Renting a home a few days per week always raises the same question: what contract do you actually sign? This guide gathers everything worth understanding about the legal framework of part-time renting in France, without jargon and without hand-waving.
Two regimes, two uses
French rental law rests on one simple distinction. The law of 6 July 1989 governs the primary residence: the home you occupy most of the year, protected by public-order rules designed for your main home. The Civil Code (articles 1708 and following) governs the rest, including secondary-residence rental: duration, notice and conditions are written freely into the contract.
A base occupied a few fixed days per week near the office, while your main home is elsewhere, is a secondary residence. Renting it falls under the Civil Code lease: that precise, long-established contract is what Kowo calls the fixed-days lease.
The key notions in this guide
Four notions structure the framework, and each is worth understanding before you sign:
- The fixed-days lease: a Civil Code lease whose object states your days of occupancy, the same every week, with rent proportionate to the nights you occupy.
- Non-exclusive occupancy: your right of use covers your days, not the whole week. The rest of the time, the home can host another occupant.
- Independent leases, no joint liability: each occupant signs their own contract with the owner. Nobody guarantees anybody else’s rent, and one occupant leaving changes nothing for the others.
- The amendment: the normal mechanism for adjusting your days or duration, whenever the home’s schedule allows it.
This vocabulary is not decorative: it maps to concrete clauses every good contract should contain, and that Kowo listings display before any contact is made.
Who this guide is for
Occupants first: commuters, hybrid workers and people living apart from their family for work, who want to understand what they sign before committing to a weekday home. Owners next: a well-written lease is what turns an under-occupied secondary residence into a calm, recurring rental, well away from tourist-rental regimes and their constraints.
The articles in this guide, listed below, go into the detail: what the contract must spell out, what to check before signing, and how this lease differs from the neighbouring regimes that cause confusion.
Going further
The legal framework is one half of the subject; the other half is the living model it makes possible. The co-occupancy and multi-occupant housing guide explains how several occupants share one home on separate days, each with their own lease. And to move from theory to practice, the Kowo cities show where the model is already open, from Paris to Lyon.