Buying French bricks and mortar (6)
The Legal Process
Once you have an agreed price for the property you are going to buy, a meeting is arranged at a Notaire to sign the Compromis (draft sale) document. Apart from yourselves, in attendence will be the sellers and also the Real Estate agent.
We think the Notaire system is very good and provides you with a great deal of confidence. Their prime responsibility is to ensure that the transaction is completed in accordance with existing French law, and that the correct amount of taxes are applied. (and collected!) So essentially they are independant, not acting for you or the seller, but for the French government. If you are a non-French speaker the Notaire must arrange for a translator to be present.
You are quite entitled to appoint your own Avocat to represent you but we have never felt a need to do so. The only exception was when we bought our first property and we we couldn’t be in France when the final documents were signed. We provided a Power of Attorney to an Avocate who signed for us. To this day we have never met her - she was away on holiday when we called by her office to collect the keys!!
I should mention here that this article is a very broad brush of our experiences and a guide only. You should of course seek expert professional advice for any property transaction you undertake. Particularly as the laws appear to be modified quite frequently. You can find excellent information at www.notaires.fr including an english version!
The Compromis is wordy (naturally!) but many of the subject headings are the same as what you would see in your own country. One very important set of clauses are the Conditions Suspensive. Here you must insert any ’subject to’ conditions you wish to apply, such as raising a loan, or selling an existing property. Once you have signed the Compromis, and if all the Conditions Suspensive have been fulfilled then the sale must proceed. Otherwise you forfeit your deposit. (usually 10%)
Once the Compromis has been signed there is usually a two or three month gap until you sign the final sale document, the Acte de Vente. During this time the Notaire undertakes the neccessary searches and checks. The seller must also present a report detailing the whereabouts of any lead, termites and asbestos on the property. They are not compelled to remove these, merely make you aware of where they exist. The Notaire also advises the local Mairie of the transaction as usually the town/village/commune has the right to purchase the property at the agreed price!!
A few days prior to signing the Acte de Vente you will need to have paid the balance of the purchase price into the Notaire”s bank account. After you have completed signing the Acte de Vente (this can take two or three hours) the Notaire will present you with the keys to your new home and you become the proud new owners from that time.
We were intrigued with the imprecise possession date applied to our existing property. We took ownership of the keys on the 20th of December, two months later in February the previous owners were still removing various items from the property!! They are a lovely family so we didn’t at all mind, were just amused by it.
A Bientôt, Bruce.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Chris’s 2p worth as ever…
Our notaire didn’t provide a translator. To be fair, we didn’t ask her to - in part because we knew she had a clerk who spoke excellent English and expected her to be present, but she wasn’t. All was not lost, however, our French was *nearly* up to the task and, as it happens, our vendors were multilingual (she a professional translator). Of course, that supposes one would be happy to trust the “other side” with the translation - we were. Still - if your french is not so hot you might want to *check* the notaire is planning to provide a translator and ask.
It’s worth mentioning that one of the notaire’s jobs is to read the *entire* contract to you section by section and make sure you’ve understood it. (It’s also not too late for minor changes if you spot an error - or such was our experience). You’ll all (vendor/vendors and buyer/buyers) be asked to sign every page!
The contract will include ful details of any morgage you’ve taken out to buy the property - there’s no separate morgage contract in France. So your vendors will see this. Also if you’ve made any agreement for separate purchase of furniture, say, this will be detailed in the contract.
Finally, as yousaid, the completion was a bit vague. We knew we owned the house from Date X. We had the keys. But the vendors had not yet had the marie sign-off on some work they had completed, and it turned out this had not been done in accordance with the plan. It was clear they were expected to finish the work to the happiness of the marie (which, in the end, involved submitting a fresh plan that showed what they HAD actually built then makign some minor adjustments to that to match the newly approved plan - all took about six months and the vendor was happy to comply. What would the situation have been if the vendor had refused, or simply failed to get it done, I know not.
Still, whilst different from our own system, the whole thing was fairly straightfoward, the most significant practical difference is that it takes SOOOO long and there’s so much still done with paper and ink on freshly drawn up documents! If you’ve still got that brief case your nan gave you under the desk never been used, this might be a good time to dust it off!
August 29th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Good point Chris, I had forgotten about the line by line reading of the Acte de Vente. And of course if you do change anything, that page has to be corrected and re-printed. If you plan a celebratory drink or dinner you need to ensure you start your meeting by 1400!!
June 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I agree that appointing your own lawyer/solicitor is not always necessary, but if you do not speak French and this is your first property purchase in France, having a solicitor that works only for you is a much safer option.
Remember that notaires only get paid provided the sale goes ahead! Some can be tempted to let their impartiality slip through… Besides, where a conflict of interests arises, having one notaire acting for both sides can lead to serious difficulties.