Conditions of sale: how to read them before a French auction

In a judicial property auction in France, one document alone decides whether the operation will be good or bad, and it is public: the conditions of sale, the cahier des conditions de vente. It is filed with the court registry before the hearing, it binds every bidder, and it is not negotiable. Most buyers skim it the night before. That is where files are lost, long before the ninety seconds of bidding.

This guide walks through what to look for, in order of importance, and what each line means in euros. It complements our reference page on property auctions in France, which sets out the full procedure.

What this document is, and what it is not

The conditions of sale are drafted by the lawyer of the creditor pursuing the seizure. They describe the property, the terms of the sale and the charges that will fall on the buyer, and they append the available documents: title deed, surveys, the description report drawn up by a judicial officer, the co-ownership rules.

It is not a sales brochure. Nobody highlights the awkward parts, nobody summarises the risks, and nothing obliges the drafter to draw your attention to the clause that will cost you most. Everything is there, but nothing is flagged. It is a document to read line by line, not to skim.

A notarial sale also has its own conditions of sale, issued by the notary, but they vary far more from one sale to the next: that is one of the points covered in our guide to online notarial auctions.

The corollary is worth holding on to: what is not in it does not exist. There is no supplement to request, no seller to question, no second viewing to check. The document’s silence is information in itself, and it is almost always bad news.

The eight lines to read first

Here is the order in which a file is usefully stripped down. The first four decide the essentials.

1. Occupancy. Is the property vacant, occupied by the seized debtor, or let? If occupied, on what basis and since when? An occupied lot means an eviction procedure counted in months, which pauses during the winter truce, from 1 November to 31 March. For anyone buying to live in, this is the decisive line.
2. Co-ownership charges. The document states the seized owner’s arrears. The co-ownership is paid out of the price for the current year and the four elapsed years; beyond that, and for every call issued after the sale, the burden is yours.
3. Works voted but not yet called. This is the line everyone forgets. A facade renovation or a roof repair decided in general meeting before the sale will land on your table afterwards. The appended minutes, where they are appended, say so.
4. Easements and third-party rights. Rights of way, rights of light, party walls, rights of use, a commercial lease in force: everything burdening the property is enforceable against you.
5. The exact description of the lot. Lot numbers, shares, ancillary spaces. A cellar or a parking space you assumed was included may not be, and that changes the value.
6. The appended surveys. Their date matters as much as their content. An old survey on a property empty for two years says nothing about its current state.
7. Costs placed on the buyer. Assessed preliminary costs, the proportional fee, land registration: they are added to the price and paid on top.
8. The terms of the sale. The amount of the guarantee, the payment deadline, how overbidding is handled. These are the rules of the game, and they vary in detail from one court to another.

The description report, the most useful document in the file

Appended to the conditions of sale, it is drawn up by a judicial officer who has been inside the property. It describes room by room, measures, photographs, and records the occupancy observed. It is often the only honest description of the lot, because its author has nothing to sell.

Read it looking for absences: a room not visited because the door was shut, an inaccessible basement, a mention of disorder with no further detail. Those blind spots are worth quotes, and those quotes come off the bidding ceiling.

What this document will never tell you

Three decisive pieces of information are not in it, and you have to find them elsewhere before committing.

• The market value of the property. The reserve price is set by the creditor to attract bidders, not by a valuation. Only a professional who knows the area can give you a reference value: that is the role of a partner buying agent holding the carte T.
• The cost of works. No document in the file prices it. It is inferred from the description report, the viewing photographs and the age of the building.
• Zoning and pre-emption rights. In an area subject to urban pre-emption rights, the local authority may substitute itself for you at the final bid price within thirty days. That is checked at the town hall, not in the conditions of sale.

How to read it when you live abroad

The document is in French, in procedural language, and it exists only in the version filed with the registry. Three things are usefully delegated, and they are what we take on at French Realty: obtaining the document from the lawyer and translating it item by item into your language, sending your dedicated concierge to the viewing opened by the judicial officer to photograph what the file does not show, and setting all of it against a reference value given by a partner buying agent.

It sits inside a wider timetable, set out in our guide to buying at auction from abroad. This work happens in the weeks before the hearing, not the night before. It is the only way to arrive with a written ceiling that holds, and to have nothing left to decide during the ninety seconds when everything is settled.

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