Buying or renting on the Riviera

I usually suggest a lease for the first address, and a purchase only once you know which Tuesday you want. That is a preference, from watching people arrive. It is not a statistic.

A rental is a lease. The documents a landlord is allowed to ask for, the guarantor, Visale, and the caps on the rental deposit are already written, from Service-Public, in Renting an apartment in Nice as a foreigner. I am not going to copy that file here. If the hard part is the dossier, that is the page.

A purchase is a sale of the property. You do not give notice the way a tenant does. You sign a preliminary contract, and then an authentic deed in front of a notaire. Getting out of the second document is not a conversation with a landlord. The towns, if you are still choosing, are on Neighborhoods. The visa that should exist before either search feels calm is in Moving to the French Riviera.

The Notaires de France tell a non-resident to sit down with a professional before investing, and to look at nationality, country of residence, personal situation and the matrimonial regime. Their point on the property itself is simple: the law of the place where the property sits is the law of the purchase. If the apartment is in France, French law decides how you acquire it, the form of the deed, and the tax consequences of selling it later.

Inheritance is a different question, and they say so. Since 17 August 2015, for an EU citizen, the succession law is in principle that of the country of habitual residence. If the estate is handled outside Europe, they tell you to check whether a treaty applies. I am not going to tell you which law inherits your flat. That is the notaire's conversation, and it is not the same conversation as the visa.

They also remind you that the money has to be explainable. Notaires check where the funds come from, because they have to stand in the way of money laundering, and they may have to report a serious doubt to TRACFIN. A transfer from a US or Canadian account is ordinary. A transfer you cannot describe is the problem. The French bank account, if you do not have one yet, is in Bank & phone.

Nothing on the notaires' page says your nationality blocks the purchase. Nothing on it gives you a fee. I will not invent one.

For an existing home, Service-Public describes the compromis de vente as the contract in which the seller agrees to sell and the buyer agrees to buy, at a price and on conditions fixed that day. It has to be in writing. It can be a private deed, including one drawn up by an agency, a deed countersigned by a lawyer, or an authentic deed. A scanned picture of a signature is not a signature. If the compromis is a private deed, there are two original copies, one for each side.

Both sides have to bring papers. The buyer, Service-Public says, should have identity, a birth-certificate extract less than three months old, proof of address, and the family-status documents that apply (a marriage contract, a PACS, a divorce judgment). The seller brings title, and, for an apartment in a building, the condominium papers: the rules, the last three years of general-meeting minutes, the maintenance log, and the rest of that list. The technical diagnostic file has to be in date on the day of the promise. On the table Service-Public publishes with that page, a DPE is valid for ten years, a lead report for one year, termites for six months, and the gas and electricity reports for three years when the installation is more than fifteen years old. Check the table. A report that has expired is not a courtesy. It is a missing document.

The contract itself has to state the price, how it will be paid, any suspensive conditions and the time allowed for them, how long the promise lasts, the last day for the final deed, the day the property is available, and, for a non-professional buyer, how the right to withdraw works. If a loan is one of those conditions, Service-Public says the time you are given to obtain it cannot be under one month from the signature. A longer time is allowed. If the loan is refused inside the rule, the sale does not go through. Read that page before you waive a loan condition you might need.

A non-professional buyer of a home has ten calendar days to withdraw. Service-Public says the ten days start the day after the first presentation of the registered letter that notifies you of the compromis. You withdraw by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, sent to the seller. There is a model letter on the Service-Public site. The seller, in principle, cannot change their mind. You can, inside those ten days.

If there was no compromis at all, the protection is a reflection period instead. The notaire sends you the draft deed, and you have ten calendar days before you may sign it. The authentic deed cannot be signed during those ten days, and no sum of money can be demanded while they run. If the last day is a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday, Service-Public says that reflection period runs on to the next working day. Once a compromis has already given you the ten-day withdrawal, you do not get this second pause before the final deed.

On money, read two pages together, because a casual summary gets them wrong. Service-Public says that paying the seller at the compromis is not what makes the contract valid. It also says that contracts often provide for a deposit, commonly described there as 10 percent of the price, held in the notaire's escrow account until the sale. Separately, the construction and housing code says that, in principle, nobody may take any payment from a non-professional buyer before the withdrawal period ends. The exception is a payment held by a professional who has a financial guarantee for returning deposits. If you do withdraw, that professional must return the money within twenty-one days, counting from the day after the withdrawal.

If a suspensive condition fails, Service-Public says the sum comes back in full. If you walk away after the ten days, and no condition has failed, the same page says the seller keeps it. I would not transfer anything until you have read which of those sentences applies to your draft. I am not publishing a notaire's fee. Ask for it in writing, on your file.

The final sale of an existing home is an authentic deed, and Service-Public says a notaire has to draw it up. You and the seller sign it in front of the notaire, on paper or electronically, after the notaire has read it aloud. You may share one notaire or each appoint your own. If there are two, the fees are shared between them. The page does not say what the fees are.

Before that day the notaire checks who you both are, whether you have capacity to sign, whether a power of attorney is in order if someone will be absent, and whether the buyer is barred by a criminal-record measure from buying a home. On the property, the checks include mortgages, planning rules, pre-emption rights, and where the seller's title came from.

If you cannot be in the room, Service-Public says you may be represented by someone holding a private power of attorney, and the deed has to say so. The Notaires de France also describe an authentic power of attorney that can be signed remotely. Ask your notaire which form your file needs, and ask before the appointment how the reading will work if you do not follow the French. The deed is the moment the apartment becomes yours. It is a bad moment to be guessing.

After the keys, if you rented instead, electricity, internet and home insurance are in utilities and home setup. If you want me to do the visits, whether the end of them is a lease or a deed, that work is I'll find your place.