How to Remind a Tenant to Pay Rent in Paris: Legal Steps for Landlords

A missed rent payment on a Paris apartment does not pause just because the owner is in New York, Singapore, or London. The legal clock starts the same day, and French tenant law gives landlords a defined sequence of steps to follow, each with its own format, timing, and paperwork.

For landlords managing a property from abroad, whether the lease falls under the loi du 6 juillet 1989 or a civil code lease used for corporate and diplomatic tenants, the practical questions are rarely about the law itself. They are about timing, language, and who actually sends the letter when you are seven time zones away.

This guide walks through what to do when a tenant in your Paris property is late on rent, from the first informal reminder to the formal deadlines introduced by the 2023 reform, and where a civil code lease changes the picture entirely.

Under French law, a rent payment is considered late the day after its due date in the lease. There is no automatic grace period, even though in practice most landlords wait a few days before reacting.

The legal moment a payment becomes impayé

Legally, the term "impayé" applies from day one of non-payment. Many landlords and agencies still wait until day five or ten before sending anything written, partly out of courtesy and partly because a single late transfer is often a banking delay rather than a real problem.

This grace period is a choice, not a requirement. If the same tenant is consistently a few days late every month, that pattern is worth tracking from the start.

Why early contact protects your position later

Acting quickly is not about being unpleasant with a tenant who is a few days late. It is about building a paper trail that matters if things escalate. Every later step in the French rent recovery process depends on being able to show when the debt started and what attempts were made to resolve it amicably.

A landlord who waited three months before the first written message has a weaker file than one who documented contact from day five.

Step 1: Sending a Friendly Rent Reminder

The first step in France's rent recovery process is the relance amiable, a polite written reminder sent once a payment is a few days overdue. It can be an email, a text, or a short letter, and its purpose is simple: flag the missed payment and ask the tenant to settle it within a few days.

What to include in the letter

A good relance is short and factual. State the amount owed, the date it was due, the lease reference, and a reasonable deadline to pay, often five to seven days.

Keep the tone neutral. Most rent delays are genuine oversights: a banking error, a forgotten standing order, a tenant who changed jobs and missed the new payment date (this is more common than landlords expect, especially with international tenants moving between accounts). A calm first message, sent in French if the tenant is French-speaking, often resolves the issue without anything further.

If there is no response within about a week, or the tenant asks for more time without a concrete plan, it is time to move to the next step.

Step 2: The Formal Lettre de Mise en Demeure

If the relance amiable produces no payment and no response, the next step is the lettre de mise en demeure, a formal notice sent by recommandé avec accusé de réception (LRAR), France's registered post with proof of delivery.

This letter is more serious in tone. It restates the amount owed, references the lease and the loi du 6 juillet 1989 where it applies, and gives a final short deadline, typically eight to fifteen days, before the landlord moves to the next stage. The wording matters, because this letter is the document that later proves the tenant was formally notified.

Sending it correctly when you live outside France

For a landlord based in London, Dubai, or New York, the practical challenge is rarely the wording. It is the logistics of sending a French LRAR with the correct legal phrasing, tracking the receipt, and following up exactly when the deadline passes, across a time difference and a language barrier.

Your lease may specify its own notice period, and not every landlord applies the same timeline. But the principle holds: a mise en demeure sent late, or worded incorrectly, can delay the entire recovery process by weeks.

Step 3: Commandement de Payer and the Six-Week Deadline

When the mise en demeure does not produce payment, the landlord can instruct a commissaire de justice, the modern term for huissier, to deliver a commandement de payer. This formal act lists the exact sums owed and starts a legal countdown.

How the 2023 anti-squat law changed the timeline

Before July 2023, tenants had two months from the commandement de payer to settle the debt before the landlord could move toward terminating the lease. The loi anti-squat of 27 July 2023 reduced that window to six weeks for leases governed by the loi du 6 juillet 1989.

That six-week change matters more than it might first appear. It shortens how quickly a landlord can move from a formal notice to the right to terminate the lease, provided the lease includes the clause that allows it.

Why your lease needs a clause résolutoire

Since the 2023 reform, every residential lease covering a tenant's main home must include a clause résolutoire, a contractual clause allowing automatic termination of the lease for non-payment. Before this change, the clause was common but optional.

If the commandement de payer goes unanswered after six weeks and the lease includes this clause, the landlord can move toward a commissaire de justice without first applying to a judge. If the tenant receives APL or another CAF housing benefit, there is an extra step: notify the CAF within two months of the first unpaid rent, or risk the benefit continuing while the debt grows. ADIL Paris's guidance for landlords walks through this CAF notification step in more detail.

If your Paris property is let under a civil code lease, or bail civil, rather than the loi 1989, most of the steps above do not apply in the same way.

Why corporate and diplomatic leases sit outside the 1989 law

Many landlords working with Relocation in Paris let their apartments to corporate tenants, embassy staff, or executives on assignment, under a civil code lease rather than a standard residential lease. This is common in the 7th, 8th, and 16th arrondissements, where company-funded accommodation and diplomatic postings are concentrated. This type of lease is used when the apartment is not the tenant's main French residence: company-provided housing, a diplomatic posting, or a pied-à-terre for someone on a temporary assignment.

A civil code lease is governed by articles 1708 and following of the Code civil, and the landlord and tenant can negotiate almost every term freely, including rent, duration, and notice periods. That flexibility is exactly what makes it useful for corporate and diplomatic placements.

What this means if your tenant stops paying

But it also means the protective sequence built into the loi 1989, the mandatory clause résolutoire, the six-week commandement de payer, the CCAPEX notification for CAF tenants, does not automatically apply to a civil code lease.

In practice, unpaid rent under a civil code lease is rarely a Visale-or-CAF situation. Corporate tenants are usually paid through their employer's accounts payable process, and a late payment is more often an administrative delay on the company's side than a personal cash-flow problem.

Even so, recovery still runs through ordinary civil procedure rather than the streamlined residential track, and standard Garantie Loyers Impayés policies, designed for loi 1989 leases, generally do not cover civil code leases. For this lease type, the safeguard is not insurance after the fact. It is having the lease itself drafted with clear payment terms, a defined notice period, and an explicit remedy for late payment from the start. Our guide on how rent control and lease classification work in Paris explains how properties are classified between the two lease types, and why getting that classification right at signing avoids ambiguity later.

Unpaid rent is more common in Paris than many non-resident landlords assume, and the gap between managing a property yourself and having it professionally managed shows up directly in the numbers.

Garantie Loyers Impayés: what it covers and what it costs

A Garantie Loyers Impayés, or GLI, policy reimburses the landlord for unpaid rent and, depending on the contract, legal costs and property damage. Bought individually, a GLI policy typically costs around 2 to 5 percent of annual rent including charges (figure should be checked against current insurer rates before publishing). Bought through an agency's group contract, the rate is often closer to 1.5 to 3 percent, because the insurer is covering a larger, pre-screened pool of tenants.

GLI is a useful safety net for loi 1989 leases (it is not, as noted above, generally available for civil code leases). But it pays out after a problem has already happened, and missing a claim deadline can mean losing the right to compensation entirely. For a broader look at how guarantees work on the tenant side, including Visale and GarantMe, see our guide to guarantor options for Paris rentals.

Self-management versus professional management, by the numbers

According to Imodirect's October 2025 barometer of properties under professional management across the Île-de-France region, unpaid rent at 30 days past due ran at 1.97 percent for professionally managed properties, against 5.33 percent for properties that had previously been self-managed (Imodirect, October 2025). Paris itself showed some of the lowest rates in the wider region.

The gap comes down to two things: tenant selection at the start of the lease, and consistent follow-up the moment a payment is late. Neither is glamorous, but together they are the difference between a one-off late payment and a three-month recovery process.

Relocation in Paris manages the practical, day-to-day side of letting a Paris apartment for landlords who live elsewhere, including the rent recovery steps covered in this guide when they become necessary.

Tenant selection: reducing the risk before it starts

The most effective way to deal with unpaid rent is to reduce the chance of it happening. Tenant selection, reviewing income documentation, employment status, and, for corporate tenants, the paying entity, is the first line of defence, and it is largely where the gap between 1.97 percent and 5.33 percent comes from.

A rental file that looks complete on paper is not always complete in substance, and checking it properly takes time that a landlord juggling a demanding job in another time zone rarely has.

Ongoing charge management: relances and deadlines, handled

Once a tenant is in place, ongoing charge management means tracking each rent due date, sending the relance the day a payment is late, and escalating to a mise en demeure on schedule if needed, in the legally appropriate French.

For a landlord in Singapore or New York, this removes the need to monitor a French bank account, interpret legal correspondence, or coordinate with a commissaire de justice across time zones. It also connects to the paperwork side of owning a Paris property: our guide on how rental income tax works for Paris landlords covers how lease type and rent timing affect your annual declaration. If this level of support fits your situation, see how Relocation in Paris structures its pricing.

If six weeks pass after the commandement de payer with no payment, and the lease includes the clause résolutoire, the commissaire de justice can move toward formally ending the lease. For leases without this clause, often older contracts, the landlord must apply to the tribunal judiciaire instead, which adds time.

Even at this stage, French law builds in protection for tenants. The trêve hivernale, the winter eviction moratorium running from 1 November to 31 March, suspends most evictions regardless of where the legal process stands.

Most landlords never reach this stage.

For the vast majority of cases, a clear relance sent on day five, followed by a properly worded mise en demeure if needed, resolves the matter long before a commissaire de justice gets involved. The legal steps exist as a backstop, not as the expected outcome.