Ending a French Tenancy as a Landlord: Congé for Sale, Personal Use (Reprise), or Legitimate Cause

A French residential lease renews automatically at each term (3 or 6 years for an unfurnished let by a private owner; 1 year, or 9 months for a student, when furnished). The landlord cannot walk away mid-lease. To stop the automatic renewal, you must serve a congé — a formal notice to quit — that takes effect on the lease's expiry date and rests on one of exactly three grounds set out in art. 15 of loi n°89-462 (unfurnished) and art. 25-8 (furnished):

1. Congé pour vente — you decide to sell the home empty.
2. Congé pour reprise — you take the home back to live in it, or to house a defined close relative.
3. Motif légitime et sérieux — a legitimate and serious reason, most commonly the tenant's failure to meet an obligation (repeated late or unpaid rent, no home insurance, nuisance, unauthorised subletting), or your need to carry out major works incompatible with continued occupation.

There is no fourth ground. "I want a higher rent" or "I'd rather have different tenants" are not lawful motives. If a tenant contests the congé, the judge may — even of their own motion — check that the stated ground is real and serious (service-public.fr). Serious rent arrears are usually handled instead through the lease's clause résolutoire and a court process, not a term-end congé.

The notice runs backwards from the lease's expiry date, not forwards from the day you post it. You must reach the tenant early enough that the full period is respected before the term.

Practical points:

• The clock starts from when the tenant receives the notice (the date of first presentation of the registered letter, or the day of hand delivery), not the date you sent it.
• Serve it too late and the congé is simply ineffective for that term: the lease renews and you must wait for the next expiry.
• Serving earlier than the minimum is fine — an early congé stays valid but only takes effect on the proper term date.
• If you buy a home that already has a sitting tenant, the loi Macron (2015) restricts when you may serve a congé pour vente or reprise, often deferring it to the next renewal or by up to two years. Check your specific situation before relying on a quick congé.

The content rules are strict because the law makes a defective congé null and void (à peine de nullité). A valid landlord's congé must:

• State the ground clearly — sale, reprise, or the legitimate and serious reason relied on.
• For a congé pour reprise: name the beneficiary, give their address, and state the nature of the family link. The law limits the beneficiary to the landlord, their spouse, PACS partner, a notorious cohabitant of at least one year at the date of the congé, their ascendants or descendants, or those of the partner.
• For a congé pour vente: state the price and conditions of the intended sale (this is what turns the notice into an offer), and attach the mandatory notice of information on the tenant's rights and the way the sale process works (required since the loi Macron).
• Be addressed to every tenant. If the home is let to a couple — married or in a PACS — the congé must be served on both partners, even where only one signed the lease.
• If a managing agent or intermediary sends it, the notice must still identify the actual landlord.

Get a mandatory mention wrong — the wrong beneficiary, a missing family link, no price on a sale — and a tenant can have the whole congé annulled, forcing you to start over at the next term.

When you give notice to sell an unfurnished home, the tenant gets a legal priority to buy it — the droit de préemption under art. 15-II. The mechanics matter:

1. The congé states the price and conditions and legally counts as an offer to sell to the tenant.
2. That offer is valid for the first two months of the six-month notice. Tenant silence past two months counts as a refusal, and you are then free to sell to anyone.
3. If the tenant accepts, they have 2 months to complete the purchase — extended to 4 months if they told you in their acceptance that they need a mortgage.
4. If you later sell to a third party at a lower price or on better terms, the notaire must notify the tenant of those terms; this second offer is valid for one month, at penalty of the sale being void.

Crucially, furnished lets carry no right of first refusal — art. 15-II applies only to unfurnished tenancies, so a furnished landlord can sell to a third party without offering to the tenant first (see art. 25-8 and ANIL). The préemption also does not apply where the buyer is a close relative (up to the third degree) who will occupy the home as their main residence.

A congé pour reprise lets you take the home back as a main residence for yourself or a defined relative. The beneficiary can only be the landlord, their spouse, PACS partner, a notorious cohabitant of at least a year, or the ascendants/descendants of the landlord or partner. You cannot repossess for a nephew, a friend, or to relet at a higher rent.

The reprise must be genuine. Courts treat a sham reprise severely:

• A judge may verify that the beneficiary really moved in and used the home as a main residence.
• A congé shown to be fraudulent (nobody moves in, or the home is quickly relet or sold) is annulled, and the tenant can claim full damages.
• Since the loi ELAN (2018), a fraudulent congé pour reprise or vente is a criminal offence: a fine of up to €6,000 for an individual and €30,000 for a legal person (Actu-Juridique).

If you have just bought a tenanted home, remember the post-acquisition timing limits noted above — a reprise often cannot take effect until roughly two years after purchase.

French law shields the most vulnerable tenants from a term-end congé. Under art. 15-III, you cannot refuse to renew the lease of a tenant who is:

• over 65 years old at the lease term, and
• has annual resources below the social-housing ceiling (the plafonds used for PLUS housing) — both conditions are cumulative and the resources are assessed over the 12 months before the congé.

…without offering suitable alternative housing near the current home, matching the tenant's needs and means. The same protection extends to a tenant who houses a dependent person over 65 meeting the resource condition.

Landlord exception: the safeguard falls away if you are yourself over 65 at the term, or if your own resources are below the same ceiling. In other words, a modest or elderly owner is not forced to rehouse a modest or elderly tenant.

The resource ceilings are revised every year, so treat any specific euro figure as indicative only — confirm the current PLUS ceiling for the tenant's household and area before serving a congé.

Only three delivery methods make a landlord's congé valid (service-public.fr):

• Registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt (LRAR) — the most common route; the notice period runs from the date of first presentation.
• Acte de commissaire de justice (formerly huissier) — the most secure, useful when you expect a dispute.
• Remise en main propre — hand delivery against a signed receipt or émargement.

An ordinary email is not valid; an electronic registered letter (LRE) works only if the tenant consented in advance. Send it to every tenant and to both spouses/PACS partners.

Because a single missing mention voids the whole notice, the letter itself is where landlords slip. Producing a compliant congé — correct ground, correct notice period, the mandatory beneficiary or price clauses, and the right delivery — is exactly what AdminLanding's Rent app is built to handle, generating a French-law letter you can serve with confidence. It streamlines the paperwork; it does not replace a lawyer for a contested case.