French property terms in plain English

The French words you will meet when buying a house, and the labels used in our reports. On other pages, a word with a dotted underline opens its explanation.

AU zone: “À urbaniser”: land in a PLU set aside for future building, such as a housing estate or a business area.
Bocage: Countryside of small fields enclosed by hedges and trees, typical of western France.
Bourg: The main village of a commune, where the mairie and the church usually are.
Buildable sector: Land in a carte communale where new buildings may be put up, usually around the village.
Cadastral reference: The identifier of a parcel in the cadastre, the national land register: a section of one or two letters and a number, such as AB 123.
Carrez measure: A legal floor-area measurement required when selling a home in a shared building (copropriété), including a house in one. For a detached house it is not required, though adverts sometimes quote it.
Carte communale: A simpler local plan used by many small communes. It marks the sectors open to new building and the sectors that are not; national rules cover the rest.
Certificat d’urbanisme: A written answer from the mairie on the planning rules for a parcel. The “opérationnel” version says whether a described project is feasible and fixes the rules that apply to it for eighteen months. It is not planning permission.
Change of destination: Changement de destination: changing what a building is used for, such as turning a barn into a house. It needs a planning declaration or permit.
Classified installation (ICPE): A farm or industrial site registered because it could cause pollution or nuisance, such as a large livestock unit, a quarry or a grain store.
Code de l’urbanisme: The French planning code: the national law on planning and building that local plans apply.
Communauté de communes: A grouping of neighbouring communes that share services. It often holds the planning powers and prepares the local plan.
Commune: The smallest unit of French local government, with its own mayor and mairie. A rural commune is often a village and the hamlets around it.
Commune nouvelle: A commune formed by merging older communes. The former communes often keep their own local plans for a time.
Compromis de vente: The first binding contract between buyer and seller, usually signed a few months before the final deed. The buyer can withdraw within ten days of receiving the signed contract.
DPE (energy certificate): Diagnostic de performance énergétique: the energy certificate that comes with almost every sale of a home. It grades a home from A (best) to G for energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, with an estimated running cost.
DVF (sold-price register): Demandes de valeurs foncières: the government’s public register of property sales, with the price, date, floor area and plot size of each. It says nothing about condition.
Energy audit: A fuller study than the DPE, with a costed programme of works. In mainland France the seller of a house rated G, F or, since 2025, E provides one from the first visit.
État des risques: The official risk statement attached to a sale wherever the address lies in a mapped risk, earthquake or radon zone, which covers most of France. It lists the recorded natural, mining and industrial risks for the address, the radon category and past disaster declarations.
Fosse septique: A septic tank. “Fosse non conforme” means the installation has been graded non-compliant by the SPANC.
Géorisques: The government website that maps natural and industrial risks by address.
Gîte: A holiday let, often in a converted outbuilding.
Lieu-dit: A named place in the countryside, often a hamlet or a single farm. Addresses use it instead of a street, and several houses can share the name.
Lotissement: A housing estate: land divided into building plots, usually under a single permit.
Mairie: The town hall of the commune. Planning applications go to the mairie, and it can answer questions about the local plan.
Mandate: Mandat: the agency’s contract with the seller to sell the house. Its date shows how long the agency has had the house on its books.
Non-buildable sector: Land in a carte communale where new building is ruled out, with exceptions set by law: work on existing buildings, annexes near them, and some farm and public buildings.
Notaire: The public official who handles every French property sale. The notaire checks the title, draws up the contracts and the deed, collects the taxes and registers the sale. Their fees are set by law.
Parcel: A plot of land in the cadastre. A house and its land are often several parcels, so the parcel list is the surest description of what is being sold.
PLU and PLUi: Plan local d’urbanisme: the local plan. It divides the commune into zones and sets what may be built in each. A PLUi is one plan shared by several communes.
Radon category: Radon is a natural radioactive gas from the ground. France places every commune in one of three categories by the radon potential of its rock; category 3 is the highest. The category describes the ground, not a particular house.
Risk prevention plan (PPR): Plan de prévention des risques: a state plan for a known risk such as flooding or ground movement, with building rules in the zones it maps. Where no plan is recorded, a risk may still exist without having been mapped.
Servitude: A legal restriction on land. Servitudes d’utilité publique serve a public purpose, such as protecting the surroundings of a listed monument, a power line or a pipeline.
SPANC: Service public d’assainissement non collectif: the local public service that inspects private drainage such as septic tanks. A seller provides its inspection report, less than three years old, with the sale.
Taxe foncière: The annual property tax, paid by whoever owns the house on 1 January.
CONSTRAINT: A report label: something is recorded that you plan and budget around.
NOTHING RECORDED: A report label: the registers checked hold nothing on this point. It describes the records, which can be incomplete, not the house.
RESOLVE FIRST: A report label: a question to have answered before making an offer.
UNKNOWN: A report label: the records cannot settle the point, and the report names who can.