Long-Term Rental Management for Concierge Companies

Choosing the right lease: unfurnished, furnished, mobility, Civil Code

Three contracts let you rent out a home that the tenant uses as their primary residence: the unfurnished lease, the furnished lease and the mobility lease (bail mobilité, a 1 to 10 month furnished lease with no security deposit). They differ in length, security deposit and how each party can get out.

The unfurnished lease suits an owner who wants a settled tenant for several years. The trade-off: the owner only gets the home back at the end of the term, and only to sell it, to move in or for a legitimate and serious reason.

The furnished lease is the most natural fit for a concierge company, since its properties are already equipped. But the equipment has to match the minimum list set by regulation: bedding with a comforter or blanket, shutters or curtains in the bedrooms, cooking hobs, an oven or microwave, a refrigerator, a freezer or freezer compartment, dishes, kitchen utensils, a table, seating, shelves, light fixtures and cleaning equipment suited to the home. A detailed inventory and condition report of the furniture is signed by both parties and attached to the lease. If an item on the list is missing, a judge can reclassify the contract as an unfurnished lease, whose minimum term is three years. The arguments for choosing between the two are covered in our article on renting furnished or unfurnished.

The mobility lease covers stays of 1 to 10 months. The tenant proves their situation with a document (internship agreement, apprenticeship contract, training agreement). No security deposit can be requested, but a guarantor is still possible, including the Visale guarantee (a free rent guarantee from Action Logement). The term can be changed once by lease amendment, up to 10 months in total.

That leaves the case where the occupant doesn’t use the home as their primary residence, for example a company housing an employee on assignment. Concierge companies that work with businesses then use the so-called “Civil Code lease” (a lease governed by the general rules of the French Civil Code rather than the 1989 residential tenancy law), whose uses are covered in our article on the Civil Code lease for renting to companies.

Our guides on the unfurnished lease, the furnished lease and the mobility lease list the documents to gather for each contract.

Screening the tenant and their guarantees

The applicant’s file is limited by a closed list of supporting documents: an ID, proof of address, and one or more documents proving employment status and income. Asking for anything outside this list exposes you to a fine of up to €3,000, or €15,000 for a legal entity. No money can be requested before the lease is signed, not even to hold the home. The public online service DossierFacile lets applicants submit a file that’s already sorted.

Once you’ve picked an applicant, two protections usually stack up: the security deposit, collected at signing, and the guarantor, who commits to pay in place of a defaulting tenant.

Rent guarantee insurance (GLI), taken out by the owner with an insurer, changes the picture: a private landlord who already has insurance against rental risks can only ask for a guarantor if the tenant is a student or an apprentice. So you have to choose between the two before publishing the listing, not at signing. The details of each guarantee are in our articles on the guarantees to ask a tenant for, GLI and the Visale guarantee. For applicants without a guarantor, Unlocker has partnered with Cautioneo.

If you charge a leasing fee, the share paid by the tenant is capped. The costs of viewings, assembling the file and drafting the lease are split between owner and tenant, and the tenant’s share can’t exceed either half of the amount billed or a cap per square meter of living space. Writing and publishing the listing remain the owner’s responsibility.

For a 25 m² studio in a high-demand area (zone tendue, a large urban area where the rental market is especially tight), the tenant’s share for the viewing, file and lease can’t exceed €252.25, whatever the amount billed.

Life of the lease: renewal, notice, early departure

Once signed, the lease moves along three milestones: the yearly rent review, the end of the term and notice from either party. Each has its own deadlines, and a missed deadline is rarely recovered.

Reviewing the rent

Rent can only be reviewed once a year, and only if the lease contains a review clause. The calculation follows the IRL (indice de référence des loyers, France’s official rent reference index) published by Insee: new rent = current rent × the IRL of the reference quarter for the year ÷ the IRL of the same quarter the previous year. A review isn’t retroactive: it applies from the request, and it’s lost if the owner doesn’t ask for it within the year. It’s not allowed for a mobility lease, nor, in mainland France, for a home rated F or G on the DPE (France’s mandatory energy performance certificate) when the lease was signed, renewed or extended since August 24, 2022. The method is detailed in our article on whether you can raise the rent every year. On Unlocker, every lease has a dedicated review tab.

End of the term and notice

Without notice from either party, an unfurnished lease that reaches its end date is renewed at the owner’s offer or automatically extended; we explain this mechanism in our article on automatic lease renewal. The mobility lease can’t be renewed or extended: it ends on the scheduled date.

The owner’s notice goes by registered letter with return receipt, by commissaire de justice (a court officer who serves legal documents) or by hand against a signed receipt, together with the information notice on the landlord’s obligations. If it arrives late, it’s not valid. On the tenant’s side, the shorter notice period in a high-demand area only applies if it’s stated in the notice letter; otherwise, it’s three months.

When a tenant leaves before the end of the lease, rent and charges remain due until the end of the notice period, unless a new tenant replaces them with the owner’s approval. That’s a chance to rent the property again quickly: see our article on what to do if your tenant wants to leave before the end of the lease. Any other change during the contract goes through a lease amendment, explained in how to amend a lease.

Disputes: unpaid rent, damage, lease violations

Most disputes are won or lost before they reach a judge: on the lease’s termination clause (clause résolutoire), on the quality of the inspection reports and on following the amicable steps.

Unpaid rent

Every lease signed since July 29, 2023 must contain a termination clause, which allows you to ask for the lease to be terminated in case of unpaid rent. The procedure follows a fixed order.

1. 1

   Chase and trigger the guarantee

   From the first late payment: remind the tenant, then call on the guarantor, Visale or GLI depending on the contract.

2. 2

   Have a payment demand served

   By a commissaire de justice. The tenant has 6 weeks to pay the debt or ask for more time.

3. 3

   Summon the tenant before the judge

   The juge des contentieux de la protection (the judge who hears residential tenancy disputes) rules at a hearing set at least 6 weeks after the summons. The judge can grant up to 3 years to pay and suspend the termination clause.

4. 4

   Enforce the decision

   As a rule, no eviction during the winter ban, from November 1 to March 31.

The real timeline and the sticking points are detailed in our article on evicting a tenant who doesn’t pay.

Damage

Everything hinges on comparing the move-in and move-out inspection reports. Normal wear and tear can’t be deducted from the security deposit; a wear-and-tear schedule agreed at signing avoids the debate. Every amount withheld must be backed by a quote or an invoice. The deposit is returned within one month if the two reports match, within two months otherwise. Each month of delay started costs the landlord 10% of the monthly rent excluding charges. The tenant can still ask to amend the move-in report within the following 10 days, and during the first heating month for the heating system: a photographed inspection report, with meter readings and the number of keys, leaves little room for dispute. That’s what the Unlocker inspection report module produces, e-signed and usable offline. For next steps, see tenant damage at the end of a lease and remedies when you disagree on the inspection report.

Lease violations

For a dispute of €5,000 or less, an amicable step is mandatory before going to court: the departmental conciliation commission (CDC) or a court-appointed conciliator, both free, or a civil mediator, who charges a fee. The CDC handles security deposits, inspection reports, repairs and charges in particular; it isn’t available for the mobility lease. The most common cases are reviewed in our article on a tenant who doesn’t comply with the lease.

Moving from short-term to long-term rental

The Hoguet Law (the 1970 French law regulating real estate professionals) governs rentals “seasonal or not”, unfurnished or furnished, carried out on a regular basis on behalf of others. In long-term rental, the job becomes property management: to manage a property under a lease on behalf of an owner, you need a holder of the property management card (the carte G, the French property management license) and a written property management mandate that expressly authorizes them to receive rent, charges and security deposits. Without a card of your own, carte G delegation lets you offer long-term rental while staying the owner’s point of contact.

A concierge company’s know-how remains useful in long-term rental: viewings, inspection reports, coordinating tradespeople, owner relations. What changes is the property’s rhythm and the nature of the cash flows.

The transition doesn’t have to cover your whole portfolio. The mobility lease, from 1 to 10 months with no security deposit, lets you fill a property in the off-season before going back to short-term rental: that’s the principle of the hybrid rental strategy. The numbers for a switch to long-term rental, commission included, are laid out in our article on what long-term rental costs and what it earns.

1. 1

   Choose the properties to switch

   Start with one or two homes whose occupancy drops in the off-season.

2. 2

   Choose the lease

   Furnished if the home meets the regulatory list, mobility for a stay of 10 months or less.

3. 3

   Get the management mandate signed

   By the owner and the carte G holder, before any lease is signed.

4. 4

   Prepare the tenant's move-in

   At Unlocker, keys are only handed over once the move-in inspection report and the home insurance certificate have been collected.

The practical changes for your organization are listed in switching from short-term to long-term rental: what changes, and the reasons to do it in why switch to long-term rental.