You might have your eyes set on a château, a farm, or a ruin you dream of renovating. But whatever it is that has caught your attention, be aware that finding a home in France, whether it’s renting or buying, is a challenging experience. 

"/> You might have your eyes set on a château, a farm, or a ruin you dream of renovating. But whatever it is that has caught your attention, be aware that finding a home in France, whether it’s renting or buying, is a challenging experience. 

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Finding a home in France

You might have your eyes set on a château, a farm, or a ruin you dream of renovating. But whatever it is that has caught your attention, be aware that finding a home in France, whether it’s renting or buying, is a challenging experience. 

Finding a home in France
William Schmitt

Finding a home in France is a difficult task, one that even the locals dread. 60 percent of the French say they struggled to find a suitable home, a rate that increases to 71 percent for youths aged 18 to 29 years old, daily Le Figaro writes.

Should foreigners moving to France rent or buy? Legal fees for buying a first home are high and newcomers are advised to rent first and test the waters.

However, renting can also be a testing experience for foreigners. Landlords complain it’s difficult to kick out tenants who don’t pay the rent and demand a lot of guarantees before handing over the keys.

In Paris, housing shortages mean you often compete against other potential tenants for a flat or house.

Renting

You would think combing through ads in the local newspaper was a good way to start your house hunt. But that’s not the Gallic way to find a home. First, you must sort out your paperwork and put together a “bon dossier”, a good file in French.  Your “dossier” includes copies of ID card, tax forms, pay slips, etc.  You will need to hand these documents over to estate agents and landlords if you wish to rent.

In major cities, real estate agencies can require you to earn three to four times the rent, and have a guarantor who will step in and pay if you don’t.

These rules play against foreigners who often don’t have established relatives in France able to guarantee their rent.

You may be able to bypass these requirements by renting directly from owners, subletting or flat-sharing. Subletting is more informal so beware of scams, make sure the people you are dealing with are trustworthy.

If you are a foreigner working in France, do find out if your company can help you rent a flat or a house, they might be able to assist you with the admin.

The French state also runs schemes to help people find a home, check this website for details.

You can also find out what the average rent is in your area on this website.

You will be asked to put up a deposit, which cannot be higher than a month’s rent. Often landlords “forget” to refund the deposit at the end of the tenancy, so be sure to claim yours.

Buying

Buying involves hefty legal fees in France, so prospective buyers are advised to choose carefully.

Legal fees for buying a property reach 5 to 10 percent of the sale price.

Negotiating a sale in France has its distinctive features. Once you have reached a deal with a seller, the notary draws up a sale promise or “promesse de vente”. This takes the property off the market and bounds the buyer to purchasing the product or pay 10 percent of the sale price in compensation. This sale promise gives the buyer time to deal with paperwork, and finalise loans.

If the buyer fails to obtain a bank loan, the sale promise is cancelled.

Where to look

The Local’s own property section has English-language listings of hundreds of flats and houses across France.

Real estate agencies are a good source of information, but do not be tempted into buying lists of flats on offer, this is often a scam. You will be asked however to pay agency fees if you do find a flat through a real estate agent. These fees can reach up to a month’s rent. This does sound a lot, but renting through an agency can be cheaper on the long term. So check out all the options.

If you want to bypass agencies, check out ad sections in local newspapers, or online. These are some of the main housing websites in France: Particuliers à particuliers, craigslist, seloger, explorimmo. 

The website streetwise-france has links to many more housing websites.

Mortgages

French weekly Le Point writes that the middle classes are increasingly finding iteasier to buy than to rent. Landlords will require tenants to earn up to four times the rent, while bankers will give clients a mortgage for a third of their earnings.

Home buyers in France are only allowed to allocate up to a third of their income on mortgages. Banks encourage future home buyers to have 10 percent of the price of the property in savings to get a mortgage. If you want to find out what kind of loans you can get, ask several banks to do a simulation, and don’t hesitate inshopping around for the best loan.

French banks will ask foreigners to put a larger contribution upfront, up to 20 percent of the property price.

Oddities

It is not unusual to rent a flat or house without a fitted kitchen. So if you do not want to spend your first weeks in your new home eating sardines on bread, make sure your home has “une cuisine aménagée”, a kitchen with furniture, or even better “une cuisine équipée”, a kitchen with furniture and white goods.

It’s illegal to kick out a tenant who doesn’t pay his or her rent during the winter months. Struggling tenants can stay smug under the blankets from November 1st till March 15th.

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PROPERTY

French property: What is buying ‘en tontine’?

If you're buying property in France, you might be thinking about buying 'en tontine' - this has advantages especially when it comes to France's strict inheritance laws, but can also have tax implications.

French property: What is buying 'en tontine'?

What is it?

The ‘clause de tontine’ sometimes also known as a ‘clause d’accroissement’ is a clause that is inserted into the property deeds when you are buying a house or apartment.

It can only be inserted during the purchase, and cannot be added later.

It’s basically a ‘group purchase’. It’s most commonly used by unmarried couples who are buying together but it can be used by larger groups too – for example a group of friends buying a holiday home together.

You will have to ask a notaire to draw up the tontine clause during the property purchase and it can only be used if 

  • the parties are equally involved in the financing of the purchase
  • the parties involved have a roughly equal life expectancy (for this reason tontine clauses may be rejected if there is a significant difference in age between the purchasers)

What’s the point of it?

The main reason that people use it is to sidestep France’s strict inheritance laws, which assign that a certain portion of every estate must go to children, at the expense of a partner. 

READ ALSO How France’s strict inheritance laws work

For this reason it is particularly used by couples who have children from previous relationships.

On a property with a tontine clause in effect, when one owner dies their share of the property passes in its entirely to the other member/members of the tontine.

This cuts out children from inheritance, but means that a surviving partner is not evicted from their home in favour of the children of the deceased. 

It also has the advantage of making the intentions of the deceased clear, to avoid arguments among heirs after their death.

It should be noted, however, that the tontine clause only takes in the property that it covers – other assets may be subject to French inheritance law so it’s therefore probably wise to arrange a will, to ensure your wishes for your estate are met.

The surviving party can ask a notaire to update the property deeds to show that they are the sole owner, if they want. Be aware there will be a fee, which could reach four figures for the privilege – and it doesn’t actually involve any change to the property title.

Drawbacks

The advantages of the system are clear, especially for blended families, but there are some potential drawbacks too, which mean that anyone considering buying in this way would be well advised to take proper legal advice before they start.

Inheritance tax – while a tontine will help you to avoid restrictions on inheritance, it does not exempt you from inheritance tax. French inheritance tax is structured according to your relationship to the deceased, and people who are neither married nor related to the deceased pay an eye-watering inheritance tax rate of 60 percent.

The only exception to this top rate of inheritance tax is if the property is your main residence and it is valued at under €76,000 – in that case, tax is paid at a rate of 5.8 percent.

Married couples and family members pay a much lower rate or not tax, but if you’re not married to your tontine co-purchaser, be careful that you’re not lining yourself up for a massive tax bill in future years.

Wealth tax – depending on the value of the property, it could tip you over into the ‘wealth tax’ category when you inherit. France’s wealth tax is a real estate based tax and is levied on anyone who has real estate assets (property and land) worth €1.3 million or more.

The calculation includes property held en tontine.

Tax savings – you might hear tontines being advised as a way to limit your French tax liability.

While this used to be true, changes to tax laws means there are no no significant tax advantages to buying this way – the same is true for buying a property via an SCI, which used to represent a tax saving until the law was tightened up.

Disinheriting family membersOne side effect of the tontine clause on mixed families is to effectively disinherit any children of the first person to die.

Because the property passed to the survivor, under French law, only their direct descendants – rather than any family by marriage – are entitled to automatic inheritance.

That means that the children of the surviving partner will be entitled to the statutory share of the entire asset (between 25 and 30 percent depending on the number of children), but the children of the first person to die will be entitled to nothing. Obviously you can choose to leave them something in your will, but you can only leave them some or all of the estate which is not automatically given to the children on the survivor.

Divorce/dispute – if the members of the tontine split up or (in the case of friends) fall out, then they can either sell the whole property or agree to buy each other out.

However, if one party refuses to sell, then you have very limited legal options – unlike a standard property purchase a tontine is not regarded as joint ownership, so one partner cannot be forced to sell as part of a divorce procedings, for example.

Basically the tontine can only be ended or changed with the agreement of all parties – so if you can’t agree between yourselves then you may be stuck with it.

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