Your property search with a partner buying agent

What is a buying agent, and who do they work for?

A professional holding the carte T, mandated by the buyer and paid by the buyer, whose job is to find a property and negotiate it in the buyer's interest. The distinction is not one of vocabulary: a conventional estate agent holds their mandate from the seller, and therefore defends the highest price. Both operate under the same law of 2 January 1970, on opposite sides of the table.

French Realty is not that buying agent and does not stand in for one: it frames your project, selects the professional whose area and specialism fit, and coordinates. The search, the viewings and the negotiation are carried by a partner buying agent holding the carte T, under their own liability and their own mandate.

How does a search unfold, step by step?

A search run from abroad is not a French search on fast-forward: it is a search where every stage produces a written record, because the client cannot see for themselves. Framing opens the journey and takes longer than people imagine, because a life plan has to be converted into criteria that can be held up: districts kept and districts ruled out, usable floor space rather than advertised space, floor level and lift, aspect, acceptable level of works, total budget including works and fees.

Then comes sourcing, which is not limited to listing portals: mandates entrusted to local agencies, properties flagged by notaries, estates, and what professionals call off-market, meaning properties whose owner accepts a sale without advertising. The viewing follows, and that is where distance is paid for or won: a viewing useful to an absent buyer produces a full photographic record, a continuous video rather than chosen angles, measurements, the state of the communal areas, the noise at the real hour and not at the hour of the appointment, and a note on what the file is missing.

What is a search mandate, and what does it actually commit you to?

This is the document that turns a conversation into a mutual commitment, and most foreign buyers sign it without having read its regime. Searching for property on behalf of a buyer is an activity regulated by the Act of 2 January 1970, known as the Hoguet Act, and by its implementing decree of 20 July 1972. The professional who carries it out holds a professional licence bearing the wording covering property transactions, issued by the chamber of commerce and industry, backed by a financial guarantee and professional indemnity insurance.

Three practical consequences follow, and they protect the buyer far more than they constrain them. The mandate must be in writing, numbered and entered in a register of mandates kept by the professional: a verbal mandate is void, and its absence deprives the professional of any fee. The mandate has a fixed term, generally three to six months, renewable expressly. And above all, section 6 of the Hoguet Act forbids the professional from receiving any sum before the transaction is actually concluded and recorded in a written instrument: no deposit, no file fee, no advance on the search.

The mandate's scope deserves more attention than its form: it is the written criteria, area, floor space, maximum budget, that determine whether a property falls within the fee's reach. A scope drafted too broadly turns any acquisition into a chargeable one.

What does an acquisition really cost, beyond the asking price?

The item foreign buyers most underestimate is what France calls notary fees, even though the notary keeps only a small share of it. Most of it is tax: transfer duties go to the department and the municipality. The standard departmental rate was 4.50 % of the price; the 2025 Finance Act allowed departments to raise it to 5.00 % for deeds signed up to 31 March 2028, an option most of them took, with first-time buyers exempt. Added to this are the municipal tax of 1.20 % and assessment costs calculated on the departmental share.

One budgeting rule fits in a sentence: you never reason on the price, you reason on the price plus eight to ten per cent for an existing property, search fee included, to which estimated works are added. That total is what has to go into the financing plan, and it is what determines the real budget of a non-resident buyer, from whom a French bank will in any case ask for a higher deposit than from a resident.

How long does a search take, and what does its length depend on?

Three to six months to find, then two to four months to sign: the second half cannot be compressed, it is made of statutory deadlines. The first, by contrast, depends almost entirely on one thing, how wide your brief is against what the market actually produces.

The duration that most surprises buyers from abroad is not the search, it is what follows. Between the preliminary contract and the keys, the French timetable is almost entirely made of incompressible deadlines: ten days of cooling off, two months for the municipality to answer the notice of intention to sell, one month minimum for the loan condition. No urgency shortens them.

Can you buy in France without ever travelling there?

Yes, and it has become routine. Three routes exist, which do not demand the same degree of formality and are not equivalent depending on where you live. The notarised power of attorney is the most common: you give authority to a person of your choosing, often a clerk of the practice, to sign the deed in your name. Drawn up in France, it is received by a notary; drawn up abroad, it goes through a local notary or the French consulate, and depending on the country it requires an apostille under the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961, or legalisation.

Remote appearance by electronic notarised deed was opened by the decree of 3 April 2020 and then made permanent: the notary receives the deed through an approved video system and collects a qualified electronic signature. It assumes the practice is equipped for it, which is far from universal, and a workable slot for both parties. If you do not speak French, the notary will call on an interpreter: they must be satisfied that each party understands the deed they are signing, and a deed received without that precaution is fragile.

What should you check before signing, when you are far away?

The law requires the seller to hand over a technical survey file annexed to the preliminary contract, provided for by article L271-4 of the Construction and Housing Code. This file is the first reading grid for an absent buyer, and its absence or incompleteness is never a detail: it deprives the seller of the hidden-defects exclusion clause on the point concerned.

In a co-ownership, article L721-2 of the same code adds a series of items the seller must supply from the promise onwards: co-ownership rules and descriptive statement of division, minutes of the last three years' general meetings, the amount of current charges in the provisional budget, sums owed to the association, and the overall arrears position. That is where you read the works already voted but not yet called in, which will become your works if the call for funds lands after your acquisition.

• The minutes of the last general meeting, read in full: facade works and lifts are announced one to three years ahead.
• The planning information statement: easements, building lines, neighbouring projects the current view gives no hint of.
• The land charges certificate, which the notary requests, revealing the registrations to be cleared before the deed.
• The tax regime awaiting you as a non-resident, to be checked before the offer and not after the deed.

What risks weigh on a buyer who is not on the ground?

Only one, in truth, in several guises: you decide on somebody else's account of things. Everything else follows from that, which is why the question is not whether one can buy remotely, but who describes the property to you and which side of the table that person sits on.

The ten-day cooling-off period of article L271-1 of the Construction and Housing Code is the remote buyer's safety net: it runs from delivery of the preliminary contract, with no reason to give and no penalty to pay. It is the only moment when a decision can be undone at no cost, and it deserves to be spent checking, not waiting.

From offer to signature: which deadlines apply?

A written purchase offer is a commitment by the buyer, not an expression of interest. Once accepted by the seller on the exact terms in which it was made, the sale is legally formed: that is why an offer should be drafted with a short validity, often a week, and with the conditions you intend to include, financing first. An offer at the asking price, once accepted, binds. A lower offer amounts to rejecting the seller's initial offer and making a new proposal, which the seller remains free to ignore.

The preliminary sale contract, or bilateral promise, binds both parties and settles everything: price, description, surveys, conditions precedent, deadline for the deed, the escrow amount, generally five to ten per cent of the price, paid into the notary's account and not to the seller. The unilateral promise to sell binds the seller only, the buyer paying an immobilisation indemnity for the time to think; it is less common outside complex transactions. In both cases, article L271-1 of the Construction and Housing Code gives a non-professional buyer a ten-day withdrawal period, raised from seven to ten days by the Act of 6 August 2015, which runs from the day after the contract is delivered and may be exercised without reason or penalty.

The mortgage condition precedent is a matter of public policy where the buyer finances the purchase: article L313-41 of the Consumer Code gives it a minimum term of one month, and a buyer who fails to obtain financing recovers the escrow in full. Waiving it in writing is possible and sometimes requested by a seller in a hurry: the escrow is then what is at stake.

Buying agent, estate agent, notary: who works for whom?

The three professionals hold different mandates and serve different interests, and this is the costliest confusion for a foreign buyer. The estate agent who publishes the listing holds their mandate from the seller: they owe them the best possible sale, and their fee depends on it. The buying agent holds theirs from the purchaser: they search for what the buyer describes, including outside published properties, and negotiate in their direction. The notary takes nobody's side: a public officer, they authenticate, check the legality of the transaction, clear pre-emption rights and answer for the legal security of the deed for both parties.

In this landscape French Realty occupies a fourth place, upstream of the other three: it informs, guides and coordinates. It frames the project, picks the partner buying agent best placed in the target area, holds the overall view across search, financing, works and settling in, and remains your single point of contact when four French professionals are speaking at once.

Should financing be settled before starting the search?

Before, yes, and it is the most profitable advice on this page. A French seller rarely picks the highest offer: they pick the one that will reach completion, and a financing file already underway is often worth more than an overbid. For a non-resident buyer that takes time: French banks apply a recommendation of the High Council for Financial Stability capping the debt-service ratio at thirty-five per cent of income and the term at twenty-five years, they apply a discount to income earned in foreign currency, and they ask for a higher deposit than from a resident.

A French bank account makes everything easier, from paying the escrow to direct debits for charges, and the right to an account under article L312-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code allows you to obtain one even after a refusal. The detail of financing and of opening an account live on their dedicated pages, with rates, documents required and timescales by country of residence.

Which mistakes cost a non-resident buyer the most?

1. Signing a purchase offer to reserve a property, believing it commits to nothing: accepted as it stands, it forms the sale.
2. Waiving the mortgage condition precedent to look more attractive, without measuring that the escrow is then lost if the bank refuses.
3. Budgeting on the asking price and discovering eight to ten per cent of costs at the financing stage, then withdrawing or borrowing more.
4. Having a passing friend view rather than a professional: the record will lack precisely what gets negotiated afterwards.
5. Letting the ten-day withdrawal period lapse without having read the general meeting minutes, which announce the works already voted.
6. Ordering the power of attorney after signing the preliminary contract: between apostille and transmission, the deed date slips by several weeks.

What does French Realty do on your search, and what does it not do?

The starting point is the personal study offered: a conversation that converts your project into written criteria, into a total budget including costs and works, and into a realistic timetable given your country of residence and your financing. It is at the end of this framing that the partner buying agent is chosen, on the target area and the type of property, and not the other way round.

During the search, French Realty holds the overall view: it tracks progress, reads the viewing reports with you, prepares the questions to put to the seller and the managing agent, coordinates the notary, the bank and, where the acquisition concerns a property to renovate, the estimate of works. After the deed, the same contact moves on to settling in, monitoring the property and maintenance, because the day the keys change hands is not the end of the project when you live six thousand kilometres away.