Your tenant doesn’t pay the rent, damages your apartment or doesn’t respect his or her obligations under the lease contract? You can have your tenant expelled!

Using the online rental eviction procedure on the AGN avocats website, you can obtain your tenant’s expulsion for 990 euros, excluding bailiff’s fees.

Evict your tenant in 5 easy steps!

A tenant’s expulsion allows you to forcibly free your apartment of occupants and remove stored furniture. You’ll need a court order and a bailiff to carry out the eviction.

Beware: evicting your tenant on your own without the authorization of a judge and the assistance of the police can result in three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to 30,000 euros.

Step 1: Identify disturbing behavior justifying expulsion

Eviction is most often carried out when a tenant has failed to meet his or her obligations:

• If your tenant has not paid the rent, utilities or security deposit.
• If your tenant has not used the premises in accordance with the contract (e.g. failure to maintain the apartment, unauthorized subletting, etc.).
• If the occupant has entered the premises without security (squatters, homeless, association…).
• If your tenant continues to stay in the premises after the lease has expired.

Once you’ve identified the reason why you wish to have the person occupying your home evicted, you’ll need to ask him or her to regularize the situation, and then ask the judge to authorize the eviction.

Step 2: Ask your tenant to regularize his or her situation

Before taking legal action, you should ask your tenant to regularize his or her situation.

In particular, if your tenant fails to pay the rent, you should send him or her a summons to pay.

How do you send a summons to pay to your tenant?

You’ll need a bailiff to deliver a summons to pay to the tenant, which must refer to the resolutory clause in the lease for non-payment of rent and service charges.

You must wait two months – the time your tenant needs to pay – before you can take the matter to court. In fact, the automatic termination clause only takes effect two months after an unsuccessful notice to pay has been served by a bailiff.

A bailiff’s summons to pay costs 30.89 euros (this rate is multiplied by 2 if the amount of rent to be recovered is greater than or equal to 1,280 euros).

Since January 1, 2015, if you are a legal entity lessor (excluding family real estate companies), you must refer the matter to the CCAPEX (Commission de coordination des actions de prévention des expulsions locatives) at least two months before the summons, failing which the summons will be inadmissible.

How can I ensure payment of rent arrears?

To be sure of recovering the rent your tenant has not paid, we advise you to proceed with a seizure after delivery of the summons to pay. This will freeze the sums of money to prevent your tenant from organizing his or her insolvency.

Step 3: Request eviction from the judge

If your tenant fails to regularize his or her situation, you must apply to the judge for expulsion.

• If the rental contract contains a resolutory clause, you must file a writ of summons.

You must summon the tenant to appear in summary proceedings before the local magistrate’s court. The judge will declare the lease terminated and demand payment of the rent arrears. Once the judge has issued the expulsion order, the tenant must be notified.

• If the lease does not contain a resolutory clause 

You must summon the tenant to appear before the district court. You will be summoned to a hearing, but it is possible that the tenant will request a postponement of the hearing, which will lengthen the duration of the rental expulsion procedure.

Once the hearing has taken place, the decision will not be handed down at the hearing, but the judge will set a date for deliberation, which will take place at least one month after the hearing.

The possibility for your tenant to ask the judge for a delay

Once the eviction order has been issued, the tenant can refer the matter to the enforcement judge, or ask the judge ordering the expulsion to grant additional time before proceeding with the eviction.

The judge may grant such additional time whenever the tenant’s rehousing poses difficulties.

Step 4: Order to vacate the premises

Before actually evicting the tenant, you need to send him or her a notice to vacate by bailiff. The bailiff will serve the judgment and a notice to vacate on the person being evicted.

Once the eviction notice has been served, the tenant has 2 months to vacate the premises. You cannot evict your tenant before 2 months have elapsed from the date of the notice to vacate.

Step 5: Forced eviction, with possible recourse to the public force

If your tenant has not vacated the premises within two months of receiving the notice to vacate, the bailiff will enforce the decision by evicting your tenant.

Beware of the winter truce period

No executions may be carried out before 6 a.m. or after 9 p.m., or on public holidays. No evictions may be carried out during the winter truce, and no rental evictions may be carried out from November 1 to March 31.  Evictions can only be carried out from April 1 to October 30.

You can apply to a judge for eviction even during the winter period. The winter truce does not prevent you from starting eviction proceedings, but if you apply to the judge for eviction during this period, it is only the actual eviction that will be postponed.

Only a bailiff can carry out an expulsion, as he or she is the only officer qualified to enforce court orders.

Calling in the police

If the bailiff is unable to carry out the expulsion on his or her own, the bailiff must request the assistance of the police.

You should ask the bailiff to summon the relevant police commissioner to call in the police to enforce the rental eviction order.

If the commissioner refuses, you can ask the prefect of your department to call in the police.

Your tenant doesn’t pay the rent, damages your apartment or doesn’t respect the obligations set out in the lease contract? You can have your tenant expelled!

Use the online rental eviction procedure on the AGN avocats website, and get your tenant evicted for 990 euros, excluding bailiff’s fees.

For more information on rental eviction, AGN Avocats invites you to read these articles:

• My tenant doesn’t pay the rent! How can I evict him?