Guides

Déficit Foncier: How French Landlords Turn Renovation Bills Into a Tax Deduction, and Why It Works Differently From Abroad

Let a French home unfurnished and spend more on it than it earns, and up to €10,700 a year (€21,400 for energy works until 2027) can come off your other income. How the déficit foncier is calculated, the three-year trap, and what it is really worth to an owner living in the UK.

Inheriting French Property From Abroad: What the Notaire Really Charges in 2026

The 2026 succession tariff run on a €300,000 flat: the three acts you cannot avoid, the partage that triples the bill, the 20 per cent discount nobody mentions, and what changes when the deceased lived in the UK.

Your Tenant Is the Neighbours’ Problem, Which Makes It Yours: What a Landlord Abroad Must Do When the Complaint Arrives

When a tenant disturbs the neighbours, French law holds the owner answerable and expects a precise sequence: evidence, a formal notice, a free conciliation, then termination or non-renewal. The steps, the 1996 ruling that your letters do not shield you, the 2025 law that lets the préfet force your hand, and why the lease’s termination clause only bites after a court has already ruled.

LMP or LMNP When You Sell: the Year of the Sale Decides, With One Tolerance and Two Traps

Is professional furnished-letting status (LMP) judged on the year of the sale or the year before? The year of the sale, says the tax administration, with a filing tolerance for last year's status, an annualisation rule when the sale ends your letting, and a worldwide-income test for non-residents from 2026. Every rule linked to its source.

Buying French Property at a Notarial Auction: the Candle, the Cahier des Charges and the Two Protections You Lose

The notarial auction has no cooling-off period, no loan condition and no negotiation. How the candle works, what the cahier des charges decides, what a bidder from abroad needs on the day, and when immo-interactif is the better room.

Short-Term or Long-Term? The First Question Every Owner of a French Flat Has to Answer

Before the SCI, the tax regime or the case law, one decision shapes everything: who lives in your French flat and for how long. The rules of a meublé de tourisme, a furnished lease and an unfurnished lease, the 2026 figures, and the five questions that decide between them.

Buying Off-Plan in France: the VEFA, and Why the Mud Is Already Yours

How a French off-plan purchase (VEFA) actually works for a foreign buyer: the 5% deposit, the 35/70/95 payment grid, the completion guarantee, delivery day and the thirteen-month clock, with the case law and the tax layer.

Guarantor for a Student in France: What a Parent Abroad Signs

Your child has a place in Paris or Lyon and the agent wants your signature on an acte de cautionnement by Friday. What you are guaranteeing, what an agency may and may not ask a parent abroad for, the free State guarantee that can replace you, and the legal ceilings on deposit and fees, from the finance ministry's student guide and the texts behind it.

Who Pays the Copropriété Charges in the Year You Sell?

French law does not split copropriété charges by days when a flat changes hands. The owner on the due date pays the whole call, the owner on the accounts-approval date takes the whole adjustment, and the works fund is never refunded. What each rule means for a foreign seller or buyer.

Ma Prime Logement Décent: the French Grant That Pays up to 90% of a Wreck’s Repairs, and Who Actually Gets It

France’s Anah pays 60 to 90 percent of heavy works on a degraded home, up to €70,000, for modest households who live in it. Who qualifies (residents, not holiday-home owners), the five ways a house qualifies, the strings, the sister aid for landlords with no income test, and how to apply in the right order.

The Foreign Owner’s Guide to the French Copropriété AGM (Assemblée Générale)

Convocation deadlines, proxies, postal votes, the four majorities and the procès-verbal: how the French copropriété AGM really works for foreign owners.