Starting a concierge business in France in 2027: status, carte G, payments

Starting a concierge business in France in 2027 comes down to four decisions, made before your first property owner: a legal status, an offer, a regulatory framework and a way to collect payments. The first three take a few weeks. The fourth is the one young concierge businesses most often regret putting off.

This guide covers the launch. For what comes next, finding and keeping property owners, see our guide on how to grow your concierge business.

The four decisions, in order:

1. Choose a legal status: micro-entreprise to test the market, a company to grow. The micro-entreprise ceiling is enough to get started.
2. Define your offer: short-term rentals only, or a hybrid offer with mid- and long-term rentals to keep the owner all year.
3. Stay compliant: a lease or rent collection means the loi Hoguet requires a carte G, held directly or delegated.
4. Collect payments cleanly: a flow where every booking is split automatically between the owner, the concierge business and service providers.

Which legal status should you choose?

Most concierge businesses start as a micro-entreprise, the French simplified sole-trader regime. It is easy to run and the ceiling is comfortable at launch: €83,600 excluding VAT in annual revenue for services, according to service-public.fr (2026 thresholds). The VAT exemption stops earlier, at €37,500 in revenue, with an upper threshold of €41,250.

For scale: at a 20% commission, €83,600 in revenue matches roughly €418,000 in rental income managed over the year.

A company (SASU, EURL) makes sense once you hire, get close to the ceiling or take on a partner. The right choice depends on your situation: have an accountant validate it before you register.

Your status changes nothing on the Unlocker side: the platform and the delegation work with a micro-entreprise as well as with a company, without changing your structure.

What should you offer your first property owners?

Short-term rentals (Airbnb, Booking) are the usual entry point. They are handled under a service agreement, and commissions sit around 20 to 25% of rental income, based on the 500 concierge businesses Unlocker has met.

A hybrid offer adds mid-term rentals, the bail mobilité (a French furnished lease of 1 to 10 months) and long-term rentals. It keeps an owner who wants out of seasonality, or fills the off-season months of a tourist property. The commission is lower, around 8 to 10% of rent among those same businesses, but the income comes in every month.

Rental type	Usual commission	Legal framework
Short-term (Airbnb, Booking)	20 to 25% of income	Service agreement
Bail mobilité, mid-term	8 to 10% of rent	Lease: carte G required, or Unlocker carte G delegation
Long-term (unfurnished, furnished)	8 to 10% of rent	Lease: carte G required, or Unlocker carte G delegation

Offering hybrid management from day one avoids the most expensive scenario: the owner who switches to long-term letting and hands the property to an agency because you could not follow.

Do you need a carte G to open a concierge business?

Not for pure services: cleaning, guest check-in and managing listings on the owner’s account fall under a service agreement. The carte G, the French property management licence, becomes mandatory as soon as there is a lease. Managing a property let under a lease (unfurnished, furnished, mobilité) falls under the loi Hoguet, the 1970 French law regulating real estate professionals, and requires a carte G. Without it, a concierge business can neither sign a lease on an owner’s behalf nor collect their rent.

Getting your own card requires a degree or recognised experience, a financial guarantee of at least €110,000 and professional liability insurance. For a concierge business starting out with a few properties, that fixed cost weighs heavily against the revenue generated.

The loi Hoguet allows a card holder to authorise people acting on its behalf. That is how carte G delegation works: Unlocker Real Estate, the card holder, signs the management mandate with the owner and entrusts the concierge business with the operational work.

In practice, every lease managed under delegation rests on that mandate. Once your account, the owner’s account and the property are validated on the platform, the owner signs it, and you then draft the lease from ready-made templates: unfurnished, furnished, mobilité or seasonal.

Criterion	Your own carte G	Unlocker delegation
Set-up	Several months of paperwork	A management mandate signed by the owner
Financial guarantee	At least €110,000	None required
Owner relationship	Yours	Yours

Short-term rentals have their own framework too. Unlocker offers a delegation tied to the management mandate held by Unlocker Real Estate: it covers the tasks within the mandate’s scope while leaving you your operational role with the owner and guests. The documents for each option are detailed on our mandates and contracts page.

How do you get paid without fronting costs or chasing invoices?

A concierge business spends money before it gets paid: cleaning, laundry, consumables, small call-outs. As long as your commission depends on an invoice sent to the owner at the end of the month, every late payment hits your cash flow.

Marjory, who manages 60 properties in Toulon, went through it: “I had a few unpaid invoices, and not €100 or €200 ones, we’re talking thousands of euros.” Her advice to newcomers: “I recommend taking Unlocker from the start and not waiting, it will save you problems later on.”

Split payment removes that gap. Every incoming payment is split automatically between the owner, your commission and service providers. You no longer issue commission invoices or chase anyone.

How many properties do you need to make a living?

There is no single threshold: the number of properties you need depends on your market, your commission and your fixed costs. A concierge business that buys another’s portfolio starts with a full book, another builds its own property by property. Run the numbers with your own data: annual fixed costs divided by net margin per property.

Which mistakes should you avoid at launch?

Three mistakes come up again and again with new concierge businesses:

• Taking on an owner without a written service agreement. Without a defined scope (who calls the plumber, who approves a discount, who pays for linen), the first disagreement is settled at your expense. Unlocker provides this service agreement: you create it and have it signed from your account, with your own rates and tasks.
• Collecting an owner’s rent into your own account. Without a carte G, a concierge business can neither sign a lease on an owner’s behalf nor collect their rent, even for a single property.
• Invoicing by hand at the end of the month. Audric, who manages 30 properties, spent several days a month on it before switching to split payment: “Today that workload is greatly reduced, and I can focus on my real job.”

How much does Unlocker cost at launch?

The Premium plan costs €100 excluding VAT per month and includes a carte G or carte T delegation. On top come 1% excl. VAT for split payment, then 1% excl. VAT for short-term or 2% excl. VAT for long-term delegation, deducted from incoming payments. No volume commitment. To estimate your earnings, use the commission simulator.

Automatic payment is also a sales argument. Matthieu, who manages 20 properties in Normandy, saw it against a competitor: an owner was hesitating between two concierge businesses and chose his, because “he liked not having to think about paying an invoice at the end of every month”. On the concierge side, payment arrives 24 to 48 hours after the guest checks out, at the same time as the owner’s.

Not ready to launch yet? Our free property management training covers the basics of management, the legal framework and the tools in 8 hours.