Renting a flat in France as a British tenant feels familiar until the first dispute arrives, and then every reflex imported from England points in the wrong direction. In England and Wales your landlord must place your deposit with an authorised protection scheme within thirty days, and the scheme adjudicates deductions when you leave, as the official guidance on the gov.uk deposit protection pages confirms. France has no such scheme. Your protection here comes from a different architecture altogether: strict legal caps on what the landlord may ask for, short deadlines for getting your money back with an automatic financial penalty for delay, a formal exit inventory compared line by line with the entry inventory, and notice rules that cut both ways. The framework is the loi du 6 juillet 1989, the statute of 6 July 1989 on the landlord and tenant relationship, read together with the Civil Code provisions on leases that the Cour de cassation applies with remarkable consistency.<\/p>\n
This guide, current on 11 October 2026, is written for British tenants living in France under a standard residential lease, whether your home is an unfurnished flat on a three-year lease or a furnished studio on a one-year lease. It explains every French term the first time it appears, works through the sums that decide most disputes, and shows the exact procedural steps that turn a complaint into leverage. Part I follows your money out of the door: recovering the d\u00e9p\u00f4t de garantie, the security deposit, giving cong\u00e9, the formal notice that ends the lease, and surviving the \u00e9tat des lieux, the inventory of condition. Part II keeps a roof over your head while you live there: forcing the landlord to carry out repairs, and defeating a cong\u00e9, an eviction claim or a rent-arrears procedure you should never have faced. Each section ends with the practical move to make this week, because in French tenancy disputes the tenant who writes first, by the right letter, usually wins.<\/p>\n
The d\u00e9p\u00f4t de garantie is the first figure to check, because anything above the legal ceiling was never owed in the first place. For an unfurnished letting where the rent is payable monthly in advance, the deposit may not exceed one month of rent excluding charges, and for a furnished letting the ceiling is two months of rent excluding charges. The amount must appear in the lease itself, it cannot be increased during the lease or at renewal, and where the rent is payable quarterly in advance no deposit may be demanded at all. These ceilings come from the official service-public.fr guidance on deposits in residential leases, which also confirms that a mobility lease, the short furnished lease of one to ten months for students and mobile workers, prohibits any deposit. If you paid three months as a deposit because the agent said that was normal for foreigners, the excess was unlawfully demanded, and that point belongs in the first paragraph of any letter of formal notice.<\/p>\n
The second figure is the clock. Once you hand back the keys, the landlord has one month to return the deposit if the \u00e9tat des lieux de sortie, the exit inventory, matches the \u00e9tat des lieux d’entr\u00e9e, the entry inventory, and two months where the two inventories differ. Every deduction must then be proved twice over: the sums must be due to the landlord or sums he has paid in your place, and they must be duly justified with invoices, bailiff reports or comparable documents. The Cour de cassation put the rule in these exact terms: “le d\u00e9p\u00f4t de garantie est restitu\u00e9 dans un d\u00e9lai maximal d’un mois \u00e0 compter de la remise des cl\u00e9s par le locataire lorsque l’\u00e9tat des lieux de sortie est conforme \u00e0 l’\u00e9tat des lieux d’entr\u00e9e, d\u00e9duction faite, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant, des sommes restant dues au bailleur et des sommes dont celui-ci pourrait \u00eatre tenu, en lieu et place du locataire, sous r\u00e9serve qu’elles soient d\u00fbment justifi\u00e9es.” That quotation comes from Cour de cassation, third civil chamber, 26 October 2023, appeal no. 22-20.183<\/a>, a decision which also shows that judges check the arithmetic themselves: in that case the court of appeal had ordered full restitution without deducting 301.73 euros of rent arrears and 732.45 euros of damage the tenants had been ordered to pay, and the Cour de cassation quashed that part, holding that the lower court had “viol\u00e9 le texte susvis\u00e9”, violated the very provision on which restitution depends.<\/p>\n Late return carries its own price, and it accrues without any need to go to court first. For each month of delay begun, the deposit still owed is increased by ten percent of one month of rent excluding charges, as the same official service-public.fr deposit guidance states. On a rent of 1,200 euros excluding charges with a deposit of 1,200 euros returned three months late, the penalty is 120 euros per month begun, or 360 euros on top of the deposit. The only escape for the landlord is that you failed to give your new address when handing over the keys, so always state the new address in writing at the handover and keep a copy. The sequence that works in practice is therefore a letter of formal notice, a mise en demeure sent by lettre recommand\u00e9e avec accus\u00e9 de r\u00e9ception, the registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, giving the landlord eight days to pay the deposit plus the accrued penalty, followed if necessary by a claim before the juge des contentieux de la protection, the specialist local judge for residential tenancy disputes. Deposit claims below the higher civil thresholds move quickly there, the procedure is largely paper-based, and the penalty arithmetic does the persuading.<\/p>\n One warning about the exit inventory itself, because British tenants often agree to an arrangement that quietly costs them money. Where the parties cannot agree a joint inventory, either side may call in a commissaire de justice, the court officer formerly called a huissier de justice, and the cost is normally split. But the Cour de cassation held in the same 26 October 2023 decision that “lorsque les parties n’ont pas \u00e9t\u00e9 convoqu\u00e9es par lettre recommand\u00e9e avec demande d’avis de r\u00e9ception adress\u00e9e au moins sept jours \u00e0 l’avance, celle qui a pris l’initiative de faire \u00e9tablir l’\u00e9tat des lieux par un huissier de justice ne peut obtenir le remboursement de la moiti\u00e9 de son co\u00fbt.” In plain terms, if you were warned of the bailiff inventory less than seven days ahead by registered letter, the landlord cannot make you pay half. Check the date on that registered letter before paying any inventory invoice, and read the full reasoning at Cour de cassation, third civil chamber, 26 October 2023, appeal no. 22-20.183<\/a>. Photographs taken on the day of each inventory, stored with their dates, remain the cheapest insurance a tenant can buy.<\/p>\n The cong\u00e9 du locataire, the tenant’s notice to end the lease, is where British tenants lose the most money through hesitation. Unlike the landlord, who may only end the lease at expiry and on narrow statutory grounds, you may leave at any time. The default pr\u00e9avis, the notice period during which rent remains due, is three months. But a long statutory list cuts it to one month, and Paris and much of the inner suburbs sit in a zone tendue, a high-demand area where one month is the rule for every tenant who invokes it correctly. The official service-public.fr guidance on tenant notice confirms that the notice is one month where the flat stands in a tense area, on the single condition that the notice letter states the address of the flat and expressly relies on article 15 of the statute of 6 July 1989 and the decree delimiting those areas. Omit that sentence and the period stays at three months, so the one sentence that cites the texts is worth two months of rent.<\/p>\n Outside tense areas, the one-month notice still applies in a series of named situations that cover most British lives in France: a first job, a transfer, a new job after redundancy, professional training, the minimum subsistence income, age over sixty-five with modest resources, disability benefits, domestic violence, and a state of health certified by a doctor that requires a change of home. Each ground needs its supporting document joined to the notice letter: the redundancy letter, the new employment contract, the medical certificate, the benefit award. Tenants sometimes ask whether Brexit changed any of this. It did not. Notice rights attach to the lease, not to nationality, and a British passport neither extends nor shortens the pr\u00e9avis. Your residence permit may matter for your right to stay in France, which is a different question dealt with in our newcomer visa material, but the landlord cannot use your nationality to refuse a valid cong\u00e9.<\/p>\n Form is everything, because an invalid notice restarts the clock. The cong\u00e9 must be served by lettre recommand\u00e9e avec accus\u00e9 de r\u00e9ception, by signification, formal service through a commissaire de justice, or by hand delivery against a signed receipt, the remise en main propre contre r\u00e9c\u00e9piss\u00e9 ou \u00e9margement. Email and ordinary post do not count, however reasonable they feel. State the date on which you will leave, cite the one-month ground with its legal basis where you rely on one, enclose the proof, and give your new address for the deposit return discussed above. Keep the acknowledgement slip and a full copy of the letter and enclosures. If the landlord refuses to collect the registered letter, the notice still runs in most cases from the presentation date, which is why the acknowledgement slip matters more than the landlord’s cooperation. Diarise the end date, return the keys by that date, and attend the exit inventory with the entry inventory in hand, because every deduction the landlord later claims will be tested against the comparison of those two documents.<\/p>\n Two financial points complete the exit. First, rent remains due through the notice period even if you hand back the keys early, unless a new tenant agreed by the landlord moves in, so negotiate an early release in writing rather than assuming departure ends the bill. Second, in buildings held in copropri\u00e9t\u00e9, the flat-owners’ association, the landlord may hold back up to twenty percent of the deposit against the annual regularisation des charges, the yearly reconciliation of service charges, with the balance returned within the month after the building accounts are approved. That retention must be justified by the accounts when they arrive, and it does not extend the penalty-free deadlines for the rest. British tenants who rented through an English-language agency sometimes discover at this stage that the agency charged illegal letting fees years earlier. Agency fees for the visit, the file, the lease and the entry inventory are capped by decree per square metre with a statutory ceiling, and anything above the cap has always been recoverable. Dig out the original invoice before the file goes cold.<\/p>\n French law divides repair duties with a clarity English tenants often find surprising, and the division starts in the Civil Code itself. Article 1719 obliges the landlord, by the very nature of the contract and with no special clause needed, to deliver the dwelling, to maintain it in a condition fit for the use for which it was let, to secure the tenant’s peaceful enjoyment, and, where the flat is the tenant’s main home, to provide a decent dwelling: “Le bailleur est oblig\u00e9, par la nature du contrat, et sans qu’il soit besoin d’aucune stipulation particuli\u00e8re : 1\u00b0 De d\u00e9livrer au preneur la chose lou\u00e9e et, s’il s’agit de son habitation principale, un logement d\u00e9cent.” Read the full text at article 1719 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. Article 1720 then allocates the work: “Le bailleur est tenu de d\u00e9livrer la chose en bon \u00e9tat de r\u00e9parations de toute esp\u00e8ce. Il doit y faire, pendant la dur\u00e9e du bail, toutes les r\u00e9parations qui peuvent devenir n\u00e9cessaires, autres que les locatives.” See article 1720 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. Everything structural or age-related, the roof, the boiler, the plumbing, damp caused by defective waterproofing, a dangerous electrical installation, belongs to the landlord. Only the menues r\u00e9parations locatives, the minor day-to-day tenant repairs listed by the decree of 26 August 1987, such as tap washers, blind cords, limescale and garden upkeep, fall on you, and even those escape you where age or force majeure caused the damage: “Aucune des r\u00e9parations r\u00e9put\u00e9es locatives n’est \u00e0 la charge des locataires quand elles ne sont occasionn\u00e9es que par v\u00e9tust\u00e9 ou force majeure.” See article 1755 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>.<\/p>\n The mirror rule protects landlords against damage the tenant actually causes. Article 1732 provides that the tenant “r\u00e9pond des d\u00e9gradations ou des pertes qui arrivent pendant sa jouissance, \u00e0 moins qu’il ne prouve qu’elles ont eu lieu sans sa faute”, meaning the tenant answers for deterioration during the tenancy unless he proves it happened without his fault. See article 1732 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. That is why the entry inventory matters as much at the start as at the end: a stain or crack recorded on day one cannot become a deduction on the last day. Where several tenants share, article 1734 apportions fire liability between them, and every tenant of an unfurnished home must carry a home insurance policy, the assurance habitation, and produce the certificate each year, failing which the landlord may insure in your place and recharge the premium. See article 1734 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. None of this affects your residence rights after Brexit, but an uninsured tenant in arrears is a tenant with two simultaneous vulnerabilities, so keep the insurance certificate with the lease.<\/p>\n When the landlord ignores repair requests, the escalation has four rungs and skipping one weakens the next. First, write by registered letter describing each defect, its location, its consequences for health or safety, and a reasonable deadline, enclosing dated photographs. Second, where the defect makes the home indecent or dangerous, ask the town hall or the regional health agency to inspect, since an official report of insalubrity or danger reframes the whole dispute. Third, refer the matter to the commission d\u00e9partementale de conciliation, the free county conciliation board that hears landlord and tenant disputes and issues an opinion most landlords take seriously. Fourth, petition the juge des contentieux de la protection for an order to carry out specified works within a deadline backed by an astreinte, a daily financial penalty for non-compliance, plus damages for the loss of enjoyment in the meantime. Damages for loss of use are routinely assessed as a percentage reduction of the rental value over the affected period, which is why your dated photographs and the conciliation opinion matter: they fix the start date of the landlord’s knowledge.<\/p>\n Two further remedies deserve a wider audience among British tenants. Article 1222 of the Civil Code allows a creditor, after formal notice, to have the obligation performed himself within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost and to claim reimbursement: “Apr\u00e8s mise en demeure, le cr\u00e9ancier peut aussi, dans un d\u00e9lai et \u00e0 un co\u00fbt raisonnables, faire ex\u00e9cuter lui-m\u00eame l’obligation”, with the possibility of asking the court to order the debtor to advance the necessary sums. See article 1222 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. A tenant who has a leaking water heater replaced by a professional after a fruitless mise en demeure, at a documented market price, can therefore claim the invoice back rather than living with cold water for a year. And article 1240, the general fault provision, states that “Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause \u00e0 autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arriv\u00e9 \u00e0 le r\u00e9parer.” See article 1240 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. A landlord who lets damp spread into a child’s bedroom or leaves a tenant without heating in winter faces damages on that basis alongside the works order. Never stop paying the full rent to pressure the landlord, however tempting that feels: French courts treat rent suspension as a breach by the tenant, and only a judge may authorise payment into escrow, the s\u00e9questre, pending the works.<\/p>\n A cong\u00e9 du bailleur, the landlord’s notice, is valid only at the end of the lease, only on one of three statutory grounds, and only in the correct form. The Cour de cassation restated the framework in these terms: “lorsque le bailleur donne cong\u00e9 \u00e0 son locataire, ce cong\u00e9 doit \u00eatre justifi\u00e9 soit par sa d\u00e9cision de reprendre ou de vendre le logement, soit par un motif l\u00e9gitime et s\u00e9rieux, notamment l’inex\u00e9cution par le locataire de l’une des obligations lui incombant.” The three gates are therefore reprise, the landlord or a close relative moving in as a main home, vente, sale of the flat, and legitimate and serious ground, typically persistent breach by the tenant. The same decision adds the sanction: “A peine de nullit\u00e9, le cong\u00e9 donn\u00e9 par le bailleur doit indiquer le motif all\u00e9gu\u00e9 et, en cas de reprise, les nom et adresse du b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire de la reprise ainsi que la nature du lien existant entre le bailleur et le b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire”, and “Le d\u00e9lai de pr\u00e9avis applicable au cong\u00e9 est de six mois lorsqu’il \u00e9mane du bailleur.” Read the decision in full at Cour de cassation, third civil chamber, 12 October 2023, appeal no. 22-18.580<\/a>. A notice received five months before expiry, a reprise for a distant cousin, or a cong\u00e9 that states no ground at all is void, and a void cong\u00e9 renews nothing and ends nothing: the lease continues.<\/p>\n The two most litigated grounds each carry a tenant protection worth knowing. A cong\u00e9 pour vendre, notice to sell the empty flat, operates as an offer of sale to the sitting tenant, who enjoys a right of first refusal during the first two months of the notice period, as the official service-public.fr guidance on landlord notice confirms. If the stated price is inflated to frighten you away and the flat is then sold cheaper to someone else, the sale can be challenged. A cong\u00e9 pour reprise requires a genuine and serious intention to live in the flat as a main home, assessed on the day notice is given, and the Cour de cassation allows the judge to consider later evidence confirming that intention, which cuts both ways: a landlord whose child never moves in and relets at a higher rent faces damages and, in the clearest cases, a criminal fine for fraudulent cong\u00e9. Keep the listing portals watched for twelve months after any reprise. Certain older tenants on modest incomes are protected tenants whose leases renew automatically, and a married couple or civil partners holding the lease together each own the right to the tenancy: article 1751 of the Civil Code makes the lease right belong to both spouses or both partners in a pacte civil de solidarit\u00e9, with the court allocating it on divorce. See article 1751 of the Civil Code on L\u00e9gifrance<\/a>. A cong\u00e9 served on only one spouse of a jointly held lease is therefore fragile from the start.<\/p>\n Where the landlord’s real complaint is unpaid rent, the procedure is rigid and every rigidity is a defence. Most leases contain a clause r\u00e9solutoire, the clause that allows termination for non-payment, but it can bite only after a commandement de payer, a formal payment order served by a commissaire de justice, has remained unpaid for two months, and only after the matter has been reported to the county commission for coordinating eviction prevention. The tenant then has until the court hearing to pay the arrears in full, to request d\u00e9lais de gr\u00e2ce, court-ordered time to pay over up to three years, or to show that the landlord’s own failures justify compensation. Crucially, an eviction ordered during the tr\u00eave hivernale, the winter truce, cannot be enforced until the truce ends. The truce runs from 1 November to 31 March inclusive, as the official service-public.fr guidance confirms, and during that window no tenant may be physically removed, although the landlord may still start proceedings and obtain the order for enforcement afterwards. The truce does not apply where suitable rehousing exists or against squatters, but for an ordinary tenant behind on rent it guarantees a winter under a roof and time to clear the debt or negotiate.<\/p>\n British tenants facing the mirror situation, owning a flat in France that they let out while living there or from London, meet the same rules from the landlord’s side, combined with French taxation of the rents. Our companion analysis for British landlords in France on declaring UK rental income and challenging double tax and social charges<\/a> covers the fiscal half of that position. Within the tenancy itself, the tenant-side checklist on receiving any cong\u00e9 or payment order is short: check the six-month receipt date against the lease expiry, check the stated ground and the named beneficiary, check the two-month payment-order period before any termination clause can operate, and write at once contesting each defect by registered letter while gathering the means to pay or the application for time to pay. “en cas de contestation, le juge peut, m\u00eame d’office, v\u00e9rifier la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 du motif du cong\u00e9 et le respect des obligations pr\u00e9vues par celui-ci”, the Cour de cassation recalled in the 12 October 2023 decision<\/a>, meaning the judge may verify of his own motion whether the ground is real. A cong\u00e9 that collapses under that examination never existed in law, whatever the landlord’s letter claimed.<\/p>\n Renting in France rewards the tenant who treats every step as a written procedure. Cap the deposit at one month unfurnished or two months furnished and refuse any excess. Compare the two inventories line by line, demand the deposit back within one month of matching inventories or two where they differ, and claim the ten percent monthly penalty for every month of delay begun. Give your own cong\u00e9 by registered letter, cite the one-month ground with its proof where the law grants it, and state the new address for repayment. Demand repairs by registered letter, escalate through conciliation to the tenancy judge, and use articles 1222 and 1240 rather than withholding rent. Test every landlord cong\u00e9 against its ground, its six-month receipt and its named beneficiary, answer every payment order within its two-month window, and remember that from November to March no eviction can be physically carried out. Those reflexes, applied from the first letter, turn the most protective tenancy regime in Europe from a wall of French text into a working shield for your home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British tenant in France? Deposit caps, the one- or two-month refund clock with a 10% monthly penalty, one-month notice rights, repair remedies and eviction defences, with the exact procedure for each step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80312,80314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british-desk","category-decryptage"],"yoast_head":"\nB. How do I give notice as a tenant, and how do I cut the notice period to one month?<\/h3>\n
II. Living in the flat and staying in it: forcing repairs and defeating eviction<\/h2>\n
A. The boiler is dead and the walls are damp: who repairs what, and how do I force action?<\/h3>\n
B. The landlord wants me out: how do I test a cong\u00e9, survive an arrears claim and use the winter truce?<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n