Holiday home in France

Morning all , just a quickie , if we buy a holiday home in France , how long can we legally stay before we have to return to the UK ?
Family circumstances are dictating this , as initially we were going to move lock stock and a few barrels to France , but have since tweaked this to maybe so many months in France and so many months in the uk ( family member has advanced dementia )

I’ve always thought that it is 180 days out of a year Chance would be a fine thing

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No it’s 90 days at a time…this is from the remain in framce website:

As a Third Country National, you will be able to spend 90 days in every 180 days in the Schengen area. So if you arrive at your French house on 1 March, you can stay there until the end of May. Then you must return to the UK for another 3 months before you can travel again, so you would not be able to return before September.

During the ‘home’ period between June to September, you wouldn’t be able to take any short trips to any of the other Schengen countries either, as the 90/180 day rule applies to the entire Schengen area, not just to any one country within it. So no quick Ryanair city breaks in between times.

Strictly it is 90 days out of the previous 180 on a rolling basis.

So you could do alternate months, for example but if you stay 90 days you then have to leave the Schengen area for a further 90 days before returning.

If that is correct and enforced then one of our clients will probably sell up, they arrived on Saturday and normally stay until their first booking in July, spend the summer in the UK and then have Sept and Oct here.

Tim… I think that this is a real worry for folk… not being able to legally stay over the 90 days… :thinking:

but, let’s wait until the dust settles…

It’s something that I’d not even considered, long term we’re intending to split our time between the UK and here but will have to re-think if things change.

Well from what we know right now the possibility may well exist that UK residents can apply for a 3rd country national long stay visas each year so you can spend up to 182 days at a time here in one go. A bit admin heavy and costs a few €€, but may well be feasible.

Otherwise the ony option would be to stay resident here and then presumably you can go back to the UK for breaks as long as you don’t accidently stay too long and become a UK resident again.

But with today’s curve ball from Bercow I’m not holding my breath that it will become any clearer very soon.

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Hi Jane
I just came across your old post and was wondering if you could clarify how the 90 days are calculated as I can’t find anything online. Can I spread my 90 days in my french property so that I can spend the warmer months in France rather than spend 3 months continuously. Ie do several short stays between March and September as long as they don’t exceed 90 days.

If you google Schengen Cslculstor you will find.
Eg




Etc etc etc
Try a few and see which you like best

Hello Carole and welcome to the forum

Just one thing… could you pleased give your Full Name in the Registration as per our T&C’s

Cheers

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Thank you so much Geoff this is exactly what I needed. Have a great day