In the event of a dispute, can the tenant enter his rent?

If you are in a dispute with your landlord, you may be tempted to deposit his rent with a bailiff, for example, to put pressure on your landlord. Charlie Cailloux, legal advisor for the real estate site PAP.fr, sheds light on us.

franceinfo: Is this the right way to proceed? Is it frequent?

Charlie Cailloux: This is a question that comes up a lot, especially when the tenant demands work to be done and the owner resists. The tenant says to himself: if the owner does not respect his obligations and does not carry out the work, well I do not have to respect mine and pay the rent. Except that in French law, you cannot take justice into your own hands, you cannot decide yourself that you have the right to stop paying the rent. By unilaterally depositing your rent, you can effectively put pressure on the landlord, but you risk getting into big trouble.

And yet, in your example of necessary work which is not carried out by the owner, is it the owner who is the first to blame?

Yes, but just because you can’t stop paying rent doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. The right way to proceed is to get help from a court conciliator or the departmental conciliation commission to reach an amicable solution. It’s free and it will take less time than court. And if that is not enough, then we can ask the judge to order the owner to do the work, perhaps under penalty, perhaps with a reduction in rent. The judge can also on this occasion, authorize you to deposit your rent in an account of the Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations while awaiting the work. But in this case, owner and tenant were able to put forward their explanations and it was the judge who decided.

What are the risks in the end of registering the rent? Were you talking about big trouble?

You risk termination of the lease and eviction. As we have just seen, consignment is only possible with the authorization of the judge. Apart from this very specific case, not paying the rent to the landlord is unpaid, period. An unpaid which can allow the owner to give notice for legitimate and serious reasons or to bring into play the termination clause of the lease.

To conclude, we can recall which work is the responsibility of the owner and that of the tenant?

The owner must take responsibility for repairs related to obsolescence, wear and tear, major repairs and all that concerns the decency of the accommodation and the tenant must take care of routine maintenance, small repairs and obviously what ‘he degraded. To know who takes care of it, it is therefore necessary to know what is the cause of the problem.