Jimi

I am looking for information on using british law for a real estate rental agreement for a property in France. I had a bad experience with French law /contracts (I couldn't evict non-paying tenants in my French property). Looking for your input, drafts of contracts and/or a reference for a lawyer with experience (Are You Experienced?).

dmu

Hi, and welcome to the Forum!
I stand to be corrected, but AFAIK, a rental agreement in accordance with a foreign law is invalid for property in France. Imagine if a foreign landlord wanted to apply his own country's laws when in the UK!
We have experienced problems evicting non-paying tenants in the past (Court procedure, Bailiff, etc..) Landlords usually require justification (payslips) that their tenants' income is 3-4 times the monthly rent, otherwise they require a Guarantor. Our erstwhile tenant had a high enough income but nonetheless stopped paying the rent. Nowadays, there exists an insurance against non-payment of rents, which protects the landlord financially.
We are now insured...

Harvester523

Agree, I'm pretty sure it would have no legal weight at all. We have two rental properties, both of which we did through a notaire - which some would say is an unnecessary expense but he did bring to our attention certain aspects that we might not have known. We were lucky that one set of tenants are relations of people we know (who wouldn't stand for any of this non-payment nonsense) and have been there for 5 years so far, and the others have been fine so far 3 years into a 6 year rental.

cyrian

Hi
You cannot take away the rights of a person in France because you add a sentence saying "written under English Law".
If you want to evict them then a French court would just throw out your "contract" and an English court has no jurisdiction.
Indeed, you could be the one in breach of French Law by issuing a non-compliant contract.
Good luck

EuroTrash

Interesting.

The full barrage of French legislation about rental contracts is here http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/N292.xhtml and it starts off: "La location d'un logement vide est strictement réglementée. Les parties ne sont donc pas libres de négocier les conditions de la location d'un commun accord." (Renting out empty accommodation is subject to strict legislation. The parties are therefore not at liberty to negotiate terms by mutual agreement." I haven't read it all but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it states somewhere that the contract has to be signed in France.

If it doesn't say that, I wonder if that would in fact be possible, if the landlord and the tenant were both British, signed the contract on English soil and specified that English law would apply? Can you 'export' an English rental agreement and call it an international transaction? But you would still pay tax on the revenue in France, so does that make it a French transaction? Then, would an English court be prepared to get involved in a dispute over French rental property? Would a French court be prepared to hand it over? It all seems highly unlikely, but you never know, maybe there is a loophole.

It certainly wouldn't work if the contract was signed in France because in the event of a dispute it would be the French courts who dealt with it, and French courts administer French law. Even clauses written into French contracts to try and protect the landlord are deemed illegal ('abusive') if they are contrary to legislation. And if the contract is not written in French (which French legal and fiscal documents must be) it would be as if there was no contract at all; so if you tried it, and it turned out that the French courts dealt with it after all, you could end up even worse off.

French law does give the tenant a lot of protection, and that can potentially be a problem for every landlord. As dmu says, the safest thing to do is to be aware of the dangers and protect yourself against them, in the same way that professional French landlords do. When in France .... Trying to cherrypick the bits of legislation from each country that suit you best is always a risky business because people sometimes come badly unstuck.

(PS I have absolutely no legal expertise on any of this, it just struck me as an interesting concept to ponder first thing of a morning without much work to do - so feel free to ignore all my ramblings.)

Jimi

A professional property manager I once met told me all his French property contracts are according to UK law. I think these were all commercial properties (stores, business space ect.), which may be different law from rental properties.

I think I need an English lawyer with extensive experience with French property, nice but not too expensive Anybody got one?

Tweedpipe

I have no legal expertise on this either. It's possible that things may have been simpler some years ago relating to professional property contracts here, although contracts written according to UK law I would think very unlikely.
However the law can and does change. (I've just been looking through the initial 92 pages of a 2013 French décret relating to changes in shooting sport legislation - to improve safety and apparently ease administration. Mind boggling to say the least!)