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Renting an apartment in Paris

Renting

05/02/2010Renting an apartment in Paris

Explorer Publishing offers useful information on renting accommodation in Paris, including how to complete the necessary paperwork.

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Paris is unlike other cities; it is a city thriving with life and to live in its centre is to become part of that life.

On the other hand, if you’re arriving with three children and a minivan, you might consider living in one of the suburbs where it is more affordable and houses are bigger and come with gardens. There will be space, parking, quiet and increased safety, and with high quality public transport it’s usually only a short train ride to the Louvre. Of course, this isn’t always the case and if enjoying Paris is important for you and your family, consider your new home’s proximity to public transport.

The majority of people who live in Paris live in apartments. There is an enormous range when it comes to price – you can find a room for a few hundred euros per month and you can spend upwards of EUR 10,000 per month for a loft looking out over the Seine. As is true anywhere else, location is key. What you get for your money in St-Germain des Prés is not what you get in the 19th.

Know what you want before you arrive and decide what it is you’re willing to give up; if you want to live in a house, odds are you’re not going to find one in Paris. There are exceptions, but to buy or rent a house in the city is brutally expensive, and even if you have the money it may be difficult to do.

Serviced apartments or ‘aparthotels’ are available as well. These serviced apartments offer the amenities of a hotel but with fully equipped kitchens included. The Citadine apartments in St-Germain des Prés, for example, directly face the Seine and sit on some of the cities’ most valuable property.

Otherwise you can always opt for furnished apartments provide the comforts of home and save yourself the trouble of starting from scratch or shipping your belongings to Paris. Also note that leases of furnished apartments are treated differently than unfurnished apartments. (Read furnished apartments)

Unfurnished apartment
A standard rental contract for an unfurnished apartment is three years. Don’t be frightened by the seemingly long duration of the lease. French law always favours the ‘little guy’ and as a tenant that’s you; the long duration of your lease exists to protect you from the landlord. If you want out, simply give three months’ notice and you’re free. And if you’re transferred with your job, you only need one month’s notice and a letter from your employer.

However, if the landlord wants you out, he needs to wait for the full term of the lease. Even then, he will need to send you a letter six months before the end of the lease. If there’s no letter, the three years is automatically renewed. These laws apply only to unfurnished apartments.

Furnished apartment
If you rent a furnished apartment the lease is one year. To leave early you must give a month’s notice. At the end of one year the lease is automatically renewed.

Although the legal minimum period for a furnished apartment in the city of Paris is one year, a student can rent it for nine months. This law which applies to all residential property was established in 1981 and has recently been enforced. The only exception is if the apartment is rated as a commercial property, which is rare.

Where to start looking

A good place to look for apartments that don’t carry an agency fee is the weekly publication De Particulier à Particulier, an excellent source for independent owners to sell or rent their property. You can also search the website which is available in English at www.pap.fr.

Also try FUSAC, a monthly English language collection of advertisements which includes a large selection of apartments for rent or sale. Depending upon your budget, you may also find apartments advertised in the International Herald Tribune but these tend to be at the upper end of the scale.

The website www.paris.craigslist.org has also become an excellent place to find apartments to rent, both short- and long-term as well as sublets and roommate situations. Another excellent resource is www.seloger.co.uk

The American Church in Paris has a good bulletin board and is a great place to start your search for an apartment. It’s an even better place to find a room for rent in someone else’s apartment.

Real estate agents
Because there’s no central real estate database in Paris, individuals often need to do a lot of leg work (or hire someone to do it for them) to find a place to live. Don’t be surprised if agents don’t return your calls, or generally seem uninterested by your desire to pay them money.

Real estate agents in Paris all have window displays, which showcase their best properties. Agencies must be certified by the préfecture de police and you should only do business with agencies that have a professional ID number, a guarantor and insurance. All of these things must, by law, be printed on all contracts and official correspondence. All agencies charge a non-refundable fee if you use their services to secure an apartment.

Also, don’t be afraid to shop around. Agencies don’t usually have exclusive rights to a property, and you may find the same property in another window so it’s worth looking around as one agent may charge less than the other.

Agence Dauphine    01 43 54 43 43   www.dauphine-immo.com
Barnes   01 55 61 92 92   www.barnes-paris.com
Capitale Partners   01 42 68 35 60   www.capitale-partners.com
Cattalan-Johnson   01 45 74 87 77   www.cattalanjohnson.com
Century 21   01 69 11 12 21   www.century21france.fr
Chasseur d’Appartement   01 55 02 32 55   www.chasseurdappartement.com
De Circourt Associates   01 43 12 98 00   www.homes-paris.com
First Address   01 56 24 83 02   www.1aparis.com
My Flat in Paris   01 44 53 98 09   www.myflatinparis.com
Paris Housing Services   01 45 55 21 37   www.paris-housing.com
Satimmo   01 40 33 55 55   www.satimmo.fr
Segur    01 56 58 68 68   www.segur.fr
Seine et Cité    01 53 68 64 02   www.seineetcite.com
SFI   01 43 80 10 17   www.groupe-sfi.com
Tradinvest   01 48 74 63 64   www.tradinvest.com
Vivre a Paris   01 44 54 97 97   www.vivre-a-paris.eu

The lease
Before you move into your apartment you will need to sign a copy of the état des lieux, a document evaluating the state of the apartment. Make sure that anything that isn’t up to par is marked in detail and take photographs. By law you must have tenant’s insurance and provide proof to your landlord that you’re covered.

In general, you will be asked to prove that you make at least three times the monthly rent. It is also not uncommon for a prospective landlord to ask for personal financial details including extensive financial records, your employment contract, and even your parents’ financial records.

The lease itself is called the droit de bail or contrat de location and must be drafted by a notary and written in French for it to be valid. You have no legal right to have the lease written in another language and if one is provided to you, make sure that you have the original in French reviewed by your lawyer or relocation agent before signing. The lease will be signed by you and by the landlord or occasionally by an estate agency on the landlord’s behalf.

The recent legal enforcement of the minimum term for a furnished apartment rental of 12 months (on in the case of a student 9 months), is due to the is scarcity of apartments in central locations as owners have found it more profitable to rent on a weekly basis to tourists. This has caused a shortage of accommodation for residents and turned some areas into tourist ghettos. The city is now cracking down on these landlords as renting a residential apartment in this way is illegal (references to this can be seen at http://2337.com) and hope to return many central apartments to residential users, not tourists. Hopefully this will bring the 38,000 apartments the city has identified in this way back to a normal rental occupancy and may have some effect on price and availability later in 2010.

What your rent include
Rent is paid monthly and is automatically deducted from your bank account. Negotiating your rent is, in most instances, unheard of. There is such high demand for apartments in Paris that landlords have their pick of tenants and because laws favour the tenant so heavily, landlords are very careful about choosing their prospective tenants. In addition to your rent you’ll need to pay a security deposit which is usually two months’ rent.

Your rent usually includes water and building maintenance. In theory, the landlord is responsible for the upkeep of the apartment itself. This does not, however, extend to appliances that may come with the apartment. For example, if you move into a studio which includes a refrigerator and it breaks down two months into your stay, you’re responsible for replacing it.

If you have gas heating, the cost is shared between the tenants and is dramatically less expensive than electric heating. All other utilities are paid for separately and individually, but air conditioning is rare in Paris. Occasionally, parking is included in the rent.

Other rental costs
Aside from your initial deposit, the agency fee and your monthly rent, you will also need to pay an annual habitation tax, taxe d’habitation. You can find out the amount by checking with the mairie. You may need to pay a deposit for your phone, internet and cable services depending on the plan.

It is uncommon for parking to be provided with an apartment; if you have a car or expect to purchase one, consider your options when deciding where to live. There are many underground parking garages in Paris, which sell monthly passes. The mayor would like to ban cars altogether from the centre of the city and is pushing hard to accomplish this.

Keep in mind that there is an increasingly competitive home services market developing in France and there are some excellent deals to be had if you shop around.

Check Expatica's listing for houses and apartments.

Reprinted with permission of Explorer Publishing from Paris Complete Residents' Guide. Renting an apartment in Paris has been updated by Tony Tidswell who moved to France with his wife and their young family 20 years ago. He has been blogging about his life, living and working in France since 1996 at http://Twiku.com and his vacation business at http://VillaRoquette.com.

7 reactions to this article

gimlet posted: 2009-04-22 11:52:51

This is a good overview, but it glosses over the need for a good dossier of papers so you can prove, among other things, that your monthly net income is at least 3x monthly rent, or else you'll need a French guarantor or 1 year in rental set aside in a locked bank account!

I found de Particulier a Particulier had the best deals, but you have to be react quickly: voice mailboxes fill up soon after the ad appears. Expect to view the apartment with 20 other prospective renters.

Linda posted: 2009-04-22 12:43:49

Would you please write a similar article about renting in Nice. I think there are differences between Paris and the Nice area. If I want to start renting something in October or November, when should I start looking? Is June too soon? I have to give three months notice where I am now.

Merci d'avance,

Linda

brad posted: 2010-02-11 19:04:50

What if you have trouble with your landlord or agency?

I moved out of my previous Paris apartment over a year ago and the agency owes me ~150€ for overpayment of "charges". Every time I call I get the run-around. They say they'll take care of it, then they don't. More excuses include the agent that is in charge of that "is busy" or "isn't here" or "has the day off", and of course never returns my calls.

I'm fed up and want some help. But to pay a lawyer would cost more than the 150€ they owe me. It's "le principe" that makes me want to file some formal complaint, but where?

Thanks for any advice.
Brad

Claire Lo posted: 2011-01-15 16:31:15

I would beware of the ads in Craigslist.fr. I contacted several of them and they appear to be scams. Either the address doesn't actually exist or they require a deposit before they will agree to an appointment to show you the apartment. They often indicate that they are working abroad and need to fly in to Paris to show the apartment. www.pap.fr is a good website as well as www.annoncesjaunes.fr

Gail Boisclair posted: 2011-05-25 13:28:45

Claire, I was just going to add a comment about Craigslist. I completely agree with you that a lot of the adverts for apartments in Paris are scams.

I have a company with rents out short term places in Paris and have had the misfortune of having one of our apartments scammed through Craisglist a few times.

Allan posted: 2012-01-31 16:15:13

The law now requiers a one month security deposit.

Laurie Volpe posted: 2012-02-01 14:38:49

I would like to see an article on the new law against short-term rentals (less than 12 months). I love the idea since I have lived in buildings with short-term rentals and the comings and goings of the tourists make life hell for those we actually live in Paris and have to go to work. Thanks in advance.

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