Landlord’s notice in France: by what date must the tenant receive it?

Receipt. The period runs from the day the registered letter is received, the day a commissaire de justice serves the notice, or the day it is handed over against a signed receipt.

A letter posted the day before the deadline almost always arrives after it. These three forms are the only ones the law provides; an email or a text message is not one of them.

For a furnished letting, the lease lasts one year and notice is given three months ahead; a nine-month student lease simply ends at its term. Article 25-8 Article 25-7

• Taking the home back to live in
• Selling it
• A legitimate and serious reason

The ground is written in the notice; without it, the notice is void. A legitimate and serious reason covers in particular a breach of the tenant’s obligations, such as unpaid rent.

To take the home back, the notice gives the name and address of the person moving in and their link to the landlord: the landlord, their spouse, PACS partner, cohabiting partner of at least one year, or their parents or children. The landlord also shows that the decision to take the home back is real and serious.

To sell, the notice states the price and the terms. It counts as an offer to sell to the tenant, who can accept it during the first two months of the notice period.

If the current lease ends more than three years after the purchase, notice to sell is possible at that end date. If it ends less than three years after, notice to sell waits for the end of the first renewal.

To take the home back, if the lease ends less than two years after the purchase, the notice only takes effect two years after the purchase.

If the notice is challenged, the judge can check the reality of the ground even when nobody asks, and cancel the notice if the refusal to renew is not based on serious grounds.

A notice to sell or take back comes with an official information leaflet on the landlord’s obligations and the tenant’s remedies. Order of 13 December 2017 Article 10