Furnished vs Unfurnished Rental in France: 2026 Rules

In France, renting furnished (meublé) or unfurnished (vide, also written non meublé) is a choice between two legal regimes, not only between a home with or without a bed. A furnished lease runs one year, takes a deposit of up to two months’ rent and lets you leave with one month’s notice. An unfurnished lease runs three years, takes one month of deposit and asks you for three months’ notice unless a listed case applies. This guide covers what makes a home legally furnished, the length and renewal of each lease, notice on both sides, the deposit, charges, rent control, the bail mobilité as a third contract, insurance, taxes and how to choose, as the official pages stood on October 13, 2026. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Rules change, and your situation may differ: always verify current requirements with the relevant French authorities or a licensed professional.

Furnished vs Unfurnished: The Legal Differences Side by Side

Five rules change with the type of lease: its length, the deposit, the way charges are paid, your notice and the landlord’s notice. The table follows the comparison published by service-public, the French administration’s official site, which adds the bail mobilité (mobility lease).

	Furnished (meublé)	Unfurnished (vide)	Bail mobilité
Minimum length	1 year, or 9 months for a student	3 years, or 6 when the landlord is a legal entity	1 to 10 months
Renewal	Automatic for the one-year lease, none for the student lease	Possible	None beyond 10 months
Who can be the tenant	Anyone, for a main residence	Anyone	A tenant in training, higher education, an apprenticeship, an internship, civic service, a job transfer or a temporary assignment
Security deposit	2 months of rent excluding charges at most	1 month of rent excluding charges at most	Forbidden
Charges	Provisions adjusted each year, or a flat amount	Provisions adjusted each year	Flat amount
Yearly rent revision	Only if a clause of the lease provides for it	Only if a clause of the lease provides for it	Forbidden
Your notice	At any time, 1 month	At any time, 3 months (1 month in listed cases)	At any time, 1 month
Landlord’s notice	At the end of the lease, for an authorized reason, at least 3 months ahead	At the end of the lease, for an authorized reason, at least 6 months ahead	The lease ends on its date, with no reason or notice to give

Source: Service-public, the three types of residential lease compared (verified on March 6, 2026).

Everything the two leases share (the written contract, the forbidden clauses, the annexes, the yearly revision capped by the IRL index) is in our guide to how a French lease works, clause by clause.

What Makes a Home Legally Furnished?

A home is furnished in the legal sense when it contains a minimum list of furniture and equipment, set by a decree of July 31, 2015. The label in the listing does not decide it: service-public’s page on the furnished home, verified on March 6, 2026, gives the list for a home rented as the tenant’s main residence, bail mobilité included.

The required items are:

bedding, with a duvet or a blanket;
shutters or curtains in the bedrooms;
a cooktop;
an oven or a microwave oven;
a refrigerator, and a freezer or a freezer compartment that reaches -6 °C or colder;
enough dishes for the occupants to eat their meals;
kitchen utensils;
a table and seats;
storage shelves;
light fittings;
cleaning equipment suited to the home (the page’s examples: a vacuum cleaner for carpet, a broom and a mop for tiles).

The list names no washing machine, no television, no sofa and no internet connection, so a home can be legally furnished without them.

The furniture inventory (inventaire et état détaillé du mobilier) is drawn up when the keys are handed over and again when they are returned, signed by both sides and attached to the lease. Treat it with the same care as a move-in inspection that protects your deposit.

If the list is not respected, the same page states that either party can go to the juge des contentieux de la protection (the judge for tenancy disputes), who may reclassify the contract as an unfurnished lease.

What Does Unfurnished Mean in France?

An unfurnished home is one rented without that list of furniture, and the official pages read for this guide give no list of what it must contain instead.

So do not assume that an unfurnished apartment comes with the appliances you would expect in the United States: ask the landlord or the agency in writing what stays in the kitchen. If you plan to fill an empty home with your own things, compare the cost of buying in France with shipping your belongings from the US.

How Long Does Each Lease Last, and Does It Renew?

A furnished lease lasts one year, or nine months when the home is rented to a student. An unfurnished lease lasts at least three years when the landlord is an individual and six years when the landlord is a legal entity (personne morale), such as a company. These durations are on service-public’s page on drafting the lease, verified on October 1, 2026.

Renewal differs too:

Furnished, one year. The lease renews automatically at its term if neither party gives notice.
Furnished, nine months for a student. Renewal is not possible. The lease ends at its term without either party giving notice, and staying takes a new lease.
Unfurnished. If neither party gives notice, the lease is either renewed on the landlord’s proposal or continued automatically.

One exception: a landlord who is an individual may sign an unfurnished lease of less than three years, but at least one year, when a family or professional reason to take the home back is written in it. Unless the landlord confirms it by registered letter at least two months before the end, the lease runs on to three years.

These lengths bind the landlord, not you: on both leases you can leave at any time by giving notice. Both are leases for a main residence, which service-public defines as a home occupied at least eight months a year. An American on a student long-stay visa can be offered either furnished lease: the nine-month one ends by itself, the one-year one renews.

How Much Notice Do You Give to Leave?

One month on a furnished lease, with no reason to give, and that includes the nine-month student lease. Three months on an unfurnished lease, reduced to one month in the cases the law lists, if you state the case in your letter and attach proof.

Service-public’s page on the tenant’s notice, verified on April 16, 2026, lists them:

Your situation (unfurnished lease)	Notice	Condition on the official page
No particular reason	3 months
Home in a zone tendue (tight housing zone)	1 month	The letter gives the address and claims the reduced notice
Social housing allocated to you	1 month
You receive the RSA or the AAH benefit	1 month
State of health that the home no longer suits	1 month	Proof such as a medical certificate
Violence within the couple, or against a child living with you	1 month	Protection order or criminal conviction less than 6 months old
First job	1 month
Job transfer, as an employee or a civil servant	1 month	A self-employed person keeps 3 months
Loss of a job, agreed termination or end of a fixed-term contract	1 month	The loss comes before the notice and is close to it
New job after losing one during the same lease	1 month	Not if you were unemployed when you signed

Source: Service-public, notice given by the tenant.

The first reduced case changes the comparison. In a zone tendue, which includes Paris, Lyon and Nice, an unfurnished lease can be left with the same one month’s notice as a furnished one. Check the commune in the official zone tendue simulator. Without the case stated and the proof attached, the notice stays at three months.

The form is the same for both leases: a registered letter with return receipt, an act served by a commissaire de justice (the officer formerly called huissier), or a letter handed over against a signed receipt. A plain email is not valid. The notice starts on the day the landlord receives the letter: see how French registered mail works.

Rent and charges are due for the whole notice, unless a new tenant moves in earlier under a new lease. The steps that follow are in our guide to moving out of a French apartment.

When Can the Landlord End the Lease?

Only for the end date of the lease, and only for one of three reasons: to sell the home, to take it back to live in it or to house a relative, or for a legitimate and serious reason such as a tenant’s fault. The notice must reach you at least three months before the end of a furnished lease and at least six months before the end of an unfurnished one.

	Furnished	Unfurnished
When the landlord’s letter must reach you	At least 3 months before the end of the lease	At least 6 months before the end of the lease
Permitted reasons	Sale, taking the home back, legitimate and serious reason	Sale, taking the home back, legitimate and serious reason
Your right to buy first if the home is sold	None	Yes, a right of pre-emption with priority over other buyers

Source: Service-public, notice given by the landlord (verified on June 1, 2026).

The right of pre-emption is the one protection that exists only on an unfurnished lease. When the landlord gives notice in order to sell, the letter states the price and the conditions, and you have the first two months of the notice to answer. The tenant of a furnished home has no such right.

On both leases, a notice that reaches you late is not valid, and a tenant over 65 whose income is under a ceiling is protected against a notice for sale or for taking the home back, subject to conditions set out on the page.

The Security Deposit: Two Months Against One

The security deposit (dépôt de garantie) cannot exceed two months of rent excluding charges on a furnished lease and one month on an unfurnished lease. On a bail mobilité the landlord may not ask for one at all. These caps are on service-public’s page on the deposit, verified on June 9, 2026.

The other deposit rules do not depend on the furniture:

it cannot be raised during the lease or at renewal;
it is returned within one month of the keys if the move-out inspection matches the move-in one, within two months if it does not;
a late refund is increased by 10 percent of the monthly rent excluding charges for each month of delay begun;
no deposit may be asked when the rent is paid a quarter in advance.

The practical difference is the cash to gather before the keys: on a furnished home you can be asked for one more month of rent, on top of the first rent and any agency fee, which our budget for a move to France works through. The deposit does not replace a guarantor, so prepare your options without a French guarantor for either lease.

Charges and Rent Revision: A Flat Amount or Yearly Adjustment

On an unfurnished lease, charges are paid as monthly provisions that the landlord adjusts against the real expenses at least once a year. On a furnished lease, the contract says which system applies: the same provisions, or a flat amount (forfait) paid with the rent.

Service-public’s page on rental charges, verified on April 15, 2025, sets the rules of the forfait. Its amount is written in the lease, must not be out of proportion with the charges the previous tenant paid, and can be revised once a year on the same terms as the rent. It cannot give rise to a top-up or a later adjustment: your monthly cost is known in advance, where provisions can end in a top-up or a refund.

The yearly rent revision does not separate the two leases. On both, the rent can be revised once a year only if a clause of the lease provides for it, and the increase is capped by the change of the IRL index over one year.

Is Furnished Rent Higher? What the Official Figures Say

No official page read for this guide publishes a national figure for the gap between furnished and unfurnished rents, and this guide gives none of its own. What official sources do provide is local: separate reference rents where rent control applies, and the public rent observatories.

Where rent control caps the level of rent. In a short list of territories (Paris, Lille with Hellemmes and Lomme, Lyon and Villeurbanne, Montpellier, Bordeaux, the Plaine Commune and Est Ensemble territories, the Pays Basque agglomeration and part of Grenoble-Alpes Métropole), the prefect sets each year, by order, a reference rent per square meter of habitable surface, an increased reference rent 20 percent above it and a reduced reference rent 30 percent below it. According to ANIL, the national housing information agency (page up to date on July 23, 2026), the reference rents for furnished homes are obtained by adding a per-square-meter increase (majoration unitaire par mètre carré) to those amounts, and that increase is determined from the gaps the local rent observatory measures between homes rented unfurnished and homes rented furnished.

In those territories, then, the legal ceiling for a furnished home is higher than for the same home rented empty, by an amount fixed locally each year. Service-public’s page on rent control, verified on August 1, 2026, confirms that the reference rents vary with the type of rental (unfurnished or furnished), the number of rooms and the period of construction, and that the base rent of your lease cannot exceed the increased reference rent in force when you sign. Start with the official simulator that tells you whether a commune is covered, which links to the local tools that give the amounts. For the capital, see how rent control plays out in Paris.

This cap is an experiment that the law extended until November 25, 2026, and the official pages read on October 13, 2026 do not say what applies afterwards.

Everywhere else. The landlord sets the first rent freely, within the zone tendue rule that limits increases between two tenants. To see what homes actually rent for, the ministry’s page on rent control points to the network of local rent observatories. Its site counts 37 observatories covering 52 percent of the French private rental stock and more than 3,000 communes, and publishes rents excluding charges, per square meter or per month, filtered by type of home, number of rooms and period of construction. The homes observed are main residences, furnished or not, so read what a figure covers: the medians we quote for renting in Toulouse, for example, describe unfurnished rentals.

The Bail Mobilité: A Third Option for Stays of 1 to 10 Months

The bail mobilité is a lease for a furnished home of 1 to 10 months, with no deposit, that can be neither renewed nor continued. It is open only to a tenant in professional training, higher education, an apprenticeship, an internship, civic service, a job transfer or a temporary work assignment, who proves it with a document.

Service-public’s page on the bail mobilité gives the rest: charges are a flat amount, the rent cannot be revised during the lease, you can leave with one month’s notice, and the landlord has no notice to give at the end. If you and the landlord sign again for the same home afterwards, the new contract must be an ordinary residential lease.

If you are in none of the listed situations, this contract is closed to you. Our guide to who can sign a bail mobilité goes through each situation and the alternatives.

Renter’s Insurance: The Same Obligation on Both Leases

Whether the home is furnished, unfurnished or rented on a bail mobilité, you must insure it against rental risks (risques locatifs): damage to the home caused by fire, explosion or water.

Service-public’s page on the tenant’s insurance, verified on April 16, 2025, states that you hand the certificate (attestation) to the landlord or the agency when you receive the keys, then once a year on request. If you are not insured, the landlord can either seek the termination of the lease or, after a registered letter that leaves you one month, take out a policy on your behalf and bill you the premium with a surcharge of up to 10 percent.

The compulsory cover is for damage to the home. Covering your own belongings, which in an unfurnished home include all the furniture, is the optional multi-risk cover the same page describes. Our guide to renter’s insurance in France explains how to get the certificate quickly.

Which Taxes Fall on the Tenant?

A tenant whose rental is a main residence pays no taxe d’habitation: it was abolished on main residences on January 1, 2023. What remains is the tax on second homes, and the household waste tax recovered through the charges.

Taxe d’habitation on second homes. Service-public’s page on this tax, verified on August 24, 2026, defines a second home as a furnished home, distinct from your main residence, that you can occupy at any time, and states that the tax is owed whether you are the owner, a tenant or a free occupant, on the basis of your situation on January 1.
Household waste tax (taxe d’enlèvement des ordures ménagères). Service-public’s page on charges lists it among the expenses that stay with the tenant, for unfurnished and furnished homes alike.

The landlord’s own taxes are another matter, covered in what French property costs an American each year.

How to Choose Depending on How Long You Stay

The furnished lease is built for a stay you cannot date, the unfurnished lease for a home you intend to keep.

Your stay	The contract the rules point to	Why
1 to 10 months, in a listed situation (studies, internship, training, transfer, assignment)	Bail mobilité	No deposit, flat charges, 1 month’s notice, ends on its date
An academic year, as a student	Furnished, 9 months	Ends by itself with no notice from either side; 1 month’s notice if you leave earlier
About a year, or a length you cannot know yet	Furnished, 1 year	1 month’s notice at any time, automatic renewal if you stay
Several years	Unfurnished	3-year term, 6 months’ warning from the landlord, deposit of 1 month, right to buy first if the home is sold

Source: Service-public, the three types of residential lease compared.

Two points refine the table. In a zone tendue, the unfurnished lease loses its main drawback, since your notice drops to one month. And a furnished lease is not a short lease: it renews every year, and the landlord can end it only at its term.

If you are still in temporary housing, the seven-day plan from an Airbnb to a signed lease and our step-by-step playbook for renting in France as an American cover the search and the application file.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Trusting the word meublé in a listing. The legal list decides, not the label. Check each item during the viewing.

Paying two months of deposit on an unfurnished home. The cap is one month of rent excluding charges.

Giving three months’ notice in a zone tendue. One month is available on an unfurnished lease there, if your letter claims it.

Comparing a rent with the wrong reference. Where rent control applies, furnished and unfurnished homes have separate reference rents.

Practical Checklist

Check the commune in the zone tendue simulator and in the rent control simulator
For a furnished home, tick the legal list of furniture and equipment during the viewing
For an unfurnished home, ask in writing what stays in the kitchen
Read the lease for its type, its length, the deposit and the way charges are paid (provisions or forfait)
Budget the deposit: up to two months of rent for furnished, one for unfurnished, none for a bail mobilité
Take out renter’s insurance and have the certificate ready for the key handover
Sign the move-in inspection and, for a furnished home, the furniture inventory, with photos
Open the electricity contract in your name if the lease leaves it to you

When to Get Help

For a legal question on the lease in front of you, the ADIL (agence départementale d’information sur le logement) of your département gives free and neutral advice, and ANIL lists the local agencies.

When the questions have to be put to a landlord or an agency in French (what is in the inventory, what stays in the kitchen, whether charges are a forfait), a dedicated assistant can ask them for you, get the answers in writing before you sign, and send your notice by registered letter when you leave.

FAQ

Can I rent an unfurnished apartment in France as an American?

Yes. The official comparison of lease types sets no condition on the tenant of an unfurnished or a furnished home, and none of nationality. A request for money before any lease is signed is one of the red flags of a rental scam.

Does an unfurnished apartment in France come with a kitchen?

The official pages do not say: they list what a furnished home must contain and set no equivalent list for an unfurnished one. Ask the landlord in writing which appliances stay.

Are the rules for unfurnished apartments different in Paris?

The lease rules are national: three years, one month of deposit, three months’ notice. Two things change in Paris. The city is a zone tendue, so your notice on an unfurnished lease is one month, and it is on the list of rent-controlled territories, where service-public states that the reference rents vary with the type of rental, the number of rooms and the period of construction.

Can I get housing aid on a furnished lease?

ANIL’s comparison of furnished contracts answers yes for the ordinary furnished lease, and yes for a bail mobilité if the home is your main residence. The conditions are in our guide to how CAF housing benefits work for Americans, and a lease signed before you leave the US can also serve as proof of accommodation for a long-stay visa.

Can a furnished lease in France be shorter than one year?

In two cases only, on the official pages: the nine-month lease for a student, and the bail mobilité of 1 to 10 months for a tenant in a listed situation. Otherwise a furnished lease for a main residence runs one year, and you remain free to leave earlier with one month’s notice.

Conclusion

Furnished or unfurnished is first a question of time. One year, one month’s notice and up to two months of deposit on one side. Three years, three months’ notice (one in a zone tendue and in the listed cases) and one month of deposit on the other. The bail mobilité sits beside them for the tenants the law lists.

On the rent itself, rely on the official figures for your address: the reference rents where rent control applies, set separately for furnished homes, and the local rent observatory elsewhere.

Furnished vs Unfurnished Rental in France for Americans: What the Law Changes