Le contrat de location est conclu pour une durée au moins égale à trois ans pour les bailleurs personnes physiques ainsi que pour les bailleurs définis à l’article 13 et à six ans pour les bailleurs personnes morales.” An individual landlord therefore grants at least three years, a company at least six. If the landlord serves no valid notice at the end of that period, the lease is either tacitly renewed or renewed outright, and a tacitly renewed lease runs again for three or six years. A furnished letting, a location meublée, follows its own chapter of the same Act: article 25-7 states that “Il est conclu pour une durée d’au moins un an”, tacitly renewed for one year at a time, with a nine-month lease possible for a student and no tacit renewal in that student case. British tenants in France often rent furnished flats through agencies, and this distinction changes everything about notice periods and deposits, so identify on day one whether your lease is vide, unfurnished, or meublée, furnished. Readers letting out a furnished second home on the other side of the transaction will recognise the same framework described in our guide to furnished rentals, registration and tax for British second-home owners.
Third, the law deletes abusive clauses automatically. Article 4 of the 1989 Act lists clauses deemed unwritten, réputées non écrites, meaning the judge simply ignores them. They include forcing you to take out home insurance with an insurer chosen by the landlord, imposing direct debit or pre-signed bills as the only way to pay rent, and obliging you, for viewings ahead of a sale or re-letting, “à laisser visiter celui-ci les jours fériés ou plus de deux heures les jours ouvrables”, to allow visits on public holidays or for more than two hours on working days. British tenants are frequently asked to accept such terms in an English-language cover email, and the answer is that whatever you signed, these clauses have no legal effect. Two companion provisions frame daily life in the flat. Article 6 requires the landlord to hand over decent housing, “un logement décent ne laissant pas apparaître de risques manifestes pouvant porter atteinte à la sécurité physique ou à la santé”, a dwelling showing no manifest risk to physical safety or health, free of pests and meeting minimum energy performance. Article 7 sets out your own core duties: pay the rent and recoverable service charges on the agreed dates, use the premises peacefully for their contractual purpose, and take out home insurance, an assurance habitation, against fire, water damage and similar risks. Monthly payment is yours by right whenever you request it. Damping walls, a boiler that has never been serviced, or a landlord who refuses any repair should therefore be handled as a breach of a statutory duty, documented in writing, rather than as bad luck to be endured.
B. The deposit and the inventory: the two papers that decide whether your money comes back
The deposit, called the dépôt de garantie, is the single largest source of tenancy litigation in France, and British tenants lose these disputes for avoidable reasons: no comparative inventory, keys returned informally, and a forwarding address never given in writing. Article 22 of the 1989 Act caps the deposit in plain terms: “il ne peut être supérieur à un mois de loyer en principal”, it may not exceed one month of basic rent, and it is paid when the lease is signed, by you directly or through a third party such as an employer or a guarantee scheme. Any clause demanding two or three months upfront is unlawful, and a landlord who makes the keys conditional on such a payment is already in breach. Keep the proof of that transfer, because everything that follows turns on dated paper.
Restitution follows a strict timetable that runs from the return of the keys, and the keys must be handed back formally, in person or by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, to the landlord or the agent. Article 22 states: “Il est restitué dans un délai maximal de deux mois à compter de la remise en main propre, ou par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception, des clés au bailleur ou à son mandataire, déduction faite, le cas échéant, des sommes restant dues au bailleur et des sommes dont celui-ci pourrait être tenu, aux lieu et place du locataire, sous réserve qu’elles soient dûment justifiées.” In other words, two months maximum, less any sums you still owe and any sums the landlord had to pay in your place, provided every deduction is properly documented. Where the outgoing inventory matches the incoming one, that period shrinks to one month. When you return the keys, give your new address in writing at the same moment: the Act asks you to do so precisely because landlords otherwise claim they could not reach you, and British tenants who have already left France are the easiest targets for that excuse.
Deductions are where files are won and lost. A landlord may only keep money against sums that are duly justified, duly documented, which in practice means comparative inventories, dated photographs, invoices or tradesmen’s quotes for damage beyond normal wear and tear, and quantified unpaid bills. A standard letter claiming cleaning costs or repainting, with no invoice and no comparison between the two inventories, does not meet that test. And delay is expensive for the landlord: the Court of Cassation recalled in a decision of 12 February 2026 that “à défaut de restitution dans le délai de deux mois à compter de la remise des clés, le dépôt de garantie restant dû au locataire est majoré d’une somme égale à 10 % du loyer mensuel principal, pour chaque période mensuelle commencée en retard”, so every month of delay adds ten per cent of the monthly basic rent, automatically, from the end of the two-month period (Cass. 3rd civ., 12 Feb. 2026, no. 24-21.258). The same ruling is a warning to landlords about proof: the owner argued he had posted a cheque, pointing to his chequebook stub, but the Court held that without proof the tenant had actually received the cheque, which the tenant disputed, the penalty applied. The Court grounded this in the burden of proof in article 1353 of the Civil Code: “celui qui réclame l’exécution d’une obligation doit la prouver et, réciproquement, celui qui se prétend libéré doit justifier le paiement ou le fait qui a produit l’extinction de son obligation.” A chequebook stub proves nothing; only receipt by the tenant discharges the debt. Tenants should mirror that logic from day one: pay by transfer, keep every receipt, and contest any deduction that arrives without an invoice.
The landlord does have one genuine shield, confirmed by the Court of Cassation on 13 March 2025: where the owner holds a real claim for restoration of the flat and unpaid charges, the tenant’s demand for restitution of the deposit and the owner’s counterclaim are interdependent, and a court may lawfully set them against each other rather than ordering the deposit back in isolation (Cass. 3rd civ., 13 Mar. 2025, no. 23-21.681). So do not assume that suing quickly for the deposit ends the matter if the flat was left damaged: the dispute becomes a single accounting exercise, and your best protection is the quality of your own file. That file starts with the inventory, the état des lieux. Article 3-2 of the 1989 Act requires it to be drawn up jointly, by the parties or their representative, in as many copies as there are parties, both when the keys are handed over and when they are returned. You have ten days after the incoming inventory to ask for it to be completed, which is the moment to note the stain behind the door or the cracked tile you spotted while unpacking. If no inventory can be agreed, either side may call in a commissaire de justice, the court officer formerly called a huissier, with costs shared equally. And where one party blocks the inventory or withholds its copy, “la présomption établie par l’article 1731 du code civil ne peut être invoquée par celle des parties qui a fait obstacle à l’établissement de l’acte ou à sa remise à l’une des parties”: the presumption that the tenant received the dwelling in good repair cannot be used by the party who sabotaged the paperwork. In plain terms, a landlord who refused an incoming inventory cannot later bill you for pre-existing wear. Finally, remember the limitation period: actions arising from a lease are time-barred after three years from the day the holder knew or should have known the facts, “Toutes actions dérivant d’un contrat de bail sont prescrites par trois ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant d’exercer ce droit” (article 7-1 of the 1989 Act). A deposit claim does not last forever, so act within months, not years, starting with a formal written demand before any court step.
II. Leaving the flat or facing conflict: notice, unpaid rent and eviction
A. Leaving properly: your notice, the one-month cases, and the landlord’s congé
French law makes it far easier for the tenant to leave than for the landlord to recover the flat, and that asymmetry is deliberate. Article 12 of the 1989 Act states that “Le locataire peut résilier le contrat de location à tout moment, dans les conditions de forme et de délai prévues à l’article 15”: you may terminate at any time, provided you respect the formalities and the notice period. The formality is strict: notice, called congé, must be served by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, by act of a commissaire de justice, or handed over in person against a signed receipt, and time runs from receipt of the letter, not from posting. An email, a text message or a phone call to the agency ends nothing, and tenants who announce their departure informally and stop paying on their own assumed end date manufacture arrears out of thin air. Send the registered letter, keep the acknowledgement slip, and photograph the signed receipt if you hand the letter over personally.
The default notice period is three months, but the one-month cases are so broad that many British tenants qualify without realising it. The official service-public guidance for tenants confirms the structure: three months as the starting point, reduced to one month in defined situations, and it provides a simulator to check your commune (service-public.fr, notice given by the tenant). Paris and most of the inner suburbs sit in a tight housing area, a zone tendue, where one month applies as a matter of geography alone, which covers a large share of British renters in the Paris region. Beyond geography, one month applies to tenants with specified health grounds, to recipients of minimum social benefits, to those who lose a job or find a first job, and to several other personal situations the statute lists, each requiring you to state the reason in the notice and attach the supporting document. The practical lesson is to check the reduced period before you give notice and to claim it expressly with evidence, because a landlord who receives a bare three-month letter will simply hold you to three months of rent.
The landlord’s side is the mirror image: short rights, heavy procedure. Article 15 of the 1989 Act allows an owner to end the tenancy only to repossess the dwelling, to sell it, or for a legitimate and serious ground such as the tenant’s persistent breach, and “Le délai de préavis applicable au congé est de six mois lorsqu’il émane du bailleur”: six months’ notice when it comes from the landlord. A repossession, a reprise, must name the beneficiary, who can only be the owner, a spouse, a civil partner, a long-standing cohabitee, or close ascendants and descendants, and the owner must show the decision is genuine and serious. A notice that merely says the owner wishes to recover the flat, without naming anyone or showing anything, is void, and voidness can be raised before the judge to stop the whole process. Where the notice is given in order to sell, a congé pour vendre, it doubles as an offer to you: the price and conditions stated in the notice are an offer you may accept within its period, and your right of first refusal, your droit de préemption, follows the sale even if you first refused. The Court of Cassation spelled out the mechanism on 1 March 2023: where the owner later sells at a better price for the buyer, “le notaire doit, lorsque le bailleur n’y a pas préalablement procédé, notifier au locataire ces conditions et prix à peine de nullité de la vente et cette notification vaut offre de vente au profit du locataire” (Cass. 3rd civ., 1 Mar. 2023, no. 21-22.073). The notary must notify you of the new terms, failing which the sale itself is void, and that notification counts as a fresh offer to you. In that case the tenants exercised the second offer and then refused to pay the estate agent’s commission, and the Court held the commission could not be loaded onto pre-empting tenants who had simply accepted the notary’s offer. For a British tenant who receives a congé pour vendre, the message is therefore double: check the notice for its compulsory contents, and if you wish to buy, exercise each offer in writing within its deadline, because each refusal followed by a cheaper sale reopens your right.
B. Unpaid rent and eviction: the six-week warning, the judge’s second chance and the winter truce
Rent arrears do not end a tenancy by themselves, and no landlord may change the locks, cut off utilities or remove your belongings on private authority. Every residential lease contains a termination clause, a clause résolutoire, for non-payment of rent or charges, but article 24 of the 1989 Act freezes its effect: “Cette clause ne produit effet que six semaines après un commandement de payer demeuré infructueux.” Only six weeks after a formal demand to pay, a commandement de payer served by a commissaire de justice, which has gone unanswered, can the clause operate, and even then the landlord must go to court. That demand is valid only if it contains six compulsory items, failing which it is void: the warning that you have six weeks to pay, the monthly amount of rent and charges, the breakdown of the debt, the warning that court termination and eviction may follow if you neither pay nor seek time to pay, the address of the departmental housing solidarity fund, the fonds de solidarité pour le logement, where you can request financial help, and the reminder that you may at any time ask the court for grace periods under article 1343-5 of the Civil Code. A commandement missing any of these is challengeable for nullity, and challenging it is often the first effective defence, because everything built on a void demand collapses. So read that document line by line the day it arrives, and treat the six weeks as a window to pay, to negotiate a plan, to apply to the solidarity fund, or to have the demand reviewed, not as a period to wait and hope.
Before and beside the courtroom, the law organises conciliation. Article 20 of the 1989 Act creates in each département a conciliation commission, a commission départementale de conciliation, with equal landlord and tenant representatives, which “s’efforce de concilier les parties” and whose remit expressly covers inventory, deposit, service-charge and repair disputes as well as disputes over notices given under article 15. Referral is free and straightforward, and landlords, agencies and their lawyers take its opinions seriously in practice. If the case reaches the judge, the judge des contentieux de la protection, the specialist housing judge, holds wide powers that surprise tenants used to the English system: grant payment schedules over up to three years, suspend the effects of the termination clause while the schedule is honoured, and verify every procedural step the landlord claims to have taken. Arrears caused by a genuine accident of life, documented and paired with resumed payment, are treated very differently from silence and absence, so attend, bring bank statements, proof of benefits or employment, and any application made to the solidarity fund.
Even a judgment ordering eviction does not mean removal the next morning. Article L. 412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures provides that eviction from an occupied home “ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement”, only after two months following the commandement to vacate, a period the judge can extend or, in narrow cases of bad faith, reduce. And article L. 412-6 of the same Code imposes the winter truce, the trêve hivernale: “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”, every unexecuted eviction is suspended from 1 November to 31 March unless the household is rehoused in conditions respecting the unity and needs of the family. Only a commissaire de justice acting on a court order, with the State’s assistance where granted, can carry out a removal, and each stage, the order, the commandement to vacate, the attempted enforcement, can be challenged for irregularity within its own deadline. For British tenants in Paris and the Île-de-France, where proceedings move fast and bailiffs are methodical, the practical rule is simple: never ignore a court summons or a commissaire’s act because it is written in French, have each document translated and reviewed immediately, and answer every deadline in writing. An eviction file handled from the first commandement is often resolved by a payment plan; the same file ignored until the police van arrives is usually beyond saving.
Conclusion
Renting in France as a British tenant after Brexit means living under a statute that protects you strongly but only if you use its procedures: a written lease with compulsory contents, a deposit capped at one month and returned within one or two months against documented deductions only, inventories that decide every end-of-tenancy argument, notice periods of three months for you, often reduced to one, against six months with stated grounds for the landlord, and an eviction process that runs through a six-week demand, a judge with power to grant time, a two-month period after the order, and a winter truce from November to March. The three court decisions cited above show the pattern clearly: penalties apply automatically when the landlord cannot prove you received the money, restoration claims are set against deposit claims on the strength of invoices, and a sale at a better price reopens your right to buy on pain of nullity. Keep every document from the first viewing to the last key handover, answer every formal demand within its deadline, and treat conciliation and the housing judge as working remedies rather than distant threats. Handled that way, most tenancy disputes end not with an eviction but with an accounting, a timetable, or an agreement.