You have handed back the keys to your Paris flat, left France, and three months later your dépôt de garantie (security deposit) has still not been returned. Or the mirror situation: you own a flat in Paris that you rent out from London or New York, the tenant left the parquet gouged and the walls grey, and you wonder what you may lawfully keep. Both questions are governed by the same small set of rules, and French judges apply them mechanically. The deposit is capped by law, it must be returned within one or two months of the key handover, every month of delay costs the landlord a penalty of 10 percent of the monthly rent, and no deduction survives without two things: a comparison between the entry and exit inventories and a written justification for each euro kept. This article explains, for foreign tenants and foreign landlords alike, how the money moves, what proof wins, and where to act in Paris and Île-de-France when it does not.

I. Getting the money back: caps, deadlines and the late penalty

The French security deposit is not a pot of free money for the landlord, nor an automatic refund for the tenant. The Cour de cassation recalls its exact function: “le dépôt de garantie est prévu pour garantir l’exécution de ses obligations locatives par le locataire” (Cass. 3e civ., 31 May 2018, No. 17-18.069, published in the Bulletin), which means the deposit exists to guarantee the performance of the tenant’s lease obligations, and nothing else. It secures unpaid rent and charges, damage beyond normal wear, and rental repairs left undone. It does not secure the landlord’s convenience, and it cannot be increased during the lease. Once that function is understood, the rest follows: how much may be taken, when it must come back, and what delay costs.

A. How much may be required, and when it must be returned

For an unfurnished home (logement vide, a dwelling let without furniture under the standard three-year lease), the deposit may not exceed one month’s rent excluding charges (loyer hors charges, the base rent without the monthly provision for building charges), and it must be stated in the lease. For a furnished letting (logement meublé, a dwelling let furnished, usually for one year, or nine months for a student), the ceiling is two months’ rent excluding charges. These ceilings come from article 22 of the Act of 6 July 1989 (loi n° 89-462 du 6 juillet 1989, the statute governing residential leases), as the official service-public.fr guidance page confirms in its English version (service-public.fr, Security deposit in a residential lease). Two practical points matter enormously for foreigners. First, when the rent is payable quarterly in advance, no deposit at all may be required. Second, the landlord may never increase the deposit during the lease or at renewal, even if the rent itself is revised upwards. An agency in Paris that asks a newly arrived expatriate for two months’ deposit on an unfurnished flat, or for a “deposit top-up” after a rent review, is asking for something unlawful, and the excess must be returned.

The return deadline depends on one comparison only: the exit inventory against the entry inventory (état des lieux d’entrée et de sortie, the descriptive inspection reports drawn up jointly when the tenant moves in and moves out). If the exit inventory matches the entry inventory, the landlord must return the deposit within one month. If the exit inventory differs from the entry inventory, the landlord has two months. The clock starts on the day the tenant returns the keys, either handed over in person (remise en main propre, delivery by hand against a receipt) or sent by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, and the tenant should give a forwarding address and bank details (RIB, relevé d’identité bancaire, the French bank account identification slip) when handing over the keys. For furnished lettings, the period is always two months. The amount returned may be lower than the amount paid, because of lawful deductions or a provision for the final charges settlement, which is examined below. Three persons are bound by this duty, and foreign parties often sue the wrong one: the landlord, or the agency acting for the landlord, must return the deposit; where the flat was sold during the lease, the new owner owes the restitution; where the managing agency changed during the lease, the new agency owes it. A buyer of a tenanted Paris flat therefore inherits the deposit debt on the day of the purchase deed (acte authentique de vente, the notarial deed of sale), whether or not the seller passed the money on, and should settle the deposit position with the seller in the deed. Our Paris real estate practice advising foreign owners and buyers regularly sees this point missed in cross-border purchases, with the new non-resident owner discovering the claim months later.

Tenants should also know what help exists if paying the deposit was the problem in the first place: employees in the private sector may obtain the Loca-Pass advance from Action Logement, repayable over time, and households in difficulty may apply to the local housing solidarity fund (FSL, fonds de solidarité pour le logement, the département-level fund that grants loans or subsidies for access to housing). These are worth mentioning to a foreign employee relocating to Paris whose French bank account is not yet open, because a landlord who refuses these payment routes while demanding cash up front is creating the kind of file that ends badly for the landlord.

B. Late return: the 10 percent monthly penalty and the charges trap

When the deadline passes without full restitution, the sanction is automatic and expensive: the landlord owes the tenant a penalty of 10 percent of the monthly rent, excluding charges, for each month of delay started (par mois de retard commencé, meaning even a few days into a new month count as a full month). On a Paris rent of 2,000 euros excluding charges, four months of delay cost 800 euros in penalties alone, on top of the deposit itself. No formal demand is needed to trigger the penalty; it runs by operation of law from the expiry of the one- or two-month period. A formal demand (mise en demeure, a written demand sent by registered letter setting a final deadline) remains useful in practice, because it dates the claim, interrupts hesitation, and opens the door to conciliation and court proceedings, but it does not create the penalty. The penalty exists even if the landlord acted in good faith, even if the tenant left no forwarding address for a time, and even if the parties disagree about deductions: the landlord who wants to deduct must return the balance on time with the justifications, not hold the whole deposit hostage while negotiating. Interest also accrues on top where the general law applies, since a debtor late in performing an obligation of payment may owe damages for delay under article 1231-1 of the Civil Code, and a landlord whose unfounded deductions cause proven additional loss may face liability under the general fault principle of article 1240 of the Civil Code: “Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer”, which means any human act that causes damage to another obliges the person by whose fault it occurred to repair it.

The one trap the Cour de cassation has closed is the confusion between the deposit and the final settlement of building charges (régularisation des charges, the annual adjustment comparing the monthly provisions paid by the tenant with the building’s actual recoverable expenses). In a collective building, the final adjustment can only be made after the building’s accounts are definitively approved, which often happens months after the tenant leaves. The Court held that this adjustment follows its own timetable and that the late penalty does not apply to it: the lower court had wrongly applied the article 22 penalty from the expiry of the two-month deposit period to a sum owed by the landlord by way of charges regularisation, which follows a different restitution timetable (Cass. 3e civ., 31 May 2018, No. 17-18.069). In practice this means two separate tracks. Track one, the deposit minus justified deductions, must be returned within one or two months, failing which the 10 percent penalty runs. Track two, the balance of the charges settlement, is paid within one month of the definitive approval of the building’s accounts, with deductions for sums still owed by the tenant or owed by the landlord in the tenant’s place, and no article 22 penalty attaches to it. Landlords sometimes invoke pending charges as an excuse to keep the entire deposit for a year; that excuse fails, because the law allows only a provision (provision pour charges, a capped holdback, at most 20 percent of the deposit where the accounts cannot yet be settled) to be retained for that purpose, with the balance returned on time. Tenants, symmetrically, should not demand the 10 percent penalty on the charges balance itself: claiming it weakens an otherwise strong file, and judges notice.

Before going to court, the parties must attempt conciliation where the law requires it, and it is free: the département conciliation commission (commission départementale de conciliation, the free mediation body for residential lease disputes) hears deposit disputes, and seizing it is quick and creates a record. If conciliation fails, the competent court is the protection litigation judge (juge des contentieux de la protection, the specialist judge for residential lease disputes within the judicial court), who routinely orders restitution plus penalties on documentary evidence alone. Foreign tenants who have left France can be represented, and foreign landlords can defend and counterclaim for damage through a representative; distance changes the logistics, never the deadlines.

II. What the landlord may keep: the comparative inventory and proof

Deductions are where most deposits die, and where most files are won or lost. The rule is strict and entirely documentary: the landlord may deduct only sums still owed by the tenant, such as unpaid rent or charges, the cost of damage beyond normal wear established by comparing the entry and exit inventories, and the cost of rental repairs left undone, and each deduction must be justified in writing, typically by invoices, firm quotations, or an unanswered formal demand for unpaid sums (service-public.fr, Security deposit in a residential lease). A deduction announced by telephone, supported by a photograph alone, or priced from memory is not a deduction a judge will accept. The legal analysis ANIL, the national housing information agency, gives of this litigation confirms the pattern: disputes concentrate on the reality and pricing of the deductions, and landlords lose when the file contains assertions instead of documents (ANIL, the national housing information agency, legal analysis on deposit deductions). The practitioner’s commentary on village-justice.com describes restitution litigation as wrongly underestimated, precisely because landlords treat the deposit as an advance on works rather than as the tenant’s money held in trust (village-justice.com commentary on deposit restitution litigation).

A. Entry against exit: the comparison that decides everything

Everything starts with the two inventories. The exit report is compared with the entry report, item by item, room by room, and only differences recorded in both documents count. Where no entry inventory was drawn up at all, the tenant is presumed to have received the premises in good repair, and must return them as such, failing proof to the contrary: “S’il n’a pas été fait d’état des lieux, le preneur est présumé les avoir reçus en bon état de réparations locatives, et doit les rendre tels, sauf la preuve contraire” (article 1731 of the Civil Code). This presumption cuts both ways and surprises foreign landlords: without an entry inventory, the landlord cannot prove that a stain, a crack, or a worn floor pre-dated the tenancy in the sense of excusing restitution, because the tenant is deemed to have received everything in good order and must simply return it so, while the tenant who actually received a damaged flat has lost the written proof of its initial state. The substantive liability rule sits next to it: “Il répond des dégradations ou des pertes qui arrivent pendant sa jouissance, à moins qu’il ne prouve qu’elles ont eu lieu sans sa faute” (article 1732 of the Civil Code), which means the tenant answers for deterioration or loss occurring during the tenancy unless the tenant proves it happened without fault, for example through age-related wear (vétusté, the natural ageing of materials and equipment), force majeure, a construction defect attributable to the landlord, or the act of a third party.

The distinction between wear and damage is the daily battleground. Repainting after nine years of tenancy is normally wear; a cigarette burn in the parquet is damage. A yellowed seal around a ten-year-old bath is wear; a smashed washbasin is damage. Minor day-to-day maintenance and small repairs fall on the tenant under the 1987 decree listing rental repairs (décret n° 87-712 du 26 août 1987, the regulation enumerating the minor repairs deemed to be the tenant’s responsibility: seals, taps washers, switches, door handles, garden upkeep and similar items), while replacement of worn-out equipment and major repairs fall on the landlord. Foreign landlords sometimes deduct the full cost of renovating a flat between two tenancies: repainting everything, replacing a carpet at new price after eight years, changing a ten-year-old water heater. Judges reduce these claims systematically, applying wear grids (grilles de vétusté, the depreciation schedules agreed in many leases or by professional usage that spread the cost of each item over its theoretical lifetime) where the lease provides one, and otherwise their own assessment of residual life. The deduction must reflect the tenant’s share of the loss, not the price of making the flat new again.

A recent Paris decision shows exactly what a winning landlord file looks like, and it is worth reading as a checklist. In April 2026 the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed a judgment ordering tenants to bear cleaning and repair deductions, on the ground that the contradictory entry and exit inventories allowed a precise comparison: “L’examen comparatif de ces documents fait apparaître plusieurs dégradations excédant la seule usure normale, lesquelles sont expressément mentionnées dans l’état des lieux de sortie” (CA Paris, Pôle 4, ch. 4, 14 Apr. 2026, No. 24/05816), which means the comparative examination of the two reports revealed several instances of deterioration beyond mere normal wear, expressly recorded in the exit inventory. The court then validated each deduction against its document: the dirty flat was corroborated by photographs, a contractual flat-rate cleaning deduction of 650 euros was held proportionate and backed by a higher cleaning quotation, parquet damage recorded in the exit report was confirmed by photographs showing alterations requiring sanding, and soiled linen and a damaged kitchen worktop were each tied to a mention in the exit report plus supporting exhibits. Four lessons follow for any foreign landlord. First, write everything into the exit inventory on the day, precisely, room by room, because what is not written there barely exists. Second, photograph the damage the same day, with the inventory in the frame of the file. Third, obtain at least one dated, itemised quotation or invoice per deduction before the return deadline, because a lump sum with no breakdown invites the judge to cancel it. Fourth, a contractual flat-rate cleaning clause can survive, but only if the dirt is real, recorded, and the amount is proportionate to documented cost.

One special case deserves attention because expatriates meet it constantly: the inventory drawn up by a bailiff (commissaire de justice, formerly huissier de justice, the sworn enforcement officer entitled to draw up official reports). When the parties cannot agree on a joint inventory, either side may call in a commissioner, whose report is difficult to challenge, but the cost is split by halves between landlord and tenant only under a strict condition. The Cour de cassation confirmed that where the parties were not summoned by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt at least seven days in advance, the party that commissioned the report cannot recover half its cost: “il résulte de l’article 3-2 de la loi du 6 juillet 1989 que, lorsque les parties n’ont pas été convoquées par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception adressée au moins sept jours à l’avance, celle qui a pris l’initiative de faire établir l’état des lieux par un huissier de justice ne peut obtenir le remboursement de la moitié de son coût” (Cass. 3e civ., 26 Oct. 2023, No. 22-20.183, published in the Bulletin), which means the seven-day registered summons is the key that unlocks cost-sharing, and without it the commissioner works at the sole expense of whoever ordered the report. A landlord in London organising an exit inventory through a Paris agent should therefore instruct the agent to send the registered summons at least seven days ahead and keep the proof of posting: a bailiff’s report that costs 400 euros and cannot be shared is a needless loss.

B. Paris and Île-de-France in practice: where to act and how foreign parties prove their case

Paris procedure has its own geography, and files move faster when they start in the right place. For a tenant whose deposit has not come back, the sequence is: a registered formal demand to the landlord or agency, with bank details and a copy of both inventories; then the free département conciliation commission for Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis or Val-de-Marne, which summons both sides and frequently produces an agreement within weeks; then, if needed, the protection litigation judge of the Paris judicial court (tribunal judiciaire de Paris, the court with jurisdiction over the Paris arrondissement where the flat is located). The judge decides on documents, which favours well-prepared foreigners: lease, proof of the deposit payment, both inventories, key-handover receipt, formal demand, and a short computation of the penalty claimed. Tenants’ associations and the Paris ADIL (ADIL 75, the Paris département housing information agency giving free legal information) provide free guidance on the computation and the forms, and their opinions carry weight in conciliation. Landlords in Île-de-France face the same judge with the same documentary standard, and Paris magistrates are accustomed to wear grids and professional quotations: a file with dated photographs, itemised invoices from Île-de-France artisans, and a wear computation succeeds where a single global invoice from an unknown company fails. Where the tenant has disappeared abroad leaving damage and unpaid rent, the landlord’s parallel remedies are unchanged: keep the justified deductions with documents, sue for the balance before the same judge, and use a commissioner of justice for service abroad where needed.

Foreign parties should organise three practical points from day one. First, language: leases, inventories and summonses are in French, and a tenant who signs an entry inventory without understanding it still signed it. Having the inventory translated or explained before signing costs little and prevents the most common disaster, an exit comparison lost on words the tenant never read. Second, representation: powers of attorney (pouvoir, the written authority to act for another) allow an agent, a friend, or counsel to attend the exit inventory and the conciliation in the party’s place, and conciliation bodies accept written submissions. Third, money movement: refunds to foreign accounts require complete bank details including IBAN and BIC, and landlords should keep proof of the transfer, because a tenant who claims never to have received the money shifts the argument to evidence of payment. None of this requires residence in France; it requires method. Foreign owners letting in Paris who want their deduction files reviewed before the deadline, or departing tenants facing an itemised claim they do not understand, can have the inventories, quotations and penalty computation checked against the rules set out above by counsel practising Paris landlord and tenant law for international clients.

Conclusion

The French security deposit rewards the party with the better documents. The tenant who kept both inventories, the key-handover receipt, and the copy of the registered demand will recover the deposit plus 10 percent per month of delay, usually without drama. The landlord who wrote the damage into the exit inventory, photographed it, and priced it with itemised quotations will keep every justified euro, as the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed in April 2026. The amounts are capped, the deadlines are short, the penalty is automatic, and the charges settlement runs on its own track. Check the cap first, compare the two inventories line by line, justify each deduction in writing before the deadline expires, and start in conciliation if the other side will not move.