You work two or three days a week in another city. Hotel bills add up fast, and renting a flat full time makes little sense when you only sleep there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Part-time furnished rental answers exactly that: a fixed base for the nights you actually need, and nothing more.
Which leaves the question everyone asks before signing: what contract covers renting a home a few days per week in France? The answer fits in one line: a Civil Code lease for a secondary residence, which we call the fixed-days lease at Kowo.
Why your weekday base is not a primary residence
French law separates two situations. The law of 6 July 1989 protects the primary residence, the home you occupy most of the year, with a rigid framework designed for your main home, not for a work-week base: minimum durations, regulated notice periods, strict formalism.
If you are a commuter, a hybrid worker called back to the office a few days a week, or living apart from your family for work, your primary residence is elsewhere: the house where your family lives, the flat you return to at the weekend. The home you occupy a few fixed days per week near the office is, legally, a secondary residence. Renting it falls under the Civil Code (articles 1708 and following), which lets both parties write a contract that matches their actual situation.
That freedom is not a legal vacuum: the Civil Code lease is a long-established rental contract that French courts know inside out. It simply means the contract can say exactly what you live, instead of forcing a full-time-home regime onto a two-night week.
What does the fixed-days lease spell out, concretely?
The fixed-days lease is a Civil Code lease with a precise object: you rent a furnished home on fixed days, the same days every week. The contract sets out in black and white:
- Your days of occupancy: for instance Monday evening to Thursday morning, with clear arrival and departure times.
- A proportionate rent: you pay for the nights you occupy, not the full week. For two nights a week, expect three to four times less than full-time rent.
- A duration you choose: a few months for an assignment, or a recurring rental renewed for as long as both parties want, with a notice period written into the contract.
- Occupancy limited to your days: the rest of the week, the home can host another occupant, who signs their own contract.
That last point is the heart of the model: occupancy is not exclusive over the whole week, it is exclusive over your days. Each occupant holds an independent lease, with no joint liability between them. We unpack how this works in our article on time-shared co-occupancy, and the co-occupancy guide gathers everything about multi-occupant housing.
What does a weekday base cost? A worked example
Take the most common Kowo pattern: two fixed nights per week, Tuesday to Thursday, near where you work.
At 45 euros per night, two nights a week come to roughly 390 euros per month (a month averages 4.33 weeks). Compare that with a commuter’s real alternatives:
- Hotel: around 1,100 euros per month for the same two weekly nights, with no way to leave your things on site.
- Holiday-style flat: about 780 euros per month, with changing addresses, service fees on every stay and no lease guaranteeing the rate.
- Full-month rental: a full-time studio often costs three to four times the Kowo budget, for nights you will never sleep there.
Over a year, the gap runs into thousands of euros: roughly 4,700 euros on a fixed-days lease against more than 13,000 euros in hotels. And unlike a hotel, the rate is guaranteed by a lease, your address never changes, and your belongings wait for you from one week to the next.
The same arithmetic scales with your rhythm: three nights a week still lands well under half of a full-time rent, and the contract keeps your rate fixed for the whole duration you signed, whatever happens to hotel prices during trade fairs and peak weeks.
What the lease changes on the owner’s side
Understanding the owner’s interest helps you negotiate calmly. For them, the fixed-days lease turns an under-occupied home, often a secondary residence sitting empty on weekdays, into a recurring fixed-days rental, without going anywhere near tourist stays.
Each occupant signs their own lease, with no joint liability between tenants: if another occupant leaves, your contract does not move, and the owner does not depend on a group. Adding an occupant on the remaining free days happens through a new independent lease, not through an amendment to yours. That architecture of independent leases is what keeps the model stable for everyone: the owner improves the home’s occupancy rate, and each occupant keeps one simple contract, in their own name, over their own days. The full landlord-side method is detailed in earning from a second home, without holiday lets.
Do not confuse it with the mobility lease or seasonal rental
Two neighbouring regimes cause regular confusion. The French mobility lease is capped at ten months and restricted to specific situations (assignment, training, studies): it does not fit a recurring rhythm that settles into the long term. Seasonal rental, for its part, targets one-off tourist stays: isolated nights, changing travellers, no contractual recurrence.
The fixed-days lease answers a third use, distinct from both: a long-term, recurring rental on fixed days, for someone whose primary residence is elsewhere. That is precisely the use the Civil Code lets both parties write down in black and white.
What to check before signing
A good fixed-days lease shows its quality in its precision. Before committing, make sure the contract covers:
- the exact days and arrival and departure times,
- the personal storage space reserved for you between stays,
- the deposit amount and the conditions for returning it,
- the notice period that applies on both sides,
- the furniture inventory and the check-in report, as for any furnished rental,
- how utilities (water, electricity, internet) are handled, most simply as a flat fee on shared days,
- your declaration that your primary residence is elsewhere, which grounds the Civil Code framework.
Add home insurance suited to a secondary-residence use: most insurers offer it in a few clicks, for a few euros per month.
Frequently asked
Is the fixed-days lease legal? Yes. It is the natural application of the French Civil Code to renting a secondary residence, a regime as old as the Code itself. The one substantive condition: your primary residence must be elsewhere.
What minimum duration and notice period apply? No minimum duration applies: the duration is set freely in the contract (capped at nine years, renewable), and the notice period is negotiated and written the same way. On Kowo, listings show these terms before you ever get in touch.
What if I want to change my days? An amendment is enough, whenever the home’s schedule allows it. Your days stay fixed from week to week: that is what keeps your rent predictable and the home reliable for everyone.
What happens if the owner sells the home? The written lease protects you: its clauses (duration, notice, exit terms) apply, exactly as for any furnished secondary-residence rental. One more reason to insist on a precise contract from day one.
To dig deeper into the legal side, browse the Civil Code lease guide. If your week is split between two cities, our two-city week guide will help you organise it. And to see what this looks like near your office, explore the cities we cover, for example a weekday home in Paris.