Escrow Account, Register, Three Clear Days: What the Carte G Really Requires

The carte G (the French property management license) requires neither an escrow account within the meaning of the decree, nor a repertory register (registre-répertoire), nor ten-year record keeping: those three obligations belong to the carte T (the French real estate transaction license). What it really requires comes down to four points, and they fall on whoever signs the property management mandate, not on the concierge company working through them.

The distinction decides who owes what. A concierge company that gets its own license carries everything below. A concierge company working under a holder’s license, through carte G delegation, carries none of it, but in exchange it inherits three specific prohibitions, detailed at the end of this article.

What the carte G really requires

Obligation	Legal source	What you have to keep	Who bears it under delegation
Financial guarantee	Hoguet Law, Art. 3, 2°; Decree 72-678, Art. 28, 30 and 32	At least €110,000, and at least the maximum of the funds envisaged	The license holder
Written mandate	Decree 72-678, Art. 64	An express authorization to receive funds	The license holder
Mandate register	Decree 72-678, Art. 65	Numbered without gaps, bound, number copied onto the owner's copy	The license holder
Rendering of accounts	Decree 72-678, Art. 66	At least once a year, under the conditions written into the mandate	The license holder
Price display	Order of January 10, 2017, Art. 2	Maximum prices including tax, storefront and website included	Each party for its own services
Continuing education	Hoguet Law, Art. 3-1; Decree 2016-173	14 hours a year or 42 hours over three consecutive years	The holder and the people they authorize

Who bears these obligations?

All of them follow the license, and the license follows the mandate. Whoever signs the property management mandate with the owner is the one who takes out the financial guarantee, keeps the mandate register, renders the accounts and answers for the renewal of their license.

Under carte G delegation, that signatory is Unlocker Real Estate, the license holder. So it’s Unlocker Real Estate that bears the financial guarantee, and the partner concierge company doesn’t have to take one out. The same goes for the mandate register, the annual rendering of accounts and the continuing education tied to renewal: none of it passes up to the concierge company.

That’s the real economics of the model. A carte G of your own requires a financial guarantee sized to the funds you manage, professional liability insurance and professional aptitude, an entry ticket explained in the next section and one that no declaration can lighten. Delegation doesn’t get around this burden: it leaves it with the party that already carries it.

The rest of this article details what the license really requires. It’s useful if you’re considering becoming a holder, and also for checking that a partner does what it must do.

Why can’t the financial guarantee be avoided in property management?

This is the point almost no page on the market writes correctly. Article 3, 2° of the Hoguet Law (the 1970 French law regulating real estate professionals) lets a professional skip the financial guarantee by declaring they intend to hold no funds. But it closes the door right away: this exemption applies “for the activities mentioned in Article 1, with the exception of those mentioned in 6° and 9° of the same article”. 6° is property management. 9° is the condominium trustee (syndic).

In other words: a carte G without a financial guarantee doesn’t exist, even when its holder never touches a euro on an owner’s behalf.

The reason is structural. In transactions, receiving funds is an option: the agent brings the parties together and the notary holds the deposit in escrow. In management, collecting rent, calling service charges and holding the security deposit is the business. A management mandate that excluded receiving any funds would no longer describe management.

The amount is found in three articles of the decree, and calculated in this order:

• Article 28 — the holder must request a guarantee “in an amount at least equal to the maximum amount of the funds they envisage holding”. The managed portfolio sets the amount, not the legal minimum.
• Article 30 — this amount can never fall below €110,000.
• Article 32 — it drops to €30,000 for the first two years of practice. With an exception no one mentions: this reduction doesn’t apply to companies in which at least one legal or statutory representative has already been subject to the Hoguet Law.

What must the mandate say to authorize receiving funds?

Article 64 of the decree requires a written mandate that specifies the extent of the manager’s powers and “that expressly authorizes them to receive property, sums or securities” in connection with the management they are entrusted with.

The word “expressly” is in the text. A management mandate that describes the tasks, sets the fees and organizes the relationship with the tenant, but nowhere says the manager is authorized to receive rent, doesn’t authorize them to receive it. Authorization can’t be inferred from context, from custom, or from the fact that the owner let it slide for two years.

It’s the first clause to look for when you review the mandate your partner has your owners sign.

The mandate register, and the annual rendering of accounts

Article 65 requires the holder of the “Gestion immobilière” (property management) mention to keep a mandate register that follows a model set by order, in which mandates are entered in chronological order. Four formal constraints apply:

• the register is, in advance, numbered without gaps and bound;
• the registration number is copied onto the copy of the mandate that stays with the owner;
• decisions entrusting the management of a condominium association, a company or a nonprofit are recorded in it on their date;
• if the guarantee ends, the register is handed to the guarantor.

Electronic keeping has been allowed since the wording in force on October 20, 2016. What is still required is continuous numbering and prior numbering, not paper.

The number copied onto the owner’s copy is a good tell: a management mandate with no registration number signals a poorly kept register, or none at all.

Article 66, often confused with the previous one, isn’t about the register: it requires the mandate to specify the conditions for rendering accounts, which must happen at least every year, and it forbids receiving any compensation other than what the mandate sets out, or from anyone other than the people it names.

Four obligations wrongly blamed on the carte G

The escrow account of Article 55

Article 55 applies to “the holder of the professional license provided for in 1° of Article 1 of this decree”. 1° is “Transactions sur immeubles et fonds de commerce” (real estate and business transactions): the carte T. The obligation is also doubly conditional: it applies only when the guarantee is given by a credit institution, a finance company or an insurance company, and a professional who has declared receiving no funds is exempt.

A holder of the “Gestion immobilière” (property management) mention alone is therefore not subject to Article 55. In practice, as soon as money is collected for third parties, the financial guarantor requires a bank account dedicated to client funds, separate from the agency’s. That’s what the market commonly calls the “escrow account.” But that obligation comes from the financial guarantee contract, not from Article 55.

The repertory register “De la loi du 2 janvier 1970”

Same mechanism. Article 51 opens with a closed list: “all payments or deliveries made to the holder of the license bearing the mention ‘Transactions sur immeubles et fonds de commerce’ or ‘Marchand de listes’” (the latter being the license for list sellers). Property management isn’t on it.

The repertory register and the mandate register are two separate documents, under two separate regimes. A carte G keeps the second, not the first.

Ten-year record keeping

The ten-year rule exists, but it’s in Article 72, which governs the “Transactions” license. Article 65, the one on the mandate register, sets no retention period. The number circulates because it was carried over from one regime to the other.

The three clear days of Article 71

The deadline is real, and it’s harsh: “all sums or securities received in connection with property management operations or the duties of condominium trustee must be paid into this account within three clear days”.

But the second paragraph depends on the first, which begins: “Lorsque la garantie résulte d’une consignation” (when the guarantee takes the form of a consignation, a deposit of funds). If the financial guarantee is given by a bank or an insurer, the most common case, Article 71 doesn’t apply, and neither does the account opened in the name of each principal.

Where must the price list be displayed?

The Order of January 10, 2017 defines its scope by the activity of brokering: it applies to “any professional who, in any capacity, acts to connect buyers or tenants with sellers or landlords of real estate”. Finding and selecting the tenant is enough to fall under it.

Its Article 2 then expressly names property management among the services whose price must be displayed. Since April 1, 2022, it’s the maximum prices charged that must be displayed (the earlier wording referred to prices actually charged), including all taxes, stating for each service who is responsible for paying the fee.

Display doesn’t stop at the storefront: the price list must be easily accessible on the professional’s dedicated online public communication service. A link from the listings is enough; a price list you can’t find is not.

It’s the only obligation on this list that can’t be delegated: each party displays the prices for its own services, and a concierge company that charges fees displays its own.

Continuing education conditions the renewal of the license

The license is issued for three years, and its renewal isn’t automatic. Article 3-1 of the Hoguet Law makes it subject to compliance with the continuing education obligation, and Article 80, 3° of the decree makes proof of that education a document in the renewal file.

The requirement is fourteen hours a year, or forty-two hours over three consecutive years of practice. Over those three years, at least two hours cover non-discrimination in access to housing and at least two hours cover other ethics rules: four distinct hours, counted over three years rather than per year.

Two caps, and only two: attending conferences counts for two hours a year at most, teaching for three hours a year. Ordinary training courses aren’t capped by anything.

The obligation doesn’t only cover the manager. It also falls on the people who run an establishment and on those, employees or not, authorized to negotiate or broker on the holder’s behalf. The latter don’t send their proof to the chamber of commerce: they send it to the holder who authorized them, after each training.

The three things a concierge company without a license can’t do

This is the flip side of the model. Carrying nothing also means not being able to do what the license allows. A concierge company that isn’t a holder and hasn’t been authorized by the holder can’t:

• collect rent on the owner’s behalf: that’s handling funds for third parties, the core of what the Hoguet Law reserves for holders;
• carry out management acts in its own name: signing a lease, giving notice, starting proceedings;
• promote the properties it operates, whenever that promotion amounts to brokering between the landlord and a tenant.

Those are the three gaps we see most often in the field, and the first is by far the most frequent.

Delegation answers the first two, and not in the same way.

For collection, the answer is the flow of money, not a contract. At Unlocker, the tenant’s rent is collected in the owner’s account, then split between the manager and the service providers. The concierge company receives its commission; it never holds the owner’s funds. The question of handling funds doesn’t arise, for lack of anything to handle. It’s a structural answer, not a clause you hope never to have to invoke.

For management acts, the answer is the mandate. The lease is signed on the owner’s behalf by the holder of the management mandate, Unlocker Real Estate. The concierge company prepares the file and supports the signing, and remains the owner’s day-to-day point of contact.

For promoting properties, delegation exempts you from nothing, and that needs saying. Publishing a listing to find a tenant is brokering, and therefore falls to the mandate holder. It’s the line to hold, and the one a concierge company drifts across most easily without noticing.

Before signing a partnership, three questions are enough to tell whether the setup holds up: who signs the property management mandate with the owner, which account the rent lands in, and which account it leaves from.