Buying in France from abroad
Without a guarantee in the lawyer’s hands, there is no bid. It is calculated on the starting price, not the final price, and it takes weeks to put together from another country. Many foreign buyers discover it last; this dossier deals with it first, as it should be.
By Jean Mascla, founder of Home Select Updated · 6 min read
Many foreign buyers discover French auctions through the price, then the procedure, then the lawyer. They arrive last at the subject that actually decides whether the bid happens at all: the financial guarantee that must be handed over before entering the room.
A guarantee, in one of the forms the conditions of sale accept: most often an irrevocable bank guarantee, or a banker’s draft made out to the stakeholder named for that sale.
It goes to the lawyer before the hearing, not on the day and not as the doors open. Without it the lawyer cannot place a bid, however serious you are and whatever sits in your account. Available funds are not a guarantee.
A tenth of the reserve price, with a floor that protects small sales. The nuance decides everything: the calculation is made on the reserve price, that is the starting figure set by the conditions of sale, and not on the price you hope to pay.
Yet the reserve is often far below the property’s value, sometimes by half. Many buyers therefore tie up a sum unrelated to their real budget, one way or the other. Read the reserve price in the document, do the sum, and do not do it on your bidding ceiling.
That depends far less on you than on your bank.
The irrevocable bank guarantee is an undertaking by the institution, often simpler to obtain from a French bank that knows you, sometimes subject to arrangement charges and to a review. Its advantage is that it does not physically tie up the sum.
The banker’s draft assumes funds available in an account, and therefore an account. This is where the subject becomes one of banking preparation rather than of auctions: opening a French account without living in France is neither impossible nor instant, and a foreign institution does not issue a euro banker’s draft on request.
The right question to ask your bank is not "can you do this", but "in how many days, and what do you need to start".
Longer than the sale’s own timetable suggests, and that is the heart of the problem. The hearing date is known well in advance, sometimes months; the difficulty is not meeting it, it is discovering late that the banking chain will not fit inside it.
So count backwards from the hearing: handover to the lawyer a few days before, issue of the draft or guarantee before that, funding of the account before that again, and the currency conversion upstream of all of it. Each link has its own lead time, and none of them speeds up on the last day.
It is also why buyers who follow auctions seriously assemble their guarantee before choosing a property. It carries over from one sale to the next, and it turns a decision that takes weeks into one that takes days.
Sainte-Maxime, Côte d’Azur
It comes back to you. You bought nothing, you owe nothing, and the sum or the undertaking is released once the sale is over. Bidding without taking the property therefore does not cost you the deposit: it costs you the time the money was tied up, and whatever your bank charged to issue it.
That is a nuance worth holding on to when following several sales in a row: failure is not financially heavy, but it is not free either.
The deposit is set against what you owe. What remains is the balance of the price, to be lodged within the set period, and the costs tied to the procedure, some of which fall due at once. The detail is in the conditions of sale, the only document that governs the sale in question.
From then on the countdown is not negotiable. A buyer who fails to pay within the period sees the sale put back in play, at their cost and their risk. That is the subject of the re-auction on default, and the reason the financing question is settled before the room, never after.
The guarantee is not a last-minute formality, it is the first piece of work in the file. A buyer living abroad who starts three weeks out does not lose a sale through poor advice on the property: they lose it because an international transfer took six working days.
Home Select searches and negotiates for the buyer, and for the buyer alone. Your property finder checks the property, the building’s documents and the calendar before you commit, and flags what deserves a question to the notaire or a clause in the offer.
Around the purchase, we introduce the partners used to buyers who live abroad: bilingual notaire, mortgage broker, lawyer, sworn translator. Each acts under their own responsibility; we keep the calendar, from the offer to the handing over of the keys.
No, and that is the commonest mistake. It is calculated on the reserve price set by the conditions of sale, which is often well below the property’s value. A low reserve therefore means a modest deposit, even if you intend to bid far higher. Check the reserve price, not your ceiling.
The conditions of sale name the accepted forms, and they are not the same everywhere. An ordinary transfer is generally not among them, because it does not offer the same certainty of funds as a banker’s draft or a guarantee. Assume nothing: put the question to the lawyer several weeks before the hearing.
Adjournments happen and they are not rare. The deposit then stays committed until the new date, tying the money up for longer than planned. That is a reason not to build the deposit from funds you might need in the meantime, and to mention it to your bank when you apply.
A guarantee, in one of the forms the conditions of sale accept: most often an irrevocable bank guarantee, or a banker’s draft made out to the stakeholder named for that sale.
A tenth of the reserve price, with a floor that protects small sales. The nuance decides everything: the calculation is made on the reserve price, that is the starting figure set by the conditions of sale, and not on the price you hope to pay.
Longer than the sale’s own timetable suggests, and that is the heart of the problem. The hearing date is known well in advance, sometimes months; the difficulty is not meeting it, it is discovering late that the banking chain will not fit inside it.
It comes back to you. You bought nothing, you owe nothing, and the sum or the undertaking is released once the sale is over. Bidding without taking the property therefore does not cost you the deposit: it costs you the time the money was tied up, and whatever your bank charged to issue it.
The deposit is set against what you owe. What remains is the balance of the price, to be lodged within the set period, and the costs tied to the procedure, some of which fall due at once. The detail is in the conditions of sale, the only document that governs the sale in question.
Further reading
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