France’s Most Controversial Lease: the Bail Code Civil, Your Second Home, and the 2026 Crackdown
The bail Code civil is the correct lease for a French second home - and the contract Paris's mayor calls industrial-scale fraud when it dodges rent control. Where the line runs after the 2026 rulings, the DGCCRF campaign and the bill in parliament.
The Agent’s Licence: How to Check a French Estate Agent, and Who Pays When They Get It Wrong
Every French estate agent operates behind a licence, a financial guarantee and compulsory insurance. How to verify the carte professionnelle in two minutes, what protects your deposit, and the case law making agents answer for the deals they touch.
The Agent’s Commission: What You Owe a French Estate Agent, and When You Owe Nothing
France hangs an agent’s entire right to payment on a written mandate, a register number and a completed sale. When the commission is owed, who owes it, and the five decades of case law on agents who tried to get paid anyway.
The Foreign Owner’s Tax Map of France: What 47 Expat Towns Really Charge
Official 2025 rates for the 47 French towns where foreign buyers concentrate: a 3.3x spread, the 90% club in the Dordogne, eleven towns with 60% second-home surcharges, and Paris up 50% in five years.
Beyond 90 Days: the Long-Stay Visitor Visa for French Second-Home Owners (2026)
Owning a French home gives you zero right to stay past 90 days. The visitor visa fixes that: VLS-T vs VLS-TS, what the consulate wants to see, the real 2026 costs, and the two clocks - Schengen and tax - that owners most often confuse.
Anatomy of a French Tax Bill: the Avis de Taxe Foncière, Translated Line by Line
France's property-tax bill, decoded box by box on a real anonymised 2025 avis: what every line means in English, how the €1,016 total is built, what to check before paying, and how to contest it.