Finding an apartment in France is often described as difficult, but that word hides what actually trips people up: rigid paperwork rules, landlord risk aversion, and a rental system designed for long-term French employees.
We’ve now gone through the apartment search process twice in France, most recently in late 2025. This guide reflects what actually works today, what is often misunderstood online, and where our first attempt got things wrong.
This guide explains how to rent an apartment in France as a foreigner, what documents you need, how guarantors work, and how to navigate the CDI requirement.
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How Renting an Apartment in France Actually Works
“C’est impossible,” “J’peux pas.” Landlords in France aren’t exactly known to be flexible or open-minded. They want to rent to a local with a salary at least triple the rent who cannot be fired from their job.
The risks landlords in France take with a new renter are quite real. With extremely strong tenant protections in France, it can be almost impossible to evict someone who stops paying. Landlords prefer to stick with the safe choice, even if that means an apartment sitting empty for longer. Renting to a foreigner in France with no income and no rental history is certainly not the safe choice in their eyes.
While convincing a landlord you’re worthy of paying their mortgage can feel like an uphill battle in an already difficult market, it’s certainly possible. We managed to do it twice in our first year in France.
The secret to renting in France is only three steps long:
- Be organized. Really organized.
- Have a solid guarantor.
- Know where to look and where not to.
The Documents Required to Rent an Apartment in France
Each landlord and agency in France will have their own list of required documents, known as the dossier de location. Most will ask for some combination of the documents below, usually up front, before showing the apartment.
Want to really stand out? Bring a paper copy of your dossier to give to the owner/agent at the showing, even if you’ve already emailed it to them. Remember, in France it’s always better to way overshoot on the amount of paperwork. They secretly love it.
- Rental guarantee (the most important document)
- Motivation letter (who you are, why you’re moving, your timeline)
- Passport
- Residency Visa
- Proof of income and/or assets
- Latest tax returns (highlight your income, they’re likely unfamiliar with a 1040)
- Recent bank statements
- Rental history (in France or abroad)
We assemble everything in one large PDF file, roughly in the above order.
Paying your rent
When paying rent in France, we’ve always used a simple transfer through Wise. We were able to open our account before arriving, and simply fund it with Dollars, convert to Euros, and send to our landlord.
Privacy concerns
We redact any sensitive information from our documents, such as account numbers and Social Security information.
The CDI Problem
The CDI, Contrat à durée indéterminée, is the French open-ended employment contract. It’s the most common form of employment in France, and comes with a long list of employee protections.
American-style at-will employment is unfathomable in France. Employees with CDIs are extremely difficult to lay off or fire. That’s why landlords view the CDI as king; it’s nearly guaranteed income. And someone with guaranteed income is unlikely to stop paying rent.
Landlords expect income to exceed three times the rent. For a €1,200 apartment, that means showing at least €3,600 per month in income.
Savings alone aren’t usually enough to make up for a lack of a CDI. Tenancy in France can be very long-term, and the landlord can’t simply stop renewing your lease.
For anyone without a CDI, the strongest alternative is a rental guarantee.
Guarantors and Rental Guarantees in France
The most important piece of your dossier will be your rental guarantee. The guarantor can be an individual such as a family member or friend, or a business. The guarantor is responsible for continuing to pay your rent, should you stop paying.
For expats moving to France, the easiest choice is to use a paid service as a guarantor. For a fixed fee based on your monthly rent, the guarantor service acts as insurance for the landlord, protecting them from unpaid rent.
For both apartments we’ve rented, we used GarantMe. We pay about 4.5% of our rent as a fee, €68/month for our €1500 apartment. To qualify, we simply uploaded proof of funds using our brokerage account’s monthly statements.
In our experience, proof of a guarantee is the #1 document landlords will want to see for someone without a CDI. It’s what we lead with at the top of our dossier, and we always send it when a prospective landlord asks about our situation.
Furnished vs Unfurnished Apartments
In France, long-term rental properties are divided into two categories: furnished and unfurnished rentals.
Unfurnished apartments
Unfurnished rentals include stronger tenant protections and price regulations. They’re often significantly cheaper than furnished places and run on three-year leases. But because of the extra legal protections and regulations, they’re much less profitable and higher risk for landlords.
We’ve never even managed to qualify for a viewing of an unfurnished apartment, and they rarely show up in our search. Without a strong network and a word-of-mouth referral, a foreigner is unlikely to have an opportunity to rent one.
Furnished apartments
Furnished apartments, with their shorter one-year lease, limited protections, and higher price tag, are much preferred by landlords.
As a new resident of France, furnished apartments will be your best bet for finding housing. With the high price tag comes less competition from locals and established residents with guaranteed income.
Where to Search for Apartments in France
There’s no unifying database of available rentals (or real estate) in France. Listings can be spread out across multiple platforms, or simply be an “à louer” sign on the balcony with a phone number.
Word of mouth
With an extremely competitive rental market, many units never get posted anywhere at all; they’re simply rented through networks and friends of friends. Real estate investing is the preferred way to save and build wealth in France, so many families own and rent a few apartment properties.
The best way to tap into this market as a new resident is to join a local expat group. A network of local American retirees is likely to help each other out with rental referrals and other housing needs. The best place to find these groups is often on Facebook, and sometimes on Meetup.
Leboncoin and Seloger
Leboncoin, the French Craigslist, and Seloger, the French Zillow, are the two most popular online platforms to find apartments for rent (or real estate for purchase).
Listings are created by individuals, Particuliers, or agencies, Professionnels. Most listings only include three photos (the limit for a free posting), but it’s common to request more by message. It’s common to request a dossier or proof of a guarantor upfront, before scheduling a viewing or even providing more details.
Agencies
Agencies are professional companies listing and managing rental units on behalf of the owners. They may post their listings to Leboncoin or Seloger, but often they’re only available on the agency’s website, or not at all. They also charge tenants a move-in fee, usually several hundred Euros.
Each agency manages a small fief of units or buildings, and towns are overflowing with small, independent agencies. There’s no way to check each agency’s listings without calling or walking into every. single. one.
What We Got Wrong the First Time
Relying on agencies
Our first attempt to find an apartment after just moving to France, we focused on agencies. We walked into over 30 agencies in our small town, asking about rentals. Most told us outright that they had nothing for rent and that it would be totally impossible for us to find anything. Many others took our contact info and our search requirements, and we never heard from them again.
We only saw two apartments through an agent, and neither was desirable. For our second apartment search, we didn’t bother with any agencies.
Investing too much time early on
When we first started our search, we spent a lot of time looking at listings online and trying to decide if the unit would meet our needs. After much debate, we would eventually reach out, only to never hear back or be denied by the owner for lack of a CDI.
Now when we search, we’re much faster to reach out to any apartment that looks decent. Only once we get a positive response do we investigate more closely.
Worrying too much about the 90-day validation timeline
The VLS-TS Visitor visa gives you 90 days to find permanent housing and validate the visa online. Hearing about the difficulties of renting in France as a foreigner, we really worried that we’d be able to find an apartment in time. We ended up compromising on our first apartment so that we could be sure to validate in time.
Looking back, it would likely be fine to validate from an Airbnb or a friend’s address. It’s easy to update your address later, once you’ve found a permanent home. Our OFII medical exam summons arrived by email, so no risk of it getting lost in the mail.
What We Do Differently Now
Search for particulier apartments on Leboncoin
After wasting so much time with agencies, we no longer bother with them. Pay a fee for a third party to manage our unit, when they can’t even return a phone call? No thanks.
Now we search almost exclusively on Leboncoin for individual owners. We’re able to view many more apartments, with much less work on our behalf, that way. No need to run around town on a treasure hunt.
Lead with the guarantee
Rather than go all the way to a viewing, only to be turned down because of our situation, we simply send our GarantMe certificate to the owner early on. This shows that we’re low-risk tenants who have a guarantor, and also filters out landlords who only want to rent to locals with CDIs. The less time spent on dead-end listings, the better.
How Long Does It Take to Find an Apartment in France?
Once you’ve organized your dossier and received your guarantor certificate, finding an apartment is simply a matter of being accepted for a unit that meets your criteria. If you’re checking Leboncoin and Seloger multiple times per day, the search can be over in under a week.
For our first apartment near Nice, the search took us a month. We spent all day, every day going into agencies, but ultimately found our apartment on Leboncoin. We sent our dossier within hours of it being posted, and were accepted a few days after the viewing.
Our second apartment search in Annecy was split into two phases. First, we booked a week-long trip and lined up as many viewings as we could for the week. Once in Annecy, we viewed the scheduled listings and any new ones that were posted. We were accepted for our favorite, and even got to turn down a few.
Final Reality Check
Renting in France is harder than in the US, but it’s certainly not impossible. And it can be a great way to test out a new city and a new country without investing in real estate.
With a solid guarantor, a well-organized dossier, and the right method of searching, the hunt isn’t so bad. Plus, those are all things you can have prepared well before landing in France.
Have an experience with renting to share or questions about the process? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section, or feel free to write us directly.
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