 | Have you heard about French bureaucracy? It’s immense and far-reaching, penetrating the depths of your soul. But if you want to live in France, you’ll get used to it. Here’s how to rent an apartment in Paris. |
Really, I recommend that you be employed by a company that transfers you to France and has already leased apartments which they funnel you into. That company will also probably take care of your visas and help you get a bank account. They’ll also probably pay your kids’ school tuition. Live it up!
On the other hand, if you are just moving to France for kicks, unemployed and aimless like us, get ready for some serious adulting. You’ll need all your wits about you, so gird your loins and buckle up. I know I’m mixing metaphors, but I’m trying to make a point.
First of all, back in the USA, you can’t get a French long-stay visa without a French address, so our realtor (Adrian Leeds, that House Hunters International lady who I google-searched) wrote us a letter saying she was looking for an apartment for us. The French consulate believed her, and we got the visas.
We got to France on a Saturday and waited till Tuesday to start our apartment hunt because Monday was a holiday, Easter Monday. Adrian told us we’d need a French bank account, so she gave us an introduction to a bank she’s familiar with. No problem, we thought! We have great credit and winning personalities! Little did we know.
On the other hand, if you are just moving to France for kicks, unemployed and aimless like us, get ready for some serious adulting. You’ll need all your wits about you, so gird your loins and buckle up. I know I’m mixing metaphors, but I’m trying to make a point.
First of all, back in the USA, you can’t get a French long-stay visa without a French address, so our realtor (Adrian Leeds, that House Hunters International lady who I google-searched) wrote us a letter saying she was looking for an apartment for us. The French consulate believed her, and we got the visas.
We got to France on a Saturday and waited till Tuesday to start our apartment hunt because Monday was a holiday, Easter Monday. Adrian told us we’d need a French bank account, so she gave us an introduction to a bank she’s familiar with. No problem, we thought! We have great credit and winning personalities! Little did we know.
| Adrian turned us over to her associate Tycen and his assistant Lukey. They started showing us beautiful apartments which perfectly fit our list of must-haves: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room that can support a grand piano the size of a Buick, Haussman style, and a location on the side of Paris where Kid 3’s school is. As we searched, we realized we also really wanted to be in a neighborhood where there’s a lot going on. Here are some of the apartments we looked at: |  Lukey |
 We could see the Arch de Triomphe from the window. |  Plaster of Paris |
 This one came with a pretty courtyard. |  Doesn’t this corner beg for a comfy chair with a book and a cup of tea? |
Tycen and Lukey tweaked the search and found us the most beautiful apartment in a really happening neighborhood. It is owned by a charitable foundation as a revenue-generating endeavor. Let’s call it The Society for Feeding Poor Children. Great, we thought! Our rent money is going to a good cause. Of course they’ll accept us as tenants! Why wouldn’t they?
We picked this one:
We picked this one:
Meanwhile, we got a bank account. It wasn’t easy. Bank hurdle number one: before we went to the bank, we learned from Tycen that the bank wanted us to say that we were getting a second residence in France. Why? No idea. We had left the USA to move to France so we had no US residence. The banker, Monsieur Peugot, (not his real name) suggested we get the last relative we had mooched off of (let’s call him Phil) to write a letter saying we lived with him when we were in the USA (which is true, he’s a really nice guy). So Tycen wrote a letter in French that Phil signed that said we live with him, and, as the bank requested, including a copy of his passport and a utility bill in his name, all via email. He complied. (Thanks, Phil!)
Bank hurdle number two? The banque securitée. (I promise not to be one of those hoity-toity writers who uses foreign words when an English one will do, but I’m going to use it here because you know what those two words mean but if I put it in italics you’ll feel like you kinda know what it means but it might be a little different than in English, which is exactly how I felt when I heard about it.) I still don’t know exactly what it means, but we had to put a whole year’s rent in a special account that shows the landlord we can pay our rent. Sometimes they only demand six months, but we had no employment in France so we had to put a year’s worth in banque securitée. Monsieur Peugot promised to get it started.
Bank hurdle number three: if you’ve never heard of the FATCA, you will if you ever enter a French bank. It’s a piece of US legislation that tells foreign banks they have to report Americans’ banking activities to the IRS. It’s a lot of work, so French banks don’t like dealing with Americans. However, with Adrian’s introduction, they took pity on us and accepted our pile of cash. We filled out forms for two and a half hours. We gave them our tax returns, US bank statements, passport and visa info, a pile of cash, and Phil’s packet. It was like getting a mortgage. Monsieur Peugot spoke some English so we had a general idea of what was going on. We were rather vague on several points, and we weren’t always totally sure what we were signing, but Monsieur Peugot seemed like a trustworthy guy so we just went with it. (Did you know you get an automatic line of credit with French bank accounts? You do.) They told us to come back in a week and pick up our ATM cards and checkbook. They said they’d mail our PIN numbers to Phil’s house. So far, so good, right?
We wired enough money into the account to set up the banque securitée. It took a few days for the wire to come through because it was May 1, a holiday in France.
We decided we wanted the happening apartment, but we agreed with Tycen that we should submit our dossier to our top two choices just in case. Our second choice was smaller and more out of the way, but just as beautiful. The dossier consisted of tax returns, bank statements, passport and visa information.
Then we waited. We waited for the wire transfer to happen. We waited for The Society for Feeding Poor Children to approve us. We waited for the the basque securitée to happen.
Tenancy laws in France are notoriously tenant-friendly. Landlords can’t kick people out for non-payment of rent, unless they get lawyers involved. They can’t kick them out in the winter at all. Therefore, landlords really want to be sure the tenants look good.
The Society for Feeding Poor Children sent us a message through Tycen. They remembered that we mentioned to their agent that Kid 3 was going to a private school, and they didn’t think we had enough money to pay rent and tuition. They wanted to see more money. Sam took a screenshot of another bank account and sent them that. Fine, they said.
The Society then let us know they’d like us to sign a six-year lease. We agreed, knowing that you can break a lease with a few months notice.
We waited.
We paced around our Airbnb, sniping at each other and apologizing. We ran out of time in the Airbnb and moved to a second one.
We went to the bank and picked up our ATM cards and checkbook. PIN numbers had never shown up at Phil’s place..
We window-shopped for furniture, thinking of our top two apartments and which furniture would go best in each one.
Then, one day as we walked down a sidewalk, Tycen called to tell us we got our favorite apartment! We danced around and hugged each other. We just needed to wait a few days so the Society manager could get our paperwork together.
We wanted to move in as soon as possible because we have been on the road for a year and wanted to be in our own place, but things just don’t move that fast in France. The Society manager, let’s call her her Madame Lechef, is a stickler for detail and does not take nothing from nobody. Tycen was visibly shaken after a phone call with her. He estimated her height to be six feet four inches. Tycen asked Monsieur Peugot if he could hurry up the banque securitée because the next Monday was another holiday (May 8, VE Day), and we wanted to be in the new apartment before the long weekend. He agreed to try. He told us we could have it on Friday, so we made an appointment with Madame Lechef to come in on Friday to sign papers. She was reluctant, not believing Monsieur Peugot could get everything ready on time.
Friday morning, pumped up, we went to the bank. Monsieur Peugot handed us a letter with the banque securitée information. He congratulated us, and we asked him to send our PIN numbers to our new address, since they never showed up at Phil’s. He agreed.
We met Tycen and Lukey at The Society’s office. The secretary took a file folder at least five inches thick into Madame Lechef’s office, then Madame Lechef herself appeared. She is the perfect Frenchwoman. Tall, slim, impeccably dressed, with tasteful jewelry and stilettoes, simple hair and makeup, great skin, somewhere between the ages of forty and sixty-five. She looked bored. She did not smile. She spoke no English. When they make her biopic, she will be played by Sharon Stone. If Sharon is lucky. Lukey saw that the situation was tense, so he went all out for us and threw himself on the floor at Madame Lechef’s feet, scratching his back on the carpet. It worked--she was charmed and smiled faintly. Thanks, buddy! We went into her office and realized that the five-inch file folder was ours. We gave her our letter from Monsieur Peugot, and a deadly silence fell in the room. It was insufficient. She knew it was not possible to get the banque securitée in such a short time. She did not want a letter, she wanted the actual certificate which is proof of the banque securitée. I considered crying, and Sam looked at his knees. I knew he was praying hard that he didn’t have to take his touchy wife and teenaged son back to the Airbnb for the long weekend. Lukey had unfortunately fallen asleep under a chair and was unavailable to speak up for us. Tycen, in lovely French, pled with her to accept this worthless piece of paper as a token of our dedication and willingness to pay rent. No, she said. It is not enough. Desperate, Tycen asked for permission to call Monsieur Peugot. She shrugged. Tycen explained the situation to Monsieur Peugot, and he agreed to talk to Madame Lechef. She grudgingly accept Tycen’s cell phone and listened to Monsieur Peugot, pursing her lips and hmph-ing. Then they hung up, and she began speaking rapidly in French, riffling through the folder. Tycen muttered, “We’re signing,” and began translating. Sam and I pressed our knees together under the desk and breathed again.
At some point during the signing, a silver fox in a perfectly tailored navy suit came in and shook hands all around. He welcomed us to the apartment. I’m not sure who he was, but everybody else seemed in awe of him. I think his name was on The Society's letterhead.
It was more like buying than renting. Madame Lechef explained the soil conditions, the age of the building, the upkeep and maintenance, the floor plan, the locked closet, the basement storage, the guardienne (sort of a super who cleans the building, takes out the trash, deals with deliverymen, keeps the bogeyman out--a super super). We signed paper after paper, trusting Tycen’s translation. We wrote checks with our new French checkbook, painstakingly spelling out the numbers with Tycen’s help. Lukey slept through that part.
Bank hurdle number two? The banque securitée. (I promise not to be one of those hoity-toity writers who uses foreign words when an English one will do, but I’m going to use it here because you know what those two words mean but if I put it in italics you’ll feel like you kinda know what it means but it might be a little different than in English, which is exactly how I felt when I heard about it.) I still don’t know exactly what it means, but we had to put a whole year’s rent in a special account that shows the landlord we can pay our rent. Sometimes they only demand six months, but we had no employment in France so we had to put a year’s worth in banque securitée. Monsieur Peugot promised to get it started.
Bank hurdle number three: if you’ve never heard of the FATCA, you will if you ever enter a French bank. It’s a piece of US legislation that tells foreign banks they have to report Americans’ banking activities to the IRS. It’s a lot of work, so French banks don’t like dealing with Americans. However, with Adrian’s introduction, they took pity on us and accepted our pile of cash. We filled out forms for two and a half hours. We gave them our tax returns, US bank statements, passport and visa info, a pile of cash, and Phil’s packet. It was like getting a mortgage. Monsieur Peugot spoke some English so we had a general idea of what was going on. We were rather vague on several points, and we weren’t always totally sure what we were signing, but Monsieur Peugot seemed like a trustworthy guy so we just went with it. (Did you know you get an automatic line of credit with French bank accounts? You do.) They told us to come back in a week and pick up our ATM cards and checkbook. They said they’d mail our PIN numbers to Phil’s house. So far, so good, right?
We wired enough money into the account to set up the banque securitée. It took a few days for the wire to come through because it was May 1, a holiday in France.
We decided we wanted the happening apartment, but we agreed with Tycen that we should submit our dossier to our top two choices just in case. Our second choice was smaller and more out of the way, but just as beautiful. The dossier consisted of tax returns, bank statements, passport and visa information.
Then we waited. We waited for the wire transfer to happen. We waited for The Society for Feeding Poor Children to approve us. We waited for the the basque securitée to happen.
Tenancy laws in France are notoriously tenant-friendly. Landlords can’t kick people out for non-payment of rent, unless they get lawyers involved. They can’t kick them out in the winter at all. Therefore, landlords really want to be sure the tenants look good.
The Society for Feeding Poor Children sent us a message through Tycen. They remembered that we mentioned to their agent that Kid 3 was going to a private school, and they didn’t think we had enough money to pay rent and tuition. They wanted to see more money. Sam took a screenshot of another bank account and sent them that. Fine, they said.
The Society then let us know they’d like us to sign a six-year lease. We agreed, knowing that you can break a lease with a few months notice.
We waited.
We paced around our Airbnb, sniping at each other and apologizing. We ran out of time in the Airbnb and moved to a second one.
We went to the bank and picked up our ATM cards and checkbook. PIN numbers had never shown up at Phil’s place..
We window-shopped for furniture, thinking of our top two apartments and which furniture would go best in each one.
Then, one day as we walked down a sidewalk, Tycen called to tell us we got our favorite apartment! We danced around and hugged each other. We just needed to wait a few days so the Society manager could get our paperwork together.
We wanted to move in as soon as possible because we have been on the road for a year and wanted to be in our own place, but things just don’t move that fast in France. The Society manager, let’s call her her Madame Lechef, is a stickler for detail and does not take nothing from nobody. Tycen was visibly shaken after a phone call with her. He estimated her height to be six feet four inches. Tycen asked Monsieur Peugot if he could hurry up the banque securitée because the next Monday was another holiday (May 8, VE Day), and we wanted to be in the new apartment before the long weekend. He agreed to try. He told us we could have it on Friday, so we made an appointment with Madame Lechef to come in on Friday to sign papers. She was reluctant, not believing Monsieur Peugot could get everything ready on time.
Friday morning, pumped up, we went to the bank. Monsieur Peugot handed us a letter with the banque securitée information. He congratulated us, and we asked him to send our PIN numbers to our new address, since they never showed up at Phil’s. He agreed.
We met Tycen and Lukey at The Society’s office. The secretary took a file folder at least five inches thick into Madame Lechef’s office, then Madame Lechef herself appeared. She is the perfect Frenchwoman. Tall, slim, impeccably dressed, with tasteful jewelry and stilettoes, simple hair and makeup, great skin, somewhere between the ages of forty and sixty-five. She looked bored. She did not smile. She spoke no English. When they make her biopic, she will be played by Sharon Stone. If Sharon is lucky. Lukey saw that the situation was tense, so he went all out for us and threw himself on the floor at Madame Lechef’s feet, scratching his back on the carpet. It worked--she was charmed and smiled faintly. Thanks, buddy! We went into her office and realized that the five-inch file folder was ours. We gave her our letter from Monsieur Peugot, and a deadly silence fell in the room. It was insufficient. She knew it was not possible to get the banque securitée in such a short time. She did not want a letter, she wanted the actual certificate which is proof of the banque securitée. I considered crying, and Sam looked at his knees. I knew he was praying hard that he didn’t have to take his touchy wife and teenaged son back to the Airbnb for the long weekend. Lukey had unfortunately fallen asleep under a chair and was unavailable to speak up for us. Tycen, in lovely French, pled with her to accept this worthless piece of paper as a token of our dedication and willingness to pay rent. No, she said. It is not enough. Desperate, Tycen asked for permission to call Monsieur Peugot. She shrugged. Tycen explained the situation to Monsieur Peugot, and he agreed to talk to Madame Lechef. She grudgingly accept Tycen’s cell phone and listened to Monsieur Peugot, pursing her lips and hmph-ing. Then they hung up, and she began speaking rapidly in French, riffling through the folder. Tycen muttered, “We’re signing,” and began translating. Sam and I pressed our knees together under the desk and breathed again.
At some point during the signing, a silver fox in a perfectly tailored navy suit came in and shook hands all around. He welcomed us to the apartment. I’m not sure who he was, but everybody else seemed in awe of him. I think his name was on The Society's letterhead.
It was more like buying than renting. Madame Lechef explained the soil conditions, the age of the building, the upkeep and maintenance, the floor plan, the locked closet, the basement storage, the guardienne (sort of a super who cleans the building, takes out the trash, deals with deliverymen, keeps the bogeyman out--a super super). We signed paper after paper, trusting Tycen’s translation. We wrote checks with our new French checkbook, painstakingly spelling out the numbers with Tycen’s help. Lukey slept through that part.
| Finally we were done, and went to the apartment for the walk-through. A man was there, going through the apartment and detailing every condition. When you move out of a French apartment, you have to put it back in exactly the condition you found it. You may paint, but when you leave you must paint it the original color again. You may replace the electric cooktop with a gas one, but you must put back the electric one when you leave and take your gas one with you. Therefore, the condition must be well-documented when you move in. We left him there checking and went out to lunch. I was so happy I ate carbs. After lunch, we got the keys. For the first time in a year, we had our own place. We bought some futons and a hair dryer and set up housekeeping. The next day, Sam and I went grocery shopping nearby and ran into Monsieur Peugot, with his wife and child! He said he was raised in the neighborhood and still lives close by. He shook Sam’s hand and told us he was happy for us. We thanked him for talking to Madame Lechef, and all agreed that we are terrified of her. It wasn’t just us! |  Working lunch with Lukey |
A week later, I received a fat packet in the mail from The Society for Feeding Poor Children. It was a printout of everything that Madame Lechef had read aloud to us. It looks very official. I can read some of the words.
We are completely enthralled by our new neighborhood! We had originally looked nearer to Kid 3’s school, where there are a lot of expats, but this place is closer to the center of town and most people are French, so there is no cushy hand-holding for us Americans. Shopkeepers don’t speak French, so we have to. There are no tourists. People really do buy baguettes at the bakery and walk home with the loaves under their arms, sometimes smoking and wearing a beret. There is a market street where produce vendors in aprons yell out their daily offerings, there is a cheese shop and two chocolate shops, and cafes where you can nurse a single tiny cup of coffee for hours. There is an oboe workshop and some art studios in the alley. There are skinned rabbits in the butcher shops. Good wine is four Euros a bottle.
We are completely enthralled by our new neighborhood! We had originally looked nearer to Kid 3’s school, where there are a lot of expats, but this place is closer to the center of town and most people are French, so there is no cushy hand-holding for us Americans. Shopkeepers don’t speak French, so we have to. There are no tourists. People really do buy baguettes at the bakery and walk home with the loaves under their arms, sometimes smoking and wearing a beret. There is a market street where produce vendors in aprons yell out their daily offerings, there is a cheese shop and two chocolate shops, and cafes where you can nurse a single tiny cup of coffee for hours. There is an oboe workshop and some art studios in the alley. There are skinned rabbits in the butcher shops. Good wine is four Euros a bottle.
So far, life in France is good. But we still haven't received our PIN numbers.
