Obligations Related to The Real Estate Sale

The seller of a building (apartment, house, land) has the obligation to inform his buyer as soon as the preliminary contract is signed. It is important to be advised before selling a property.

What information does the seller have to provide?

In general, he must send him all the information he has about the building. Some of this information is provided by law. Courts severely punish any failure by the seller to this general obligation.

If it hides important information, the buyer can get a price reduction or cancellation of the sale in the most serious cases. The seller is then condemned to the reimbursement of the price and sometimes the payment of compensation to the buyer who has suffered damage (moving expenses, research of another dwelling). It is therefore very important to respect these constraints. But some companies claim even after these damages we buy ugly houses. However, the list of information that the seller must provide to the buyer is continually growing.

On the legal level:

The seller must, for example, inform the buyer of the existence of easements (crossing, sight, drainage), mortgages or privileges (taken in favor of a bank to guarantee credit) or other charges (preference pact or advertising display contract).

At the technical level:

1) The timeshare salesperson, for example, the obligation to provide the exact area of housing. The maintenance booklet, which is mandatory for condominiums , must be communicated to the future purchaser (unless he is already the owner of at least one lot in the same co-ownership), just like the co-ownership by-law, the descriptive statement division or the current expenses of the provisional budget and the charges outside the estimated budget, the amounts remaining due to the syndicate of co-owners, etc. The seller must also give the buyer a significant number of diagnoses, to inform it, in particular, about the possible presence of termites, lead or even asbestos, of Radon, on the energy performance, the state of the internal electricity and gas installation, the environmental data and natural hazards, technological mining and seismic.

2) The seller of building land, on which the purchaser has indicated his intention to build a residential building or a mixed use of housing and professional, must specify whether a demarcation has been made and inform on the rules of planning applicable to the land and construction possibilities. In addition, where the building lot is a lot of subdivision, is the result of a division within a planning zone agreed by the public or private person in charge of the development or comes from a consolidation by an urban land association, the description of the land description resulting from the demarcation is recorded in the promise or the contract.

3) Finally, sales of land that have become constructible by private individuals(individuals or companies subject to the personal capital gains tax regime) as part of their private wealth may be subject to a so-called "local" flat tax if the municipal council (or the competent deliberative organ) of the commune of situation of the ground took a deliberation in this direction. In this case, the tax payer will be the seller. The tax will be equal to 10% of 2/3 of the sale price of the land and will be paid by the notary on behalf of the seller during the land advertisement of the deed of sale.