Knocked down but occupied: what you really buy when someone still lives there

In a private sale, the handover date is written into the contract. In a forced sale, it is written nowhere. The court transfers ownership of a property to you, not the enjoyment of it, and the gap between the two is sometimes measured in years.

Are you buying an empty property or an occupied one?

The conditions of sale say so, and it is the first line to look for. They rest on the description drawn up by a judicial officer at the start of the procedure: layout, condition, and the occupancy recorded on that day.

That document is your main source of information, and it has a limit worth knowing: it describes a situation on one date, sometimes several months old. A property described as empty may have been reoccupied, and an occupant described as a tenant may no longer be one.

Who is in the property, and why does the answer change everything?

Three situations, three radically different outcomes.

The debtor, still living in their own home. This is the commonest case, and legally the simplest for you: the title of sale itself stands as a title of eviction against them, with no need for fresh proceedings.

A tenant with an enforceable lease, earlier in date and regular. Here you evict no one: you become their landlord. The lease continues, the rent comes to you, and any departure happens on the lease’s terms, not yours.

An occupant with no right or title, installed without a lease or with an accommodating one. This is the most uncertain situation, because it combines a weak legal position with a physical reality that does not move on its own.

Does the title of sale allow eviction?

Against the debtor, yes: that is precisely what distinguishes a judicial sale from an ordinary one, where you would first have to obtain a court decision. You already hold the necessary title.

But holding a title and holding the keys are not the same thing. Enforcement follows its own path, with its delays, its participants and its interruptions. The title is the starting point of the process of getting possession, not its finishing line.

How long does getting possession take?

The sequence is known. A judicial officer serves a notice to vacate, which opens a two-month period. If the premises are not vacated, they apply to the prefecture for the assistance of the police, and that is where the timetable becomes unpredictable: consent may come within weeks, or take considerably longer, a refusal then giving a right to compensation from the State without giving you the property back.

Hold on to the order of magnitude rather than the promise: a few months in the favourable case, more where the occupancy is disputed. And in the meantime the service charges and the property tax are in your name.

What does the winter truce change?

From 1 November to 31 March, evictions from residential premises are suspended. Proceedings started in September therefore stop in November and resume in spring, whatever stage they had reached.

This is not a calendar detail, it is a fact to fold into your decision. An autumn purchase of an occupied property means, in many cases, taking possession the following spring at the earliest. Buy in the knowledge of that seasonality, not against it.

How do you find out before bidding?

By reading the description in full, attending the organised viewing, and asking your lawyer, who has access to the procedural file. Three sources, none of which is sufficient alone.

The most useful signal is often the gap between the reserve price and the property’s value. A deep discount almost always has an explanation: condition, legal position, or occupancy. When the first two explanations do not hold, the third is likely, and it deserves to be looked for before the hearing rather than discovered after.

How does it translate into your ceiling?

In months, then in euros. Estimate the likely time to possession, multiply by what the property costs you each month while earning nothing, add the costs of eviction proceedings and, where relevant, heavier refurbishment than expected: properties recovered at the end of a conflict are rarely left in good order.

The total comes off the ceiling you give your lawyer. It is the only way to turn occupancy into a priced risk rather than a nasty surprise. An occupied property is not a bad purchase: it is a purchase whose price has to say that it is one.