Dear all, we have recently agreed to rent a lovely house near Messery having failed to find anywhere we could afford that was big enough in and around Geneva. However, having paid the deposit for the house we have been told that because my husband has a 1 year (rolling) contract the insurance company requires us to cough up the entire year's rent upfront to sit in a french bank account or we will lose the house. We have said that we might be able to get a guarantor here in England but that's not acceptable as they require the whole of the year's rent in the account. Does anyone else have any experience of this or of borrowing a very large amount of money from a french bank? AGH!!!!!! It was all going so well up to now!
Any information very gratefully received.

This sounds like a con - would be worth asking around a few real estate places to see if this is common practice. Personally, I'd be demanding my deposit back (after checking other real estate agents!), as this "requirement" was not mentioned in the initial agreement.

I have never heard of anything like that before. Demanding one year worth of rent in advance seems outrageous....

Hi,

French law only allows a 1 month deposit. But I think that asking for a guarantor is quite a common practise. I had my employer to sign a guarantee as well when we arrived.

Patrick