Bilingual notary for non-residents

What is a French notary, and who do they work for?

For nobody in particular, and that is the whole point. A notary is a public officer appointed by the State, holding their mission from the ordinance of 2 November 1945: they confer authenticity on deeds, are bound to impartiality towards all parties, and are professionally liable for the validity of what they receive. This is not a lawyer serving one side.

One practical consequence of this impartiality often surprises buyers from common law countries: the notary will not negotiate for you and will not tell you whether the price is right. That work belongs to a partner buying agent holding the carte T, who acts for the buyer alone. The two roles complement each other and do not substitute.

How does a sale before a notary unfold, step by step?

In two deeds separated by two to four months, and most of the work happens in that interval, out of your sight. There the notary queries the municipality, the land registry, the managing agent and the land publicity services, and what they find decides whether the deed can be signed.

1. The preliminary contract: a promise or a bilateral contract, signed at the notary's or privately. It sets the price, the conditions precedent and the deadline for the deed.
2. The cooling-off period: ten days for a non-professional buyer, with no reason and no penalty, from notification of the preliminary contract.
3. The investigation: the notary gathers the mortgage register extract, planning documents, co-ownership papers, and notifies the municipality of its pre-emption right.
4. The financing: the bank issues the offer, the eleven-day reflection period runs, then funds are called by the notary a few days before the deed.
5. The authentic deed: reading, signature, handover of keys, and payment of the price from the practice's account, never hand to hand.
6. After the deed: registration with the land publicity service, then delivery of the title deed, several months later.

The price never passes directly between the parties: it is transferred to the practice's account, which holds it until registration and pays it out afterwards. That mechanism, which looks heavy, is the foreign buyer's main protection: it prevents a seller from being paid before the transfer of ownership is enforceable against everyone.

Can you choose your notary, and on what conditions?

Freely, and with no territorial condition for a long time now: a notary in Lille can receive the deed for a property in Nice. The real question is therefore not whether you may choose, but what you choose, and for a foreign buyer the decisive criterion is neither proximity nor reputation, it is the working language of the practice.

The only case where the choice partly escapes you is a seller who has already instructed their own: you will not make them change. But you need not give up yours for that, and that is precisely the subject of the next section on two notaries.

What do you actually pay under the name of notary costs?

Taxes, mostly, and the French expression is misleading to the point of having become an international misunderstanding. What the buyer pays to the practice splits into three very unequal masses, and the share that actually goes to the notary is the smallest of the three.

Two consequences follow, pulling in opposite directions. The first is reassuring: negotiating notary costs makes almost no sense, since most of them do not belong to the notary. The second costs: these charges are higher on older property than on new, and they are paid in cash on the day of the deed, generally without being financed by the loan.

A real saving does exist, and it is often overlooked: furniture sold with the property, if inventoried and honestly valued, is outside the base of transfer duties. A fitted kitchen, storage units or pool equipment legitimately belong there, provided they are valued at their real worth and not at whatever figure would suit.

How much time passes between the preliminary contract and the keys?

Two to four months, and this is not administrative slowness: it is the sum of three public-policy periods that neither the notary nor the parties can shorten. Wanting to sign in three weeks is not ambitious, it is legally impossible.

The first three periods partly run in parallel, which is why the total is around three months and not five. The only real lever on this calendar is to supply quickly the documents that depend on you, translated civil-status records included: every missing document pushes the whole thing back, and a foreign buyer's documents are the ones that arrive last.

Can you sign without coming to France, and how?

Yes, by two routes, and the choice between them is not neutral. A notarised power of attorney transfers the signature to an agent present at the practice. Remote appearance, opened by the decree of 3 April 2020, has you sign yourself, by video link, from another notary's office or from home depending on the arrangement.

One point of law matters more than comfort: the authentic deed is drawn in French, and where a party does not understand that language, an interpreter must step in so that consent is informed. This is not a courtesy, it is a condition of valid consent. A practice working in your language removes that friction before it arises.

What should be checked in the deed before signing it?

The deed is read in full before signature, and that reading is the only moment when an error is corrected at no cost. Six points deserve to be followed word by word, because an imprecision there produces effects good faith does not repair.

The source of funds is what surprises most, and it is what actually blocks sales on the appointed day. The notary is subject to the vigilance duties of article L561-2 of the Monetary and Financial Code: they must be able to justify where the money comes from, and a transfer from a third-party account or a sensitive jurisdiction without written explanation suspends the signature. Prepare these documents weeks ahead, not the night before.

What risks weigh on a foreign buyer before a notary?

None to do with the security of the deed: that is precisely what authenticity guarantees, and it is one of the most protective systems there is. The risks are elsewhere, in what the deed commits you to without your having understood, and they are all linguistic or patrimonial in nature.

A fourth risk concerns not the purchase but the resale, and yet it is prepared on the day of acquisition: a non-resident seller established outside the European Economic Area must appoint an accredited tax representative when the price exceeds 150,000 euros, under article 244 bis A of the General Tax Code. This is known at purchase and budgeted for, or discovered in a hurry fifteen years later.

Does taking your own notary cost more?

No, and this is probably the least known fact in the whole French property purchase. When two notaries act, one for the seller and one for the buyer, they do not charge twice: they share the same fees, set by decree. The total cost to the parties is rigorously identical.

The question is therefore not financial but practical: a second notary adds a few days and a review by somebody who did not draft the deed. For a buyer fluent in French purchasing a straightforward flat, the gain is modest. For a foreign buyer, married under a non-French regime and buying from the other side of the world, it is what makes the reading genuinely possible.

Which law will govern the transmission of your French property?

That of your last habitual residence, unless you decide otherwise, and that sentence is worth rereading: since European regulation 650/2012, a single law governs an entire international succession, and by default it is that of the country where you last lived, not that of the country where the property sits.

The concrete stake has a name: forced heirship. French law imposes a minimum share for children, which many common law systems ignore. Depending on the law that applies, your French property will therefore go to whoever you designated, or to whoever the law designates in your place. The choice is made by will, received by the notary, and it is made in your lifetime: that is the only window.

How are the fees calculated, and why are they degressive?

By price brackets, with a rate that decreases as the price rises, the whole set by decree. This scale explains something that often surprises: the notary's share, relative to the price, is markedly lower on a prestige property than on a studio, although the work is not proportionally less.

• Fees are proportional to the price, in brackets, and each bracket's rate decreases: that is the degressivity.
• They are identical in every practice in France, being set by decree: comparing them makes no sense.
• A discount is possible above a certain amount, at the practice's discretion and within a limit set by the text.
• They cover neither transfer duties, paid to the State and local authorities, nor disbursements advanced to third parties.
• Ancillary deeds, a notarised power of attorney or a will, carry their own fees, also on a set scale.

What this scale implies deserves stating plainly to a buyer from a country where fees are negotiated: there is nothing to negotiate, and a practice offering a rate below the scale would be breaking the law. Negotiating energy therefore goes entirely into the property price, never into the costs.

Which mistakes cost the most before a notary?

They all look alike: having treated the visit to the notary as a closing formality, when it is the only moment where everything is decided and fixed. After signature, what was written produces its effects, including what was not read.

The seventh mistake belongs to a hurried buyer: refusing the full reading of the deed because it is long. That reading is the very guarantee of authenticity, and it is the last moment when a clerical error is corrected with a stroke of the pen. Afterwards it takes a corrective deed and the other party's agreement.

What does French Realty do around the notary, and what does it not do?

It directs you to a practice whose working language is yours and whose daily bread is international files, then it holds the circulation of documents between you, the practice, the bank and the partner buying agent. This is coordination and calendar work, not legal work.

• The direction: a practice working in your language and routinely handling international matrimonial regimes and successions.
• The documents: the list of what the practice expects from you, what must be translated by a sworn translator and what must be apostilled.
• The calendar: the dates that govern, preparing the source of funds well ahead, and the power of attorney started in time.
• The coordination: exchanges between the practice, the bank, the managing agent and the partner buying agent, so nothing waits on a chase.

What it does not do: it drafts no deed, gives no legal consultation, which the law of 31 December 1971 reserves, and never holds your funds, which pass only through the practice's account. On the scope of a clause or the choice of a succession law, the answer belongs to the notary, and sending you there is part of the service.