Does a Lease Renew Automatically?

Yes: unless one party gives notice in time, a lease renews automatically on the same terms. This is automatic renewal (tacite reconduction). Its length depends on the type of rental: 3 years for an individual landlord (6 years for a company) on an unfurnished lease, 1 year on a furnished lease. The exceptions are mobility leases (bail mobilité, a 1–10 month furnished lease with no deposit) and student leases, which never renew on their own.

This mechanism comes up constantly in long-term rental management: once the deadline to give notice has passed, the lease carries on with no new signature, for you or for your tenant.

What is automatic renewal?

When a lease renews on its own, that’s called automatic renewal (tacite reconduction). In practice, if neither you nor your tenant decides to end it within the deadlines, the contract restarts on the same terms as the original, with no special steps. This principle applies to nearly all residential leases, whether unfurnished or furnished.

How long does the renewal last?

• Unfurnished rental: 3 years if you’re an individual landlord (or a family real estate company, SCI familiale), 6 years if the landlord is a company (an SCI taxed as a corporation, a SAS, etc.).
• Furnished rental: 1 year, whoever the landlord is.

If you’re still torn between the two formats before signing, our article on renting furnished or unfurnished compares both options.

The exceptions: mobility lease and student lease

“Mobility” and “student” leases are never subject to automatic renewal. If you use one of these contracts and want to keep your tenant at the end of the term, you have to sign a new lease. It’s one of the points to plan for if you’re considering a hybrid rental mixing mobility and seasonal leases.

Notice periods to refuse renewal

If you want to take your home back, the law requires advance notice:

• Unfurnished rental: notice from the landlord at least 6 months before the lease ends.
• Furnished rental: notice from the landlord at least 3 months before the lease ends.

Your tenant, on the other hand, can give notice at any time, as long as they respect their own legal notice period. If they’d rather leave before the end of the lease, the procedure is different, and we explain it in our article on a tenant who wants to leave before the lease ends.

Can the rent change at renewal?

Renewal is in principle on identical terms, but two mechanisms let the rent change:

• Annual review: if the lease includes a rent review clause, you can adjust the rent based on the change in the IRL (indice de référence des loyers, France’s official rent reference index).
• Reassessment of underpriced rent: outside the annual review, an increase is only possible if the rent is clearly underpriced compared with rents in the neighborhood for comparable homes. You then have to send your tenant a proposal at least 6 months before the contract ends, with the rent references used to calculate it. The same 6-month rule also applies to furnished rentals.

This topic ties into the broader question of how to set the rent amount when you sign.

What to keep in mind

• The security deposit doesn’t change at renewal.
• Automatic renewal kicks in once the deadline to give notice has passed.
• You can’t terminate a lease in progress. You can only choose not to renew it, under the conditions and deadlines set by law.

If you’d rather change a clause in the contract without waiting for the end of the term, first look at what you can change in a lease already in progress, or check out our lease templates to start again from an up-to-date base.