Fabienne Atkin outlines the procedure for buying a propertyrty within a co-ownership in France, including ski apartments
A co-ownership (copropriété) is a legal structure applicable to all properties in France that have shared facilities. The most common type is an apartment complex, although a coownership can also consist of individual villas within a domain such as a golf resort or a holiday village.
A copropriété comprises the private areas (les parties privatives), also known as private lots, which are individually owned by each owner, alongside the communal areas (les parties communes), which are jointly owned by the co-owners.
With ownership of each private lot comes parts of ownership of the communal areas (tantièmes or fractions), which will be used to determine the co-owners’ respective share of the coownership charges and their contribution to the works to the communal areas that are approved by the property’s group of co-owners.
The distinction between the private and communal areas can sometimes be blurred – for instance, where a co-owner has an exclusive right to use a communal area such as a ski locker within a communal room or a terrace.
However, the division deed (état descriptif de division) will clarify exactly what constitutes the privately owned lots and what is included in the communal areas. It will also allocate a number to each of the private lots and confirm their corresponding fractions of ownership. By contrast, the communal areas will not be numbered.
DIVISION DEED
The division deed is a compulsory document prepared by the notaire or a land surveyor (géomètre) when the co-ownership is created and will often – albeit not automatically – be incorporated into the co-ownership rules (règlement de copropriété), which set out the rights and obligations of each owner in relation to the use of the complex as a whole and of their specific private lots.
The co-ownership rules and division deed can subsequently be modified, for various reasons, such as a change of use of a lot or a renumbering/ re-fractioning due to a division or fusion of lots.
The co-ownership rules and division deed will also provide details of the initial managing agent (the syndic) who is usually the developer until a new managing agent is elected by the co-owners at their first meeting. The managing agent is responsible for the coownership’s administration.
The legal process of buying and selling a property within a co-ownership remains a two-stage process, with the signature of a preliminary contract (compromis de vente or promesse de vente) followed by the signature of the final sale and purchase deed (acte de vente) a few weeks or months later, once all the pre-completion searches have taken place.
The intervention of a notaire remains compulsory when it comes to selling/buying a coownership pr
