Do these - or anything roughly similar - exist in France ?
There is this
- basically you “sell” your house for a very low price, you keep living in it and the buyer pays you a monthly allowance for the rest of your life. When you pop your clogs the property becomes his. There are variations but that is the gist.
If you live to be as old as Methuselah the buyer has a made very bad deal, if you die a month after the sale he has done very well.
It can sometimes be a less than stellar investment as the lawyer who sold to Jeanne Calment discovered. 
The deal to sell your home and get paid to stay - BBC News
Of course Jeanne did well out of the deal
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I’d never heard of this before - worth a bit more research…
The Jeanne Calment story is hilarious. (If you’re Jeanne Calment…)
Hi,
It is also possible to sell en viager to an insurance company , see here;
http://www.certivia.fr?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyIKCv_3R3gIVUPlRCh127gf7EAAYAyAAEgJiJ_D_BwE
see also;
In the UK they were known as home income plans, later after several tragedies, safe home income plans. The change was to protect people from institutions who wrote into the fine print that if interest rates did this or that, the institution could take over ownership ( or something along those lines) so as ever the devil is in the detail, fine print.