Problem with Tenants and Tenancy Agreement

I wonder if anyone has any advice on this little problem:


We want to rent our house out and go back to UK for a year. Advertised it and almost immediately had a reply, met the people, seemed ok, young but nice etc etc and after a few weeks discussion we had a Tenancy Agreement drawn up, in english, and everyone signed it to the effect that they would take the house from 27th April. We didn't ask for a deposit at the time as that would be paid later with the first month's rent. A week ago we had an email to say that they had decided not to take the house. We have made all our arrangements based around the end of April and had almost been on the dot of signing a rental agreement in the UK - luckily we didn't - but now are left with going through the whole process again. I think that as they signed the agreement to rent the house for one year minimum then they should at least pay some sort of compensation. But they are adamant they wont their argument being if they did that and we almost immediately found someone else, then we would in effect be getting paid twice!


Does anyone know if there is anything we could do? Would it be worth it? Any help would be appreciate.





I would imagine that any clauses in the English agreement that go against French law would simply be ignored regardless of the fact you both signed it. We let out our properties through an agent so we won't have any problems.

As long as everything tallies with french law then no worries (fully agree, it has nothing to do with the language used but the laws of the country where it applies), if it doesn't then it'll be French law that'll take precedence - classic example is a translation of a british will for someone living in France - they need a french will taking french inheritance law into account, same to a lesser degree for a tenancy agreement (although I say again, I'm not an expert but speak from what I've heard/read/common sense)

Well I do also have a french Tenancy Agreement and actually the UK one is much more comprehensive so thought we had covered every eventuality - after all a legal document is surely legal anywhere, if two people sign something saying they both agree to whatever, surely that counts regardless of language?

I'm not an expert but as has already been said, if the house is in France, a UK tenancy agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on as French rental law is very different to UK law and would take precedence...! Bonne chance ;-)

Thanks for everyone who replied but suppose I sort of knew what the answers would be! Agreement is in english, but based on a much used UK Tenancy Agreement, people are Romanian (!) and it was for a minimum of 12 mths with 3 mths notice after that period. Oh well.........

And under lessons learned, always insist on the deposit cheque being paid at the signing of the contract, that's what we do.

Oh, and by the way, if you don't succeed in closing a contract before you're planned leave for the UK, you can hand it over to an local agency who handles tenancies for private house owners..

AND then they can stay.

yes renting in France can be a real nightmare as the locataire is soooo much better protected than the propriétaire, trève hivernal etc. even if they're not paying the rent plus by the time you get it through court you're back into winter and another 6 months where you can't kick them out...

Sorry to say this but renting seems to be a pain in the neck!

Not sur e if the money is worth the bother.

Whilst in UK J said we should borrow and buy and then rent.

All the contracts under the sun seem to mean very little.

I begged my good friend here in France not to rent...OR at least furnish.

She is very organised and omniscient.

She had three years of the tenants from hell.

In uk we had a large and really nice appartment in Holland Park ....the less

posh side ...round the corner from Simon Cowell and Brian May.

But on the floor above we had a young banker from the capitol of Hell who would

entertain himself in a night club session at 3 in the morning.....and he left olwing bills all

over the place ...INCLUDING NOT PAYING RENT to the owner of the Flat.

OOhps we had a brief flutter of room renting when we were in ALL Sts Road...

Long story but the "Students" were regular visitors to Amsterdam and ended up having a long

holiday in a hotel with non of the mod cons of Portobello.

second that !

Depends a lot on what is in the agreement. Any notice periods? If the people are French and the contract is in English this might also be a backdraw.

But basically they signed a contract and can be held for their part of the deal. To get it is something else however. You could take them to court I suppose, but that would coincide with you spending a year in the UK...

Might be more advisable to let it go, file it under "lessons learned" and put your energy during the remaining time to better use i.e. finding a tenant, using a standard french tenancy agreement this time.

Hi Jean. You might want to consider posting your query also in this group: http://www.survivefrance.com/group/longtermlets

regards

Sheila