Paris, Priced Differently.
There is a second way of buying property in France, written into the Civil Code, used every week, and almost unknown outside the country. It is called viager. This page explains how it works, what it costs, and what can go wrong.
You own it from the first day. They live in it for the rest of theirs.
Viager has financed French property since the MiddleAges. It is ordinary in France and almost invisible elsewhere — which is precisely where the opportunity begins.
In a viager sale, an owner sells their property and keeps the right to live in it for the rest of their life. The buyer pays a lump sum at signing, called the bouquet, and then a monthly payment for the seller's lifetime, called the rente.Title changes hands on day one. From settlement the buyer owns the property, not a share of it and not an option on it. The seller holds a right to live there, not a piece of the asset. Everything the property does in value from that day forward belongs to the buyer, and the seller receives none of it.
Because the buyer takes title to a property they cannot yet occupy, the price sits below what the same property would fetch with vacant possession. That gap is the structure's defining feature, and section three explains exactly what it is and what it is not.
None of this is unusual in France. Viager has transferred French property for centuries, is governed by the Civil Code, and is executed before a notaire, a public officer whose involvement is mandatory and whose records are a matter of state.
"Viager does not change the asset. It changes the price of time — and prices it in the buyer's favour for those willing to wait."
Viager Invest · The Briefing 2026
from day one.
Full legal ownership transfers at signing. Any change in the property's value from that moment is the buyer's, and the waiting period is compounding time rather than dead time. This is true whatever growth turns out to be.
The bouquet
The lump sum paid at signing. A genuine part of the price rather than a deposit, paid outright and non-refundable, set by negotiation and notarial valuation.
The rente
A monthly payment for the seller's lifetime, calculated actuarially from their age and the property value, indexed each year, and ending entirely on their death. There is no income here for the buyer. The rente is money paid out, every month, for as long as it runs.
Institutional France has been doing this deliberately for over a decade.
In 2014 the Caisse des Dépôts, the French state's financial arm, brought together around twenty French institutional investors to create Certivia, a fund formed specifically to buy occupied viager. Its investors include CNP Assurances, AG2R La Mondiale, Groupama, MAIF, Macif, Ircantec and Suravenir, the life insurance arm of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa. The fund was renewed in 2020 and holds around 350 million euros in commitments across the two vintages, with a stated objective of more than a thousand occupied properties. It is managed by La Française Real Estate Managers alongside the largest viager operator in France.
A second vehicle, Foncière Est Ouest, was formed by two Caisse d'Épargne regional banks to acquire viager and bare ownership in their own territories.
This is among the most conservative and longest-horizon capital in France, and it has been buying occupancy-encumbered property on actuarial terms since before most people outside the country had heard the word. What remains rare is a considered route in for a private buyer from outside France.
Almost nobody outside France owns a Paris apartment.
Not because it is off limits. Because nobody has ever explained how it is actually bought.
Paris residential property is held by remarkably few buyers outside France. The obstacle has never been availability or law. It is that the mechanism is ordinary in French and invisible in English, so the people best placed to use it have never had it explained.
Behind that, the supply arithmetic is worth knowing. Paris is roughly 87 square kilometres once the two bois are set aside, low-rise, heritage-protected and effectively built out. Net additions to the housing stock run at about 0.29 per cent a year, roughly 4,100 dwellings against a stock of 1.4 million. For a structure whose case depends on the asset still being wanted in twenty years, that matters more than any short-term price signal.
~87km²
Land area of the City of Paris once the two bois are set aside. Heritage protected, low rise, and effectively built out.
~0.29%
Net annual addition to the housing stock: roughly 4,100 dwellings against a stock of 1.4 million.
1.4million
Dwellings inside the city walls, the base any new supply has to be measured against.
Sources: INSEE and Notaires de France, current at [month, year].
How the numbers actually work.
Three parts: the bouquet paid at signing, the rente paid monthly, and the discount against vacant-possession value. Below are two real Paris listings we have priced and analysed to understand the market. They are illustrative only, and they are not available for purchase through us. We show two because they disagree with each other, and the disagreement is the point.
Comparison Table
| Montmartre, 18e | Alésia, 14e | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Size and building | 47 m², 2 rooms, 1932, 4th floor with lift | 55 m², 2 to 3 rooms, 1860, 5th floor with balcony | |
| Vacant-possession value | €500,000 | €462,500 | |
| Bouquet, at signing | €137,500 | €114,688 | |
| Rente, monthly, indexed | €910 | €2,002 | |
| Indexation assumption | 2% a year | 2% a year | |
| Occupants | a couple, 75 and 78 | one man, 81 | |
| Entry price, occupied | €256,500 | €299,700 | |
| Entry discount to vacant value | about 49% | about 35% | |
| Annual charges | €510 per quarter | €570 per quarter | |
| Taxe foncière | €1,124 a year | €1,401 a year | |
| Refuse | €244 | €304 | |
| Charge split | buyer carries taxe foncière excluding refuse; non-recoverable charges roughly 60% vendor, 40% buyer | per the deed | |
| Energy rating | DPE D | DPE D | |
| If the occupants leave | the rente rises 30% under this deed | per the deed | |
Neither is the better deal, and the comparison is the fastest way to see why. Montmartre carries the larger discount and the smaller monthly payment because a couple in their mid-seventies is likely to stay a long time, so the wait is longer and the right to remain is worth more. Alésia has one owner of 81 and a shorter expected stay, so a smaller discount and more than double the monthly amount. Each is priced for its own situation, worked out actuarially.
The rente is indexed under the deed, conventionally to INSEE consumer prices, with the statutory floor applying where a deed provides less. It starts at the figure shown and rises over the life of the contract. Every figure here assumes 2 per cent a year. Modelling a flat rente would understate the true cost, so we do not do it.
Notaire fees and transfer duties are assessed on the capitalised value of the transaction, meaning the bouquet plus the capitalised value of the rente, not on the bouquet alone.
One thing the discount figures are not: they are the discount at the point of entry, calculated on the occupied price. What you pay in total depends on how long the occupancy runs, and the table below sets that out across a range of outcomes including the ones that go against you.
What the discount is, and what it is not.
The discount to vacant-possession value commonly runs between 30 and 50 per cent. It is structural rather than negotiated: it reflects the occupant's retained right to live there, and it is assessed actuarially.
It is not money off the same asset. The price sits below vacant-possession value because the buyer waits, and because nobody knows how long the wait will be. It is compensation for accepting that uncertainty. It is not a cushion, not protection, and not a floor. If the occupancy runs long, the discount narrows, and it can narrow to nothing.
French law calls this kind of contract aléatoire. The uncertainty is the structure itself, not a flaw in it.
Run it on your own numbers.
Not because it is off limits. Because nobody has ever explained how it is actually bought.
Everything above is arithmetic on assumptions, and the assumptions are the interesting part. The one that matters most is capital growth, because it compounds over an occupancy of unknown length.
The examples in our education materials use 5 per cent a year. That is an illustrative assumption, not a forecast and not a historical average, and nobody can tell you what a particular Paris apartment will do. Paris apartment prices have fallen as well as risen, including over recent years.
So we do not ask you to accept our number. Our modelling tool lets you set growth, the rente indexation, the vendor's age and every cost line yourself, and see the outcome across a range of longevity scenarios including the ones that go against you. It comes with the briefing when you register.
Register for the briefing and the modelling toolWhere these numbers come from.
Both properties above are real listings, advertised on the French market. We priced and analysed them ourselves, on the basis we would apply for a client, to understand how the market is valuing occupancy. They are here to show method, not to be sold: we are not offering either of them and neither is available for purchase through us.
The vacant-possession values, bouquets, rentes, occupant ages, running costs and deed terms are taken from the agents' own particulars. The discount figures are our own calculation, being the occupied entry price measured against the vacant-possession value. Anything projected forward rather than taken from the listing is an assumption, and is labelled as one wherever it appears.
The downside, stated plainly.
These are set out in the order that matters, not the order that reads well. The first one is different in kind from the rest, and it is the reason the others are worth reading. This is not an exhaustive list of every risk attaching to a viager transaction, and the specific terms of any individual deed must be reviewed by qualified professionals before you commit.
Non-payment. The risk that matters most.
The standard viager deed contains a clause résolutoire, and it is severe and asymmetric. If the buyer stops paying, the vendor can cancel the sale, take the property back, and typically keep everything paid so far, both bouquet and rente. A defaulting buyer can lose the asset and the money. This exists to protect an elderly seller's income and it is enforced.
The comparison worth holding onto: a mortgage lender who is not paid takes the property and returns your equity after costs. A viager seller who is not paid takes the property and keeps your equity.
So the affordability question is not whether you could pay the rente today. It is whether you could pay it, without strain, in the worst plausible year of the next twenty-five.
Longevity.
The central uncertainty, and nobody controls it. Both parties carry it, in opposite directions: the seller may die early and receive little, the buyer may pay for far longer than expected. If the occupancy runs well beyond expectancy the total cost rises, the discount narrows, and it can narrow to nothing. There is a second point here we would rather name than skirt: the financial outcome improves when the seller dies sooner. That is uncomfortable, and it should be. The outcome anyone would wish for them, a long life in their own home, is the one that costs the buyer most. That tension does not resolve. And a move into care does not end the obligation: on the Montmartre deed above, the rente rises by 30 per cent if the occupants leave. Most people assume the opposite.
The obligation survives the buyer's death
The rente does not stop if the buyer dies. It passes to the estate and the heirs inherit it. Anyone buying needs to have thought about that. If an SCI is used, associés carry indefinite liability. Under French law an SCI's associés are liable for the company's debts beyond their capital, in proportion to their shareholding. In a viager the principal debt is the rente. So an SCI is not a liability shield, and anyone assuming otherwise should be corrected.
No income, and no use, for an unknown period.
The buyer owns an asset that pays nothing and cannot be entered. Meanwhile the rente leaves the account every month, along with the taxe foncière, a share of the building charges, insurance and the cost of any holding structure. The position is cash-flow negative for its entire duration, by design.
Illiquidity.
There is no institutional secondary market. The interest is legally transferable, but selling one is a bilateral negotiation within a niche, and any new buyer re-runs the actuarial calculation against the seller's current age. Treat viager as a hold-to-reversion structure, and size the position so you are never the one who has to sell.
Currency.
The bouquet and the rente are payable in euros. If your income is in another currency you are converting every month at a rate you do not control, and the rente is separately indexed to a French index, so the euro amount itself rises. Those are two exposures running in the same direction.
Condition, and building works.
The seller maintains the interior to their own standard, possibly for decades, and the buyer inherits whatever is there. Separately, the buyer is the owner from day one and carries the owner's share of the building's obligations throughout. A major works programme in year four is funded while the asset returns nothing.
Concentration.
One apartment, in one city, dependent on one person's lifespan. The dependency is idiosyncratic and it does not spread. That determines how large a share of anyone's wealth this should be.
Getting the entry price wrong.
Everything in a viager is calculated from the vacant-possession value. If that number is set too high on the way in, the bouquet is too high, the rente is too high, and the discount is smaller than it appears or absent altogether. This is the one risk here that can be managed rather than merely carried, and it is managed before signing. Patience does not fix an overpriced entry. Nothing does.
Letting it afterwards is constrained.
Paris rent control caps what can be charged, and a property lived in for many years may not meet current energy standards, in which case it cannot legally be let until work is done. Do not assume rental income at the end.
Regulatory and tax change.
This is a position that may run twenty-five years. Over that horizon French property taxation, the wealth tax threshold, the rules on letting, the capital gains taper and the buyer's own country's treatment of foreign-held assets will all change, some of them more than once.
The market itself.
Paris and the French regions can fall in value, and have. The structure does not make the position immune to a prolonged decline in French residential values, and any growth figure anywhere on this site or in our calculator is an assumption you have chosen rather than a forecast.
The seller is choosing someone to rely on for years.
A viager seller is not simply accepting the best price. They are choosing a person whose payments they will depend on for the rest of their life, in the home they intend to stay in. The clause résolutoire protects them on paper, but recovering the flat is not what they want. What they want is an income that never stops arriving. A default does not make them whole; it stops their income and forces an elderly person into enforcement.
So credibility, not just capital, wins these transactions. A seller weighing two buyers will take the one they believe will still be paying in fifteen years, and a buyer on the other side of the world is at a disadvantage in that comparison unless somebody credible is standing beside them, in French.
That is a large part of what we do. We introduce a buyer's financial position to a seller soberly and verifiably, in French, without disclosing figures the buyer has not authorised us to share. It does not replace any check the seller's notaire may wish to make, and it is not a guarantee of payment. It is a considered introduction from a party with a name and a reputation in the market, rather than an approach from an unknown overseas buyer. And it continues after signing: the relationship with the occupant is managed in French, for as long as it runs.
A narrow practice, delibrately so.
We are a buyer's agent, full stop. We sit on your side of the table. The seller has their own agent; we represent you. Nothing here replaces your own accountant or adviser. It sits alongside them.
We work with a small number of buyers at a time, well below what we could take on. The easy part of this business is signing the next mandate and collecting the fee. The hard part, the part that actually matters, is choosing the right people.
Every client we take on either spends or replenishes our reputation in Paris. That reputation is what surfaces an off-market apartment and gets a client taken seriously alongside institutional buyers. So protecting it and protecting the outcome for the buyers we act for are the same act. The selectivity is not fastidiousness. It is the reason the service works.
It follows that we ask a good deal before we act. Nobody is taken on without working through the education and running their own numbers. We do not try to convince anyone of anything. We would rather you do the work, understand it properly, and decide for yourself. It is a two-way audition: you are deciding whether we are right for you, and we are deciding whether you are right for us.
A viager is a relationship, not a transaction.
Most of what we do happens after signing. The rente has to reach the seller on time, every month, for as long as it runs, because the consequences of it not doing so are the ones set out above. Charges get raised, works get voted, indexation gets applied, circumstances change, and all of it happens in French, with a person who did not choose to have an overseas counterparty.
So we stay in it. We monitor the payment schedule and remind, we handle the correspondence and the practicalities in French, and we keep the relationship with the occupant intact for the life of the arrangement. We do not pay the rente; that obligation is yours and it cannot be delegated. What we do is make sure nothing quietly goes wrong at a distance of seventeen thousand kilometres.
Direct principals
You speak with the people doing the work, not a sales layer. Conversations are considered and unhurried.
Discretion by default
No public listings and no volume marketing. Your interest, and your identity, stay private throughout.
French market access
We source and assess viager opportunities that are rarely visible, let alone legible, to a buyer working alone from overseas. That is access and standing, not a promised outcome.
Ongoing stewardship
A viager is a relationship over time. We coordinate the practicalities in French through the life of the arrangement, not just to signing. We monitor and remind; we do not pay the rente.
The institutional presence described earlier cuts both ways, and it is worth being clear about the second edge. Those funds are not only evidence that the category is serious. They are also bidding for the same small number of good properties, with full-time French teams, standing relationships and the ability to move immediately.
They are not, however, the whole market. Roughly nine in ten viager purchases in France are still made by private individuals. So a private buyer is not shut out. They are simply up against professionals whenever a genuinely good property comes up, and they are doing it from the other side of the world, in a second language, against people who do this every day.
That is the gap we work in. Our standing helps a client reach those opportunities and be taken seriously alongside institutional buyers. That is access and credibility, not a promised outcome, and nobody can guarantee you win a particular property.
Paris-led, with the door open across France.
Paris leads, and it anchors the argument on this page. We also act selectively elsewhere in France, where a regional market offers a comparable asset with materially less competition for it. Those are opportunities in their own right, not a cheaper version of Paris. Where a region has something on the horizon we write it up as exactly that, unpriced and uncertain, and we would not buy on it alone.
What we are not
- Not a listings agency moving inventory.
- Not a fund pooling capital or selling units.
- Not a generalist adviser across markets.
- Not your financial, legal or tax adviser. That work sits with your own professionals, in your own jurisdiction.
- Not a hard sell. If viager is not right for you, we will say so.
What you get, and what each part is for.
A written primer, Edition 01, on Paris. It covers how the structure works, what a real Paris listing actually costs on viager terms, and the risks set out plainly rather than in a footnote at the back. It is the document we would want a serious buyer to read before speaking to anybody, including us.
A recorded conversation working through the mechanics end to end: the two prices, why the title moves on day one, how the discount is arrived at, what the deed actually says, and where this goes wrong. Plus a short introduction from our founder on why the practice exists and who it is not for.
Nine modules, in two parts.[1] UNRESOLVED FACT: The document itself notes that the checklist and studio plan say eight modules. Do not publish a module count until reconciled; use number-neutral wording in the meantime.
Part One is the core, and it is short on purpose. French property and the role of the notaire. Viager mechanics, worked through with a real listing. And a full module on what can go wrong and who this is wrong for, which is the longest of the three and the one we would keep if we had to delete the rest.
Part Two is a reference library to come back to rather than read in order: why viager, how to compete for the good properties, assembling your team in France, the transaction process step by step, what actually happens when the occupancy ends, and an introduction to French tax and administration, which we are completing with our French accountants.
This is the part most people spend longest with, and it is where the argument on this page either survives contact with your own assumptions or does not.
You set everything: the vacant-possession value, your own growth assumption, the occupant’s age and whether it is one person or a couple, the bouquet, the monthly rente, the indexation rate, the acquisition costs, and every ongoing cost line including building charges, taxe foncière, insurance and the cost of any holding structure.
It then shows you cumulative outlay against assumed value over thirty years, and the position across five longevity scenarios: an early exit, statistical life expectancy, a longer life, a much longer life, and the occupant substantially outliving expectancy. You can add an aged-care scenario, and read the figures in Australian dollars alongside euros.
The outcomes that go against you are shown as prominently as the ones that do not, including the cases where a viager ends up costing more than an ordinary purchase would have. That is deliberate. A tool that only produces good news is not a tool, it is a brochure.