What Documents Do French Landlords Need? Checklist & Legal Requirements

You found a tenant. The lease is drafted, the deposit is agreed, and you are ready to hand over the keys. But in Paris, the paperwork obligation does not sit only with your tenant.

French law puts a specific list of documents on you as the landlord, whether you live in the 8th arrondissement year round or you own a property in the 16th while based in New York, London, or Dubai. Miss one, and the consequences range from an annoyed tenant to a rent reduction you did not see coming.

This applies whether you inherited a family apartment, bought a property as an investment while working as a diplomat or executive abroad, or run a small portfolio as an entrepreneur. American and British owners in particular tend to assume their home country's disclosure rules apply here. They do not. This guide walks through exactly what you owe your tenant, in the order you will need it.

Under Décret n° 2015-587, you are required to attach a defined set of documents to the lease at signing, not send them later once your tenant has moved in.

The written lease itself needs to include specific mentions:

• The rent amount
• The deposit
• The duration
• The identity of both parties.
• The technical diagnostic file (known as the DDT)
• A mandatory information notice that explains the tenant's rights and yours.

For non-resident owners, one detail matters more than it should: electronic delivery is legally valid. You can send everything by email or as a PDF, unless your tenant specifically asks for paper. That single rule makes remote compliance genuinely workable.

Five to six diagnostics are mandatory, and each one carries its own validity window, according to France's official government portal. Mixing up these dates is the single most common oversight among owners who are not physically checking the property every year.

Here is what applies, and when:

• DPE (energy performance diagnostic): valid 10 years. Properties rated G have been banned from new leases since 1 January 2025, and F-rated properties will follow in 2028.
• CREP (lead diagnostic): required for buildings built before 1 January 1949. Valid indefinitely if the result comes back negative.
• Electricity and gas diagnostics: required if the installation is over 15 years old. Valid for 3 years.
• ERP (risk exposure report): valid only 6 months, so it is worth timing this close to your listing date rather than doing it too early.
• Noise zone attestation: required only if the property sits within an official aircraft noise exposure zone.

What each diagnostic actually checks

The DPE looks at insulation, heating, and glazing to assign an energy label from A to G. As of January 2026, the calculation method changed its electricity conversion coefficient, which improved the rating for many electrically heated apartments without any renovation work. If your last DPE dates from before this reform and your building relies on electric heating, it is worth asking your diagnostician to recheck the figure.

The electricity and gas diagnostics are more technical: a certified assessor checks around 75 safety points, from wiring protection to appliance combustion. They do not force you to redo the installation. They simply document its real condition, which protects you if a dispute ever comes up.

To understand what this looks like in practice, this short overview of what a French property diagnostic report actually contains is a useful watch before your first appointment with a diagnostician.

How long each diagnostic stays valid

Keep a simple renewal calendar rather than trusting memory. The ERP expires fastest at 6 months, electricity and gas run on a 3-year cycle, and the DPE is good for a full decade. An expired diagnostic in the file is treated the same as a missing one, so a renewal date that slips by even a few weeks can undo the whole point of having done the diagnostic in the first place.

If one or more diagnostics identify issues that need attention before you can legally rent out the property, you may need to complete repairs or renovation work first. The scope and cost will depend on the condition of the apartment and the type of improvements required. Understanding these requirements early can help you avoid delays when preparing your property for a new tenancy.

If your lease is a bail meublé or a furnished civil code lease, one more document is required and it is the one most owners forget: a signed furniture inventory.

Décret n° 2015-981 sets out exactly what has to be in the apartment for it to legally count as furnished. This is not a suggestion. If even one category is missing, a court can reclassify your furnished lease as an unfurnished one, which changes your notice periods and caps your deposit at one month instead of two.

The 11 items the law requires

Each room needs furniture appropriate to its purpose, and the inventory (signed by both you and your tenant) must confirm the following are present and functional:

• Bedding, including a duvet or blanket
• Window coverings in any room used as a bedroom
• Cooking hotplates
• An oven or microwave
• A refrigerator with a freezer compartment, or one capable of reaching minus 6 degrees Celsius
• Dishes sufficient for meals
• Kitchen utensils
• A table and seating
• Storage shelving
• Lighting fixtures
• Cleaning equipment suited to the apartment

You can add extras (a washing machine, a television, decorative pieces) and these should also appear on the inventory. But the 11 categories above are the legal floor, not a suggestion you can round down from.

The état des lieux determines whether your tenant gets their full deposit back at the end of the lease, and conducting it properly is your legal obligation as the landlord, not something you hand off with a blank template.

A compliant inspection goes room by room, noting the condition of walls, floors, fixtures, and (for furnished units) every item on your inventory list. Photos are not legally required, but they are the single best protection you have if a dispute arises after you have moved on to your next tenant.

If you cannot be present at handover, this is exactly the kind of task that gets delegated to a property manager or a trusted representative. Doing it by proxy is completely normal for owners managing from abroad. Skipping it entirely is not an option that holds up in a dispute.

Your obligations do not end once the ink is dry. Several documents are owed throughout the tenancy, either automatically or on request.

If your building is part of a copropriété, you need to provide an excerpt of the co-ownership regulations covering how common areas are used. Your tenant can also ask for a rent receipt at any point, and you are required to send an annual charge statement one month before the yearly reconciliation, showing exactly how service charges were calculated.

None of this is dramatic paperwork. It is closer to routine bookkeeping, and most owners who use a property manager never touch it directly.

A missing or expired document is not a paperwork technicality. It shifts real leverage back to your tenant, and it can be expensive.

Depending on what is missing, a tenant can request a rent reduction, contest the validity of the lease, or in serious cases hold you liable for damages. This is harder to fix retroactively than it sounds, especially if you only discover the gap once a dispute is already underway and you are not in Paris to sort it out quickly.

Civil code leases, the type commonly used for diplomatic postings and corporate housing, do not remove this obligation. They exempt you from certain tenant protections under the 1989 housing law, but the diagnostic file, the inventory, and the inspection report are still required regardless of which lease structure you choose.

None of these obligations require you to be physically present in Paris. What they do require is someone who is.

Diagnostics can be scheduled and delivered without you setting foot in the apartment, as long as you have a local point of contact who can let the assessor in and receive the reports on your behalf. Digital signature and electronic delivery are both legally recognised, which is what makes remote ownership genuinely workable rather than just theoretically possible.

What trips up American and British owners specifically

There is no direct US or UK equivalent to the French DDT. An American EPC-style certificate does not transfer, and a UK gas safety record does not satisfy the French electricity and gas diagnostics. Every document has to be produced fresh, by a certified French assessor, under French rules.

The other adjustment is timing. In the US and UK, disclosure obligations tend to sit mostly with the seller at the point of sale. In France, they follow the property continuously through every lease, every renewal, and every tenant change. Rent arrears in France also rose 86 percent in January 2026 compared to the year before, which is one more reason a complete, current file matters from day one rather than something to tidy up later.

If you want the fuller picture on remote ownership, from choosing a lease type to setting up a management mandate, our guide on managing a Paris property remotely as an overseas landlord covers that ground in more depth.

You should not have to track diagnostic renewal dates from a different time zone, or chase a certified assessor by email between meetings.

Our property management service assembles and verifies your full document set before a tenant is ever shown the apartment: the DDT, the furniture inventory if the unit is furnished, the move-in inspection, and the ongoing paperwork that follows. We also handle tenant screening directly, which matters because a well-vetted tenant is far less likely to raise a dispute over paperwork later on.

Whether you own one apartment in the 7th or a small portfolio across several arrondissements, the goal is the same: nothing lapses, and nothing gets missed, whether you are in Paris this month or not.