I. Legislation and regulation

Parliamentary activity on housing

Several private members’ bills concerning the housing sector were tabled or discussed during the week, according to the review by the JurisHebdo Immobilier newsletter (No. 1067 of 21 September 2026). They include a text tightening the conditions of access to social housing, a proposal to harmonise inspections of non-collective sanitation, a universal guarantee against unpaid rent, a proposal to speed up the eviction of unlawful occupants, a request to apply the reduced 5.5% VAT rate to air-conditioning equipment, and a proposal introducing new-build housing quotas under the SRU law. At this stage these texts remain mere proposals, not yet debated in plenary; they will be followed in future digests.

Council of Ministers of 16 September 2026

The report of the Council of Ministers of 16 September 2026 mentions, under the so-called « casseurs-payeurs » bill (making wrongdoers pay for damage), a new exception to the principle that personal housing benefits cannot be seized, which would allow them to be seized in certain cases. The bill, still before Parliament and whose main purpose lies outside construction law, deserves mention because of its potential impact on the housing finances of the households concerned.

II. Case law

Judicial acceptance: the adversarial principle requires all contractors to be present

Cass. 3e civ., 10 September 2026, appeal No. 24-19.593

The Cour de cassation recalls that judicial acceptance, pronounced under Article 1792-6 of the Civil Code, is necessarily pronounced after adversarial proceedings and cannot therefore be ordered in the absence of the contractors concerned.

Practical scope: the ruling puts an end to practices whereby a project owner seeks judicial acceptance while deliberately leaving out certain contractors held responsible for the defects. All the builders concerned must now be joined for judicial acceptance to be enforceable against them.

Withdrawal of the appeal against a liquidated contractor: the insurer cannot be held liable beyond what has been finally decided

Cass. 3e civ., 3 September 2026, No. 449 FS-B, appeal No. 24-18.678

Project owners had entrusted the extension and raising of their house to three firms, later liquidated, insured with the same ten-year liability insurer. Having obtained an assessment of their losses at first instance, they withdrew their appeal against the builders and pursued only the insurer through the direct action. The Cour de cassation holds that this withdrawal amounts to acceptance of the first-instance judgment and that the insurer may rely on the compensation ceilings thereby irrevocably set, even though the right of direct action against the insurer remains, in principle, independent of the insured’s debt.

Practical scope: a project owner should never withdraw an appeal against a builder, even one in liquidation, without weighing the effect of that decision on the amount recoverable from the insurer. Where the first-instance judgment undervalues the loss, the appeal must be maintained in full; the proof of claim in the insolvency proceedings must also be quantified precisely.

Ten-year warranty: an action attached exclusively to ownership of the works

Cass. 3e civ., 19 February 2026, appeal No. 24-11.092 (decision commented on for the first time this week)

The Cour de cassation states that the ten-year warranty action is attached to ownership of the works and not merely to their enjoyment, so only the owner of record has standing to sue the builders under Articles 1792 et seq. of the Civil Code. A mere occupant or tenant, even if directly exposed to the defects, cannot rely on this action.

Practical scope: practitioners should systematically check the claimant’s status as owner before bringing a ten-year warranty action, particularly where ownership is split, where co-ownership is being wound up or where the works were recently sold.

Commercial lease: a fixed, automatic rent increase clause with no ceiling is deemed unwritten

Cass. 3e civ., 3 September 2026, No. 468 FS-B, appeal No. 25-14.904

A commercial lease clause providing for an automatic, fixed annual increase, with no ceiling and no time limit, does not set the initial price of the lease but organises its review. It must therefore be deemed unwritten, as it breaches the mandatory rules on rent review in Articles L. 145-37 to L. 145-39 of the Commercial Code.

Practical scope: tenants may seek a declaration that such clauses are deemed unwritten and recover increases unduly paid over the last five years. Landlords should audit leases containing unlimited automatic increases, provision for the corresponding retroactive exposure and replace the disputed clauses with capped steps or indexation that complies with the mandatory rules.

Subdivision: the specifications cease to be enforceable against the municipality after transfer and declassification of the common areas

Cass. 3e civ., 3 September 2026, appeal No. 24-16.968

Where a subdivision’s specifications provide for all roads and common areas to be transferred to the municipality, the municipality does not thereby become a co-owner of the subdivision and the stipulations of the specifications cannot be relied on against it. Once these areas have been incorporated into the public domain and then declassified, only the public property regime applies, so the subsequent sale of the property is beyond the lot owners’ control.

Practical scope: lot owners lose their action to annul the sale or to obtain demolition once the transfer, incorporation into the public domain and declassification have been properly completed. The effective remedy is to challenge the declassification before the administrative court within the time limit for litigation, not to sue belatedly before the judicial court; for notaries and buyers, the legal certainty of the transaction depends on checking the complete chain of documents recording transfer, incorporation and declassification.

III. Other points to watch

Specialist commentators returned this week to what Law No. 2026-403 of 26 May 2026 simplifying economic life brings to planning law, in particular on securing building permits: sanctions for abusive challenges under Article L. 600-7 of the Planning Code, and tighter standing rules for third-party claimants and associations under Articles L. 600-1-1 and L. 600-1-2 of the same code. This reminder, prompted by no new text, invites practitioners to factor these rules, in force since the spring, into their analysis of pending planning disputes.

Specialist weekly monitoring also continues to flag energy renovation and energy performance diagnosis, asbestos, photovoltaics, the net-zero land take trajectory, the treatment of vacant housing and access to social housing as substantive issues to watch, although no notable text or decision was published on these points during the past week.

The firm advises on French real estate and construction law.

Previous edition: Weekly Digest: Real Estate and Construction Law (7-13 September 2026)
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