This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change and individual situations differ. Always confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.
You complete the sale of your Paris flat on 2 April. On 1 April the syndic took the whole of the second-quarter charge out of your account. You owned the flat for one day of that quarter, and the buyer owns it for the other eighty-nine. French law has an answer, and it is not the one most British and American sellers expect. There is no apportionment on completion, no clean-up calculation by the notaire, and nothing the syndic will do for you afterwards. Everything turns on a single question: who was the owner on the day the money fell due. The government restated the rule in guidance updated on 13 February 2026, and the underlying text has not changed in substance since 2004. Here is how each pot of money is split, what the notaire will and will not do about it, and the two clauses worth putting in your sale contract.
The four pots of money, and who carries each one
A copropriété collects money from you in four different ways, and the sale rule is different for each. The table is the whole article in one screen. The rest explains the traps.
| What the syndic is calling for | Who pays by default | The date that decides | Can you agree otherwise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarterly provision on the annual budget (provision sur budget prévisionnel) | The seller, for the whole quarter | The first day of the quarter, or of the period the general meeting has fixed | Yes, but only as between you and the buyer |
| Calls for works outside the budget (appels de fonds travaux) | Whoever is the owner when the call falls due | The due date written into the schedule voted at the general meeting | Yes, on the same terms |
| Year-end adjustment (régularisation des charges) | Whoever is the owner on the day the accounts are approved | The date of the general meeting that approves the accounts | Yes, on the same terms |
| Contributions already paid into the works fund (fonds travaux) | Nobody refunds them, they stay with the building | Not applicable, the money is gone on payment | Only by adding an equivalent sum to the price |
The rule in one sentence
The governing text is article 6-2 of the décret of 17 March 1967, and it fits in three short lines. On a sale, the quarterly provision on the budget falls on the seller. Provisions for spending outside the budget fall on whoever is the owner at the moment they become payable. And the surplus or shortfall revealed when the accounts are approved goes to the credit or the debit of whoever is the owner on the day of that approval. The only thing that changed recently is a cross-reference. A décret of 22 December 2025 inserted two words into the first limb to follow the renumbering of the 1965 law. The substance is the same as it was twenty years ago, which is worth knowing when an agent tells you the rules have just been rewritten.
The quarter-day trap
Every copropriété votes an annual budget for the ordinary running of the building, and owners pay it in advance in four instalments. Under article 14-1 of the 1965 law each instalment equals a quarter of the budget, and falls due on the first day of the quarter. The general meeting can vote a different rhythm, monthly or half-yearly, and then that date governs instead. That date is the one that matters. If completion falls on 2 April, the provision for April, May and June fell due on 1 April, when you were still the owner. It is your bill. You do not own the flat for the period the money covers, and the syndic will not reimburse you for the eighty-nine days that belong to the buyer.
Reverse the dates and the result reverses with them. Complete on 31 March and the buyer pays the whole of the following quarter, having owned the flat for one day of it. The rule is crude, but it is at least predictable, and its crudeness is exactly why the price negotiation should take account of it. A completion date two days either side of a quarter day moves real money between the parties. Nobody in the chain is obliged to point that out to you.
Works: the call, not the scaffolding
Major works are not in the annual budget. They are voted separately at a general meeting, with a payment schedule attached, and they are called in by instalments over months or years. Here the rule swings the other way. The payer is whoever holds the lot when each call becomes payable, which means the seller settles the calls that fell due before completion and the buyer settles everything issued afterwards. The government guidance makes the point that matters most: this holds even if the works have not started. A buyer can complete in June, receive a call for a roof in July, pay it, and watch the scaffolding arrive in the following spring.
For a buyer that is the single most expensive thing to check before signing. The minutes of the last three general meetings will tell you what has been voted and what the payment schedule looks like, and our guide to the copropriété general meeting explains how to read them. A vote that predates your purchase by two years can still empty your account after it. For a seller the mirror point applies. Works voted before the sale and called in after it are not your problem, and you should resist any attempt to write them back onto you in the contract without a discount in exchange.
The year-end adjustment, and why it can feel unfair
Provisions are estimates. Once a year the general meeting approves the accounts and the estimates are trued up against what the building actually spent, which is the régularisation des charges. Whoever is the owner on the day of that approval takes the whole of the difference, in either direction. The consequence is easy to state and mildly maddening. A buyer who completes in September can be credited in the following June with a refund of provisions the seller paid, or debited for a shortfall on heating the seller burned through in February. The syndic applies the rule and does not look behind it.
Two practical consequences follow. The date of the next approval meeting is a fact worth asking for before you sign anything, because it tells you who is standing in the path of the adjustment. And a building with a history of large adjustments is a building whose budget is not being voted honestly, which is information about the syndic as much as about the block. If the accounts themselves look wrong, the window to challenge a resolution is short, as we set out in our piece on the two-month contestation deadline.
The works fund you will never see again
Residential buildings more than ten years old have to run a fonds travaux, a compulsory savings pot fed by annual contributions and held by the syndicat for future works. If you have owned a flat for a decade you may have several thousand euros sitting in it. Article 14-2-1 of the 1965 law is blunt about what happens on a sale. The sums are attached to the lot, they enter the syndicat’s own assets the moment they are paid, and they are not refunded to the seller. You paid for a new roof that the buyer will enjoy.
The same article supplies the fix, and it is the clause we would want in any sale of an older flat. The buyer may agree to pay the seller a sum equivalent to the works fund on top of the purchase price. It is not automatic, nobody will propose it for you, and it is a straightforward point to raise at the offer stage rather than three days before completion. Watch where the money is put. Acquisition duties are calculated on the price, as our frais de notaire comparison explains, so loading the sum onto the price is not cost-free for the buyer.
You can agree anything, and the syndic can ignore it
All of the above is default law, not mandatory law. Seller and buyer are free to write a different split into the sale contract, and in a sale completing two days after a quarter day they probably should. But article 6-3 of the same décret sets the limit in a single line. Any agreement that departs from article 6-2 takes effect only between the parties to the sale. The syndic is not a party to it and is entitled to carry on billing the person the law designates. If your buyer agreed to refund you the April quarter and then does not, your claim is against the buyer, not the building, and it is a civil claim you would have to pursue yourself.
That is why the mechanics matter more than the promise. The right place for the money is the completion statement drawn up by the notaire. There the adjustment comes out of the price on the day, rather than sitting as a promise to be honoured later by someone who has just spent everything they had. Say so when the draft compromis or promesse de vente is being prepared, not afterwards.
The clause to hand your notaire
Two clauses do the work. The first apportions the current quarter by days, which is what most people assume the law already does. The second deals with the works fund. What follows is the shape of each, in French with a plain translation, to give the notaire as a starting point rather than to use as it stands.
1. Apportioning the current quarter
Par dérogation à l’article 6-2 du décret n° 67-223 du 17 mars 1967, et sans que la présente convention puisse être opposée au syndicat des copropriétaires ni au syndic, les provisions sur le budget prévisionnel afférentes au trimestre en cours à la date de l’acte authentique seront supportées par le vendeur et par l’acquéreur au prorata du nombre de jours de détention de chacun au cours de ce trimestre. Le décompte sera établi par le notaire et réglé dans le décompte de vente.
In English: we are departing from the default rule, the syndic is not bound by this, the current quarter is split by days, and the notaire settles it on completion day.
2. The works fund
Conformément au III de l’article 14-2-1 de la loi n° 65-557 du 10 juillet 1965, l’acquéreur versera au vendeur, en sus du prix de vente, une somme de … euros correspondant aux cotisations au fonds de travaux attachées au lot et non remboursables par le syndicat des copropriétaires.
In English: the buyer pays the seller the value of the works fund on top of the price, which is exactly what the statute contemplates. Ask the notaire how that separate payment should be treated for transfer duty before it goes into the deed.
The état daté, its €380 ceiling, and the March 2026 decision
None of this can be settled without a document called the état daté, which the syndic draws up for the notaire shortly before completion. It sets out three things: what the seller still owes the building, what the building may owe the seller, and what will fall on the new owner. Article 5 of the 1967 décret fixes its content, and the December 2025 décret added two new lines to it, both concerning the collective loan that a copropriété can now take out in its own name. If the seller is part of such a loan, the état daté must state the balance still owed, and any sum a guarantor has already paid out on the seller’s default.
The fee is the seller’s, and it is capped. Article 10-1 of the 1965 law makes the syndic’s charges for the état daté payable by the owner concerned and caps them by decree, and the décret of 21 February 2020 fixes the figure at €380 including tax. The cap covers one mutation, including where several lots such as a flat, a cellar and a parking space are sold in the same transaction, so a syndic who bills €380 three times for one sale is not applying the text. Two FNAIM chambers asked the prime minister to review the figure and then took his silence to court. On 17 March 2026 the Conseil d’État dismissed the case. General cost inflation did not by itself show that €380 no longer covers what an état daté actually costs, and the competition authority had found that the work involved averages at most an hour. The cap stands, and a bill above it is worth one polite letter before you pay it.
Watch the vocabulary as well as the figure. The pré-état daté is not a legal document at all, it is a trade name for the bundle of building papers handed over at the compromis stage, and its price is not capped. A single invoice that mixes the two is the most common way the ceiling is worked around.
How the building gets paid out of your price
If you owe the copropriété money on completion day, the law does not leave the syndicat chasing you across a border. Article 20 of the 1965 law gives it a shortcut. Unless you hand the notaire a certificate from the syndic less than a month old confirming you owe the building nothing, the notaire must notify the syndic of the sale within fifteen days of the transfer. The syndic then has fifteen days from receiving that notice to serve a formal opposition on the sale proceeds, stating the amount and the reason. The notaire holds back that amount. If seller and syndic agree on the figure, the money is released at once. If they do not, the sum goes to the syndicat after three months, unless someone has gone to court in the meantime.
For a non-resident seller this is the part that bites, because the money leaves the proceeds before they reach you. It sits alongside the other deductions, such as the accredited tax representative that some sellers still need. It is also why a disputed charge is much easier to settle before you put the flat on the market than during the fortnight before completion. Our article on the €77,000 letter shows how expensive an old unpaid balance can become once the syndicat starts enforcing it properly.
A worked example: completion on 2 April
15 November, general meeting
The building votes a €40,000 façade job, payable in four calls: 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December.
15 March, first works call
You are still the owner. Your share of the first call is yours, even though the scaffolding goes up in October.
1 April, quarterly provision
The provision for April to June falls due. You are the owner that morning, so the whole quarter is yours.
2 April, completion
The notaire settles whatever you and the buyer agreed between yourselves, and notifies the syndic if you have no clean certificate.
15 June, second works call
The buyer pays. So does the buyer for September and December.
June the following year, accounts approved
The buyer takes the whole surplus or shortfall on the year you largely paid for. Your contributions to the works fund stay with the building.
Now put numbers on it. Take a flat carrying two percent of the tantièmes in a building whose annual budget is €200,000. Its share of that budget is €4,000 a year, so the quarterly provision is €1,000. The €40,000 façade job costs the flat €800, called in four instalments of €200. The works fund has been taking the statutory minimum, five percent of the budget share, which is €200 a year, so after ten years it holds €2,000 against this lot.
What the 2 April seller actually carries
€200 for the works call of 15 March, which is fair enough, since the works were voted while they owned the flat.
€1,000 for a quarter of the year they will own for one day.
Up to €380 for the état daté.
€2,000 left behind in the works fund, for a roof they will never sit under.
Of that, only the €1,000 and the €2,000 are negotiable, and only with the buyer. The figures are an illustration, but the shape of the bill is not.
When none of this applies
Three of the rules above use the same phrase, mutation à titre onéreux, a transfer for value. Article 6-2, the syndic’s right of opposition in article 20 and the €380 ceiling in article 10-1 all depend on it. A gift or an inheritance falls outside all three. There the syndicat simply looks to whoever is the co-owner when each sum falls due, and the split between the parties is a matter for the deed of gift or for the estate, which our guide to French inheritance law covers.
Selling the shares of an SCI that owns the flat is a bigger exception, because the lot does not change hands at all. The co-owner before and after the deal is the same company. There is no état daté, no notification to the syndic and no opposition on the price, and the charges keep running against the SCI, arrears included. A buyer of shares therefore takes on the company’s copropriété account in substance while getting none of the statutory disclosure a buyer of the flat would receive, which makes the syndic’s ledger a due diligence item rather than a formality. Whatever the outgoing and incoming shareholders agree belongs in the share transfer agreement. It is one more line in the ledger when you weigh an SCI against owning in your own name.
What this means if you are the foreign owner
If you are selling, ask the syndic for the payment calendar before you agree a completion date, and treat the quarter day as a negotiating point rather than an accident. Ask for the date of the next accounts meeting. Request the certificate confirming you owe nothing, because it spares you the notification and the possible opposition. And raise the works fund at the offer stage, since an equivalent sum on top of the price is the only way that money ever comes back to you.
If you are buying, read the minutes for works already voted and the schedule of calls attached to them, because those calls follow the lot rather than the person who voted for them. Check when the accounts are next approved, and price in the risk of a shortfall you did not create. Ask for the état daté before the authentic act rather than on the day, and read it against the minutes. Our step-by-step buying guide sets out where each of these documents belongs in the timetable, and our running-cost model is the place to put the numbers once you have them.
The decision rule
Nothing is apportioned by days. The owner on the due date pays the whole call, the owner on the approval date takes the whole adjustment, and the works fund is never refunded. Anything else you and the other side agree binds only the two of you, so put it in the notaire’s completion statement rather than in a side letter. Check the syndic’s état daté invoice against the €380 ceiling before paying it.
Our view: the rule is fine, the timing is not
The default split is defensible and we would not change it. Apportioning every provision by days would have the syndic reopening thousands of accounts for a handful of sales, and that cost lands on the owners who are staying put. A rule that turns on a due date is one a notaire can apply in ten minutes, and predictability is worth more to both sides than precision to the nearest euro.
The defect is where the information sits. Two facts decide almost all of the money in a sale year: the date of the next call for funds, and the date of the next meeting to approve the accounts. Neither has to be disclosed anywhere before the price is agreed. Both surface in the état daté, which the syndic writes for the notaire at the very end, when the completion date is already fixed and the leverage is gone. Putting those two dates in the pre-contract pack would cost a syndic one line of text and would let both parties price the thing properly.
There is a fair answer to that. Agents and notaires already owe a duty of advice, the pre-contract bundle is heavy enough, and every new compulsory document in this sector has eventually arrived with a fee attached. We would still take the line, and the €380 ceiling is part of the reason. The Conseil d’État was right in March that a professional body wanting a higher cap has to show its costs rather than point at the inflation index. But a capped document is also a document nobody has any commercial reason to produce early, and that is precisely when it would be worth reading.
FAQ: charges in the year of a sale
Are copropriété charges split by days on completion?
No. There is no pro rata calculation in the default rule. The person who owns the lot on the day a payment falls due owes the whole of that payment, whether it covers three months or three years.
Who pays for works voted before the sale but carried out afterwards?
Whoever owns the lot when each call for funds becomes payable. The seller pays the calls that fell due before completion and the buyer pays those issued afterwards, even where the works have not begun.
Do I get my contributions to the fonds travaux back when I sell?
Not from the building. Those sums are attached to the lot and belong to the syndicat from the moment they are paid. The buyer may agree to pay you an equivalent amount on top of the price, but only if you ask.
Can the seller and buyer agree a different split?
Yes, and it is common where completion falls just after a quarter day. The agreement binds only the two parties. The syndic continues to bill whoever the law designates and cannot be required to follow your arrangement.
How much can the syndic charge for the état daté?
€380 including tax, for the sale, covering several lots sold in the same transaction. The Conseil d’État refused in March 2026 to order a review of that ceiling. A pré-état daté is a different document and is not capped.
Does any of this apply if I sell the shares of an SCI that owns the flat?
No. The lot does not change owner, so there is no état daté, no notification to the syndic and no opposition on the price. The charges keep running against the company, arrears included, and the split between outgoing and incoming shareholders belongs in the share transfer agreement.
