Buying at auction in France from abroad: the full path

One question comes up in almost every conversation we have with buyers based in London, New York, Geneva or São Paulo: can you buy at auction in France when you do not live there? The legal answer is simple, and it is yes. No French rule reserves property purchase for nationals or residents, at auction as anywhere else.

The real difficulties lie elsewhere, and they are all practical: banking, calendar, documentary. They are cleared one by one, provided you start weeks before the hearing. Here is the full path, in the order it unfolds. For the procedure itself, our reference page on property auctions in France sets out the three possible routes.

What causes no problem at all

Let us clear away the needless worries first. You need no prior authorisation, no visa, no French tax residence. You do not have to set up a company. You do not have to be present in the courtroom, and in a judicial adjudication you could not bid yourself in any case: the law requires bids to be made by a lawyer.

In other words, on purely legal ground a non-resident foreign buyer is in exactly the same position as a French one. That is not where the game is played.

The four real obstacles

The bank guarantee. To bid in a judicial adjudication you hand your lawyer an irrevocable bank guarantee or a banker’s draft payable to the escrow holder, representing 10 % of the reserve price with a floor of 3,000 euros. The counterpart must be French: a cheque drawn on your bank abroad will be refused. This is the first task, and the longest, because opening a French account remotely takes weeks rather than days.

No mortgage condition. An adjudication cannot be withdrawn from and is not cancelled if your financing falls through. So you must hold the funds, or a firm agreement that holds within the deadline. This is the difference in kind from an ordinary purchase, and it is what disqualifies most files put together in a hurry.

The currency transfer. If your funds are in pounds, dollars or reais, they have to be converted and repatriated within a constrained deadline, at a rate that is not against you. Between the decision and euros actually available in a French account, allow generously. A currency partner committed to a rate and a date beats an improvised transfer.

Source of funds. French banking compliance asks for supporting documents, and an incomplete file holds a transfer up for days. Assembling that file beforehand, translated where necessary, avoids discovering the problem during the two-month window.

One remark before the detail: these four obstacles belong to judicial adjudication. Online notarial auctions remove two of them, since they keep the cooling-off period and usually allow a mortgage condition.

The timetable, read backwards

The right way to think is to start from the hearing date and work back.

• Hearing day. Everything is settled: your lawyer holds your written mandate and ceiling, the guarantee is lodged.
• One week before. The guarantee is issued and handed to the lawyer. The ceiling is fixed, based on a reference value and a works budget, not on an impression.
• Two to three weeks before. The viewing has taken place. You have the photographs, the video and the report on what was seen and what was not.
• One month before. The conditions of sale have been obtained and read item by item. The lawyer is instructed.
• Six to eight weeks before. The French bank account is open, or the guarantee is being issued. The currency transfer is framed.

A file that starts three weeks before the hearing only holds that timetable by luck. It is possible, it is not sensible.

After the adjudication

The ten-day overbidding window runs first: a third party may take the property back by offering one tenth more. Then the price is lodged within two months, and the costs are settled. Finally comes taking possession, which for a non-resident is the most concrete moment: meter readings, opening the utility contracts, a locksmith, a first inventory, costing the works, securing the property if it has stood empty for a long time.

That is exactly what your dedicated concierge handles on site while you are still abroad. If the property is occupied, what follows belongs to the lawyer, whom we coordinate without ever conducting the procedure in their place.

Once you own it

The holding regime is that of any foreign owner, and it does not change because the property was bought at auction: property tax, possible second-home tax, taxation of rental income in France, and on resale a capital gain with social charges whose rate depends on your country of residence and your affiliation. Our country guides set these points out, tax treaty by tax treaty.

To frame an auction purchase project from abroad, whatever the court in France, the complimentary personal study is the starting point.