the seller and the real estate agency condemned

VSSome courts have already ruled that selling housing while concealing the existence of annoying neighbors constitutes deception – “fraud”. The same is true of concealing the non-payment of the tenant occupying the accommodation, as the following case shows.

In 2016, Mr. and Mme X decide to make a rental investment, thanks to the purchase of an occupied apartment: they rely on the payment of rents to repay the maturities of their loan. They acquire one, offered to them by the Arc Real Estate Agency, for the sum of 100,000 euros. During the promise to sell, the 1er March, as when the authentic deed was signed on June 30, the owner, Mr.me Y, tell them not to have “No ongoing dispute with the tenant”.

But, on July 5, 2016, the X noticed, on reading the account statement that their agency address, that the tenant has stopped paying his rents since May; they also learn that he has just lost his job. They initiate a procedure to terminate the lease which costs them 1,800 euros (bailiff’s fees), while they suffer a loss of earnings of some 6,000 euros.

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X assigns Mme Y and the Agence immobilière de l’Arc, whom they accuse of having concealed the tenant’s default from them, while his solvency was for them a determining factor. The owner replies that she was not aware of anything since it is the agency that took care of the rental. As for the latter, she maintains that her sales mandate ended during the promise to sell, in March 2016, one month before the first payment incident.

Loss amounted to 10,000 euros

The April 8, 2021, the court of appeal d’Aix-en-Provence considers that the owner “Could not ignore” the default of her tenant, since she “Received monthly rents”, at the same time as she received a “Management report”.

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As for the agency, it cannot claim to have been discharged of its obligations after the “Unilateral promise” of sale, this constituting a “Preparatory act” for final sale. So she had to “Inform buyers (…) of the tenant’s situation ”. For the yard, saleswoman and agency have “Voluntarily concealed from buyers a prejudicial situation of which knowledge would have them (…) led to renounce “ to their purchase, which constitutes a fraud.

The magistrates estimate that the damage suffered by the X “Is analyzed in the loss of chance to give up [l’achat] or acquire at a lower price ”. They put it at… 10,000 euros: much less than the price of the apartment, but a little more than the addition of the bailiff’s fees and the rental debt. Condemned to pay this sum, saleswoman and agency will know that they must no longer cheat with buyers: “The pre-contractual information obligation must be complete”, as indicated the Pdpavocat firm, who reported the shutdown.