You bought the stone house near Bergerac before Brexit, lived in it for a few summers, and then life moved on. The children stayed in England, your work kept you in Manchester, and the house sat empty for most of the year, costing you insurance, local taxes and worry. A neighbour mentions that a young couple is looking for a year-round home in the village. The rent would cover the bills and keep the house lived in through winter. You agree in principle, shake hands, and then the questions start piling up. Which written lease does French law impose on you, and what happens if you simply sign a one-page English agreement downloaded from the internet? How is the rent taxed when you live in England and the house stands in France, and what changes if you have moved to France for good? And the question every distant landlord dreads: if the tenant stops paying, how do you recover the arrears and the house without boarding a plane every fortnight? This guide answers those three questions in order. French residential letting law applies to your house whatever passport you hold, and it is largely mandatory: the wrong lease does not protect you, it usually protects the tenant. French tax claims the rent first when the property stands in France, and the United Kingdom taxes you again if you live there, with a treaty mechanism to soften the double hit. And when payment stops, France offers a clear enforcement ladder, but every rung has a deadline, a formal document and a consumer-style protection for the tenant that you must respect. Read the lease rules before you sign, set the tax position before the first rent arrives, and prepare the arrears procedure before you need it.

I. Renting out your French house lawfully: the lease that binds you

When you let a house in France as someone’s main home, you enter one of the most protective tenancy regimes in Europe. The statute that governs you is the Act of 6 July 1989 on landlord and tenant relations, known in France as the loi du 6 juillet 1989, and its residential provisions apply to your Bergerac house exactly as they apply to a flat in Paris: your nationality, your residence and the language of the contract change nothing. The full text sits on the official statute book at the official guide to French residential leases (under the Act of 6 July 1989, Loi n° 89-462). Many of its provisions are a matter of public policy, which means a clause that contradicts them is simply unenforceable, even if both sides signed it willingly. An English assured shorthold tenancy pasted onto a French house does not travel: only the French lease counts, and the tenant can invoke the French rules against you. Two choices shape everything that follows: whether you let unfurnished or furnished, and whether the tenant makes the house their main home. This first part walks through both, then through the compliance checks that must be in place before the keys change hands.

A. Unfurnished or furnished: duration, deposit and notice under a French residential lease

An unfurnished letting, called a location vide, is the default long-term contract. Where the landlord is an individual, as most British owners are, the lease must run for at least three years; where the landlord is a company, the minimum is six years, as article 10 of the 1989 Act provides. At the end of the term the lease renews itself by tacit agreement unless one side gives proper notice, so in practice a location vide can run for decades. A furnished letting, or location meublée, where the house is let as the tenant’s main home with sufficient furniture for daily life, follows a lighter version of the same statute: the minimum term is one year, or nine months where the tenant is a student, and the official comparison published by the French administration confirms the three-year and one-year minimums side by side at service-public.fr: differences between unfurnished and furnished lets. The same official table confirms the second figure that matters on day one: the security deposit, the dépôt de garantie, may not exceed one month’s rent without charges for an unfurnished let, and two months’ rent for a furnished let. Ask for more and the excess must be returned; ask for any deposit at all on a short mobility lease and you are outside the rules entirely.

The deposit is where distant landlords most often lose money, in both directions. Article 22 of the 1989 Act, whose official version is at Article 22 of the Act of 6 July 1989, requires return of the deposit within two months of the keys being handed back, reduced to one month where the exit inventory matches the entry inventory, and adds a penalty of ten per cent of the monthly rent for each month of late return begun. Every deduction must be documented: unpaid rent, unpaid charges, damage beyond fair wear and tear, each proved by the exit inventory, invoices or receipts. A British owner who simply keeps the whole deposit because the garden was left untidy, without an inventory comparison and without quotes, will be ordered to repay it with the penalty. The Cour de cassation, France’s highest civil court, restated the mechanics in a decision of 29 January 2026, appeal no. 24-20.758, published at Cass. 3rd civ., 29 January 2026, no. 24-20.758: “Selon l’article 22 de la loi n° 89-462 du 6 juillet 1989, le dépôt de garantie, prévu par le contrat de location pour garantir l’exécution de ses obligations locatives par le locataire, 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.” The same ruling adds a point that cuts both ways, at the same official reference: “Est incluse dans les sommes restant dues au bailleur l’indemnité d’occupation dont le locataire est redevable s’il se maintient dans les lieux au-delà du terme du bail, ce dont il résulte que le locataire qui agit en restitution du dépôt de garantie ne peut opposer au bailleur la prescription de son action en paiement d’une indemnité d’occupation.” In plain terms, if your tenant stays on after the lease ends, the daily compensation you are owed for that overstay, the indemnité d’occupation, can be set against the deposit, and the tenant cannot defeat that set-off by arguing that your claim is time-barred. Photograph everything on entry and on exit, keep the signed inventories, and return the balance on time with an itemised statement: that file is your whole case if the deposit is disputed.

Ending the tenancy from your side is the mirror image: strictly framed, and unforgiving of shortcuts. During the lease you cannot simply decide you want the house back. At expiry you may refuse renewal only on three grounds set by article 15 of the 1989 Act: you or a close relative genuinely intend to live in the house, you genuinely intend to sell it, or you rely on a serious and legitimate reason such as the tenant’s persistent breach. The notice must reach the tenant at least six months before expiry for an unfurnished let, and at least three months before expiry for a furnished one, and it must state its ground. A notice to repossess for your own use must name the person who will live there and their relationship to you; a notice to sell operates as a first offer to the sitting tenant, with a right of first refusal on stated terms. Get the ground, the names or the deadline wrong and the notice is void, which means the lease renews and you start again. The tenant, by contrast, can leave at any time with one to three months’ notice depending on the area and their personal situation, and your only protection is the rent due through the notice period. Price that asymmetry into your plans: a French residential tenant is never a lodger you can ask to leave at the end of the month.

The repossession notice deserves special attention from British owners because it interacts with succession, and British families in France meet succession early and often. The Cour de cassation held on 16 April 2026, appeal no. 24-13.191, published at Cass. 3rd civ., 16 April 2026, no. 24-13.191: “Selon ce texte, 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. 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. Lorsqu’il donne congé à son locataire pour reprendre le logement, le bailleur justifie du caractère réel et sérieux de sa décision de reprise.” The same decision then draws the consequence that matters for estates, at the same official reference: “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.” In that case a mother had given notice so that she could live in the flat herself, died before the notice expired, and her son tried to take over the notice for himself. The court quashed the eviction: the repossession is judged in the person of the named beneficiary, and that beneficiary’s death before expiry kills the notice. If you give notice to move back into your Dordogne house yourself and then die, your children cannot simply inherit the notice; they must serve a fresh one in their own names, with a fresh six months. Conversely, if your tenant dies, the lease does not end automatically either: a spouse, partner or close relative living there can claim transfer of the lease, and only in the absence of such a person does the estate wind the tenancy down. Coordinate letting strategy with your will and your matrimonial position rather than treating them as separate files.

Two practical add-ons close this section. First, the rent itself: the lease must state it clearly with the breakdown of recoverable charges, and any annual increase during the lease is capped by reference to the official rent index unless the property is in a listed tight housing zone with its own cap. If your house stands in Paris or another city that applies a rent cap, the lease must show the reference rent and the capped figure, and the tenant can challenge an overcharge for years. Second, management from abroad: nothing stops you managing the let yourself from England, but the time difference, the language and the formalism of every notice make a local gestion locative mandate with a licensed agent worth its fee for most absentee owners. The agent collects the rent, serves the notices through the proper channels and holds the inventories; make sure the mandate is in writing, states the fee base, and gives you monthly statements you can reconcile with your tax return. Keep every notice, receipt and inventory for at least the limitation period, because in a dispute the landlord who can produce the paper trail wins and the landlord who kept everything in memory loses.

B. The compliance gates before the keys change hands: energy rating, survey file and co-ownership

Before any tenant moves in, three compliance gates must be passed, and the first now decides whether you may let at all. France grades every home’s energy performance from A to G through the energy performance diagnosis, the diagnostic de performance énergétique, universally shortened to DPE. The diagnosis is defined by statute as a document recording energy quantities and related measurements, and its official definition is at Article L. 126-26 of the Building and Housing Code. The scale itself runs from class A for extremely efficient homes down to class G for extremely inefficient ones, as set by Article L. 173-1-1 of the Building and Housing Code, which names class G homes extrêmement peu performants. Since 1 January 2025, homes rated G may no longer be let under new leases, renewals or tacit renewals, as the administration confirms at service-public.fr: the G-rated letting ban from 1 January 2025. From 1 January 2028 the bar rises to classes A to E, with only narrow exemptions for technical, architectural or heritage constraints or manifestly disproportionate cost, under Article L. 173-2 of the Building and Housing Code, and co-ownerships in formal difficulty get a limited postponement. Many British-owned village houses, thick stone walls, single glazing, oil-fired boiler, sit squarely in F or G. Commission a valid DPE before marketing the house, because the rating now appears in the advertisement itself, and budget the insulation, glazing or heating works before the first viewing rather than after the tenant’s lawyer writes. A lease signed for a G-rated house in breach of the ban exposes you to a tenant action to upgrade the property or cut the rent, and no clause can waive that.

The second gate is the technical survey file, the dossier de diagnostic technique, attached to the lease on signature. Alongside the DPE it contains the surveys the age and equipment of the house call for: lead paint where the building predates 1949, asbestos where the permit predates mid-1997, gas and electricity installations older than fifteen years, natural and technological risk statements for the commune, and noise exposure near aerodromes. Each survey has its own validity period and its own accredited surveyor, and an expired or missing survey gives the tenant a lever to challenge the rent or claim damages if the risk materialises. The third gate is the inventory of condition, the état des lieux, drawn up jointly and free of charge on entry and on exit, preferably with dated photographs. There is no valid deposit deduction without a comparative reading of the two inventories, as the deposit decision quoted above shows: the exit inventory is compared line by line with the entry one, and only differences beyond fair wear and tear can be charged. Never skip the entry inventory because the tenant seemed trustworthy; trust is not evidence, and the court will treat an absent entry inventory as a presumption that the house was delivered in good order.

The fourth check is the building itself. If your house is a flat in a copropriété, the French equivalent of a leasehold block with jointly owned common parts, the co-ownership rules, the règlement de copropriété, may restrict short tourist letting and sometimes furnished letting altogether, while a plain year-round residential lease is rarely an issue. Read the rules before choosing your letting model rather than after a neighbour complains to the managing agent, the syndic. If the house shares a private road, a well or a septic tank with neighbours, check the easements, the servitudes, and the maintenance agreements, because the tenant will call you when the shared drive floods. And if the house stands within Paris or the inner suburbs, add the local layer: the capital applies a rent cap with reference rents per district, requires a registration number for tourist letting, and enforces both with fines that make the compliance work look cheap. A British owner letting a Paris studio long-term must show the capped rent in the lease; a British owner tempted by short holiday lets in the same flat faces a different and far stricter regime, with prior authorisation for change of use in many arrondissements. Choose the long-term model deliberately, price it against the cap, and keep the flat out of the short-let enforcement statistics.

II. Paying tax on the French rent and getting paid when the tenant defaults

Once the lease is signed and the rent flows, two money questions arise together: what you owe the tax authorities, and what you do when the tenant owes you. France taxes the rent at source because the house stands in France, and your country of residence then decides the second half of the bill. The France–United Kingdom treaty of 19 June 2008, published by decree on the official statute book at the France–United Kingdom tax convention of 19 June 2008 as presented by the French Embassy in London, gives France the first taxing right over rents from buildings situated in France, a situs rule every British landlord should know Rents from your French house are therefore taxable in France first, whether you live in Manchester, Bergerac or anywhere else. If you live in England, the United Kingdom taxes you on your worldwide income as a UK resident, a position the British administration explains on its residence pages at GOV.UK: tax on foreign income and UK residence, and relief against the French tax follows through the treaty’s double-taxation machinery, so the same euro of rent is not taxed twice in full. If you live in France, France taxes your worldwide income directly and the treaty mainly protects the English-source part of your affairs. Either way, declare the rent in France first and keep the French assessment: it is the document on which every credit, return or challenge downstream depends.

A. Where the rent is taxed: French declaration, micro schemes and the non-resident bill

Inside the French return, an unfurnished rent falls under property income, the revenus fonciers category. Article 14 of the General Tax Code brings within that category the income from built property such as houses, and its official version is at Article 14 of the General Tax Code. Two regimes then compete. Under the simplified micro-property scheme, the micro-foncier, gross rents up to 15,000 euros a year are taxed after a flat 30 per cent allowance with no deduction of actual expenses, under Article 32 of the General Tax Code, which states the 15,000-euro ceiling and the 30 per cent allowance in its first paragraph. Above that ceiling, or by election, the real-cost regime taxes rents minus deductible items such as repairs, insurance, management fees, loan interest and local taxes, which rewards the owner who renovates and punishes the owner who throws receipts away. Keep every invoice from the first year, even if you start under the micro scheme, because crossing the threshold mid-letting or electing for real costs later requires the paper trail retrospectively.

A furnished long-term let is taxed differently, as trading income rather than property income. The micro trading scheme, the micro-BIC, taxes long-term furnished rents after a 50 per cent flat allowance within a turnover ceiling of 83,600 euros, while tourist furnished lets face a lower 15,000-euro ceiling with a 30 per cent allowance, all set by Article 50-0 of the General Tax Code. Above the ceilings, or by election, the real-cost trading regime applies with depreciation of the building and furniture, which often beats the flat allowance for a recently renovated house. Cross the line into professional letting, the loueur en meublé professionnel status, and the social and tax consequences deepen: the statute treats the activity as professional where annual receipts exceed 23,000 euros and outweigh the household’s other taxed income, under Article 155, IV of the General Tax Code, with a specific comparison rule for households without French tax residence. Most British owners letting one house long-term stay well below that line and remain non-professional, but check the arithmetic before adding a second property or pushing the rent up. The furnished model’s higher allowance is attractive, yet remember its tenancy cost: shorter minimum terms and a tenant who can leave faster, as Part I explained.

Residence then sets the rate and the extras. French-source rents are exactly what article 164 B of the General Tax Code describes: income from buildings situated in France counts as French-source income, at Article 164 B of the General Tax Code. If you are not domiciled in France for tax purposes, article 197 A of the same code applies the standard income-tax scale but with a floor: the tax cannot be lower than 20 per cent on the slice of net taxable income up to the top of the second bracket and 30 per cent above, with reduced rates for certain European residents, at Article 197 A of the General Tax Code. A British owner in Manchester with only French rental income therefore pays French tax at no less than those minimum rates, plus the social levies on property income where they apply: owners covered by the British health system through a portable document may escape part of those levies, a point developed in our companion guide for British pensioners in France at British state pensioners, the S1 certificate and French healthcare charges. If you are domiciled in France, the rents join your household income under the ordinary progressive scale, and the property also feeds the annual local bills, the taxe foncière on owners and any applicable housing taxes, detailed in our yearly-bills guide at British second homes and French annual property bills. Either way, file every year even if the rent barely covers the costs: a non-filer cannot claim allowances, cannot prove the creditable French tax in London, and cannot credibly challenge an assessment. And when the assessment looks wrong, challenge it through a formal claim within the deadline rather than by ignoring it: the tenant’s arrears are your problem, but the tax office’s arithmetic is yours to check.

B. When the rent stops: formal demand, the court, the winter truce and recovering the flat

Now the hard part. One missed rent is a signal; two is a procedure. Start the paper trail at once: a written reminder, then a formal demand for payment served by a commissaire de justice, the French court enforcement officer who used to be called a huissier. For residential leases the demand that invokes the lease’s termination clause must give the tenant two months to pay, and only an unsuccessful two months opens the road to court. Never try to force the outcome yourself: changing the locks, removing the tenant’s belongings, cutting off utilities or threatening the family exposes you to criminal liability and destroys your own case. Only a court judgment, enforced by the commissaire de justice, lawfully ends the occupation and recovers the house. The administration’s arrears guide walks landlords through each stage in English at service-public.fr: unpaid rent and tenant eviction, and its steps match the courtroom reality: demand, summons before the judge, judgment for termination, arrears and eviction, then enforcement with its own delays.

At the hearing, expect the judge to test three things: whether the debt is real and documented, whether the tenant’s difficulties deserve time, and whether the termination clause was properly triggered. French judges may grant the tenant payment delays of up to three years and suspend the termination clause while the schedule runs, so arrive with the ledger, the lease, the demand and the payment history, and propose a realistic schedule if one exists: a landlord who refuses any schedule without reason fares worse than one who offered one the tenant broke. If the lease is terminated and the tenant still does not leave, enforcement pauses twice. First, no eviction from an occupied home may take place until two months after the order to vacate, the commandement de quitter les lieux, has been served, subject to the judge’s power to shorten or extend that period and to the bad-faith exception, under Article L. 412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures. Second, the winter truce, the trêve hivernale, suspends every unexecuted eviction from 1 November to 31 March each year unless the household is properly rehoused, in the statute’s own words at Article L. 412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures: “Nonobstant toute décision d’expulsion passée en force de chose jugée et malgré l’expiration des délais accordés en vertu de l’article L. 412-3, 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.” A judgment obtained in October is therefore enforced in April, and the arrears keep running meanwhile: keep the claim for the debt alive even while the eviction waits for spring.

Prevention beats procedure, and three tools cost little against the price of a year without rent. First, take a solvent guarantor, the garant, usually a parent or employer, whose written commitment follows a strict statutory form: an informal email promise is worthless, a compliant guarantee deed is gold. Third, rent-default insurance, the assurance loyers impayés, pays the rent and funds the proceedings after a short excess period, provided you selected the tenant on documented income, typically three times the rent, and declared the first default on time. Screen lawfully: you may ask for pay slips, tax notices and employment contracts, but not for bank statements, medical records or criminal extracts, and discrimination between applicants on protected grounds is a criminal offence. Finally, if the tenant at the end claims the deposit back while owing the last months, remember the set-off rule from the January 2026 deposit decision quoted in Part I: occupation compensation and proven arrears come off the deposit, with an itemised account within the two-month deadline. And if the tenant challenges your assessment of wear and tear, the comparative inventories decide, not the photographs alone and certainly not your memory of the magnolia paint.

Conclusion

A British-owned house let long-term in France succeeds on three files kept together. The lease file holds a compliant French contract for the right model, unfurnished for stability or furnished for yield, with the lawful deposit, the valid surveys, a genuine energy rating above the letting ban, and matching entry and exit inventories. The tax file holds the French declaration every year, the micro or real-cost election that fits the numbers, the treaty priority of France over the rent, and the British return with the French tax credited, so neither administration can accuse you of silence. The arrears file, opened at the second missed rent, holds the formal demand, the court papers, the judgment and the enforcement calendar with its two-month pause and its winter truce. None of these files requires you to live in France; all of them require you to act in writing, on time, and through the proper officer. Set them up before the tenant moves in, and the Dordogne house pays its way instead of teaching you French procedure the expensive way.