You have signed, and you have no title deed: that is normal

A few weeks after signing, a foreign buyer sometimes writes an anxious question to their notaire: the official document never arrived. In most systems they know, proof of ownership is handed over on the day or thereabouts. In France it arrives several months later, and that says nothing untoward.

What do you receive on the day of signing?

The keys, and an attestation of ownership drawn up by the office. That document runs to a page or two: it states who bought, what, on what date and at what price. It is an act of the notaire, it has official standing, and it covers almost everything you will need to do in the months that follow.

What you do not receive that day is the certified copy of the deed, the thing commonly called the title deed.

Where is the title, and why is it slow?

It does not yet exist in the form you are expecting. The original of the deed, the minute, stays with the office: it never leaves the premises. What will be sent to you is a certified copy, and it can only be issued once the formalities are complete, first among them registration at the land registry.

That registration takes time, and the delay varies a great deal from one office to another. Several months is usual. It is not negligence on the notaire’s part, and chasing them speeds nothing up: they are waiting for the same thing you are.

What is the notaire doing in the meantime?

Most of the work that protects your purchase, and that is invisible from abroad. They pay the transfer duties on your behalf, register the deed, have the charges that encumbered the property struck off, apportion the service charges between seller and buyer, and release the price to the seller once the checks are done, which is the subject of escrow.

The order of those operations is not incidental: it is because they happen after signing and before the title is issued that the final document attests to a clean position, rather than to one still to be verified.

Are you the owner before registration?

Yes. As between you and the seller, ownership transfers on signature. You can move in, furnish, insure, let, carry out works.

Registration serves another purpose: making your right enforceable against third parties, that is against anyone claiming a right over the same property. It is registration that records your purchase in the file everyone can consult, and that fixes your priority. The distinction looks theoretical; it explains why the system is content to let you wait for the document with nothing hanging in the balance.

What is the attestation actually for?

For everything awaiting you in the following weeks. Opening energy and water accounts, taking out home insurance, introducing yourself to the building’s management, answering an administration, or evidencing your status as owner to a bank.

It is the document you will supply most often, far more than the title itself. Keep a legible digital copy, and send it to whoever looks after the property in your absence: a caretaker dealing with a leak on a Sunday has no time to ask you for it.

And later, if you need it again?

You ask the office for another copy. Since the original stays with the notaire for decades, losing the document you hold has no consequence: it is not that paper that proves anything, it is the original and the registration.

That is a fundamental difference from countries where the paper title is the right itself, and it is worth remembering before worrying. In France, the document you are waiting for is a confirmation, not a condition.