6. Local Searches when Buying French Property

1. 6.1. Capacity of the Parties
   6.2. Title Searches
   6.3. Pre-emption Rights
   6.4. Planning Enquiries

6.3. Pre-emption Rights on French Property

There are certain bodies and persons who have an automatic right of prior acquisition, or pre-emption, on the sale of a property.

These rights are called the droits de pré-emption.

The rule of prior acquisition means, quite literally, that even though the seller may have agreed to sell the property to you, they may be obliged to sell it to another buyer!

Accordingly, before any sale to a prospective purchaser can be completed the notaire will need to ‘purge’ the property of these pre-emption rights.

In practice, around 98% of sales proceed without an pre-emption taking place, so you should not feel too anxious that you are going to be robbed of the French idyll you may have found!

The local mairie only have a right of prior acquisition if the property is located within a designated area as shown on a local plan, and SAFER only have a right if it is agricultural land or buildings, or land or buildings which could be for agricultural use.

The threshold figure which triggers a right of prior purchase by SAFER is determined by the local préfet on a five year cycle. In some parts of France and on certain types of land it can be as low as zero.

The right of prior acquisition by SAFER or the mairie relates only to the whole of the property, not just part of it. Accordingly, they have to buy all or nothing (excepting land located out of the zoned area).

This often means that larger estates avoid being caught, as the local council or SAFER may not have funds to make the acquisition.

In other cases, sellers of rural estates do sometimes come to a negotiated agreement on the sale of parts of a property to SAFER, prior to it being placed on the open market.

If SAFER want to buy only part of the property (say, the agricultural land) then, unless they are able to do so by agreement, they would need to obtain a court order to this effect. This occurs very rarely.

Accordingly, completion of the sale cannot normally take place earlier than two months, although it is possible to pay a small additional fee to gain clearance from the mairie and SAFER with two weeks.

The law offers some limited protection to the original purchaser in this whole process in that a sitting tenant only has the right to buy at the same price as that contained in the sale and purchase agreement.

However, this same rule does not apply in the case of the local mairie or SAFER, who may make an alternative lower offer if they consider the initial sale price to be in excess of the market value.

If this occurs then the owner can either withdraw the property from the market, or contest the offer in a court of law.

More often than not the two sides enter into discussions to arrive at an amicable settlement. Of course, the end result is that the property is then acquired by the public body!

Nevertheless, it is possible to contest the use of pre-emption rights in the courts, and many such cases are won by the applicants, often because of a failure of due procedure by the mairie or SAFER.