08 October 2019

Moving in France - The Rental Contract

Moving in France - The Rental Contract

Today we went to our new rental agency, and signed our rental contract (contrat de bail)!

The contract is standardized by the government, so everyone runs through large chunks of it pretty fast. The things that vary most often are:
- name of renters and landlords
- amount of rent, deposit, and agent fees
- details such as T2, footage, parking spot, cellar, unfurnished
- amount of time required to give notice before leaving (zones tendues, like Sète, require only 1 month)
- whether water heating is collective or individual - if individual, then you are required to have a contract with a chauffagiste

Because there are two of us on the lease, everyone (the agent and both of us) initialed each page and signed the last page, of *all three* copies!

Then, we all initialed and signed copies of information about repairs - what part is ours to pay, how long our responsibility is in effect.

After all that signing, we still had two more important papers to sign - checks! One for the agency's fee, and one for the security deposit. We hadn't thought to bring our RIB (bank account information), but they said we could give it to them later. We will owe rent for 4 days in October, and the full month of November when we move in.

On the 28th, we will bring our renter's insurance (attestation d'assurance), and we will do a walk-through (état des lieux), noting and photographing anything less than perfect (some recommend doing a video, showing the agent pointing out things). At least this time, we won't have a dozen pages of inventory to check! Then we get the keys! And start moving in!

While we were at the agency, we asked for the name of a handyman, and also someone to help us move bigger items (like our refrigerator). Our agent said the handyman would do both! and she will email us contact info. She will also email the health and status report of the building (it's older, so this is required by law).

So, we're getting there! And we now have our first justificatif de domicile for our new address - the rental contract!

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Standard lease agreement: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F920

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