Buying with friends and moving into a co-living building get filed together in almost every article on the subject, as if they were two flavours of the same idea. They are not. One makes you an owner with a legal problem to solve in advance. The other, nine times out of ten, makes you a tenant.
In brief
- Indivision is the default and the least stable of the three structures.
- A convention d’indivision runs for five years, renewable, and is drawn up by a notary.
- Joint borrowers are each liable for the whole loan, whatever their ownership share.
- France taxes an inheritance between unrelated people at 60%.
The clause that decides whether this ends well
The single most important feature of buying together in France is how easily one person can force the exit.
Under indivision, each buyer holds an undivided share of the whole property rather than a specific room, and article 815 of the Civil Code gives every co-owner the right to leave. If your friend wants out in year three, you buy their share or the property goes on the market, and a court can order the sale if nobody agrees. This is not a loophole, it is the intended design: French law dislikes leaving property frozen between people who no longer get along.
Two provisions soften it. A convention d’indivision, drawn up by a notary, organises the arrangement in writing: shares, contributions, who pays what, how decisions are taken and how someone leaves. It is capped at five years and renewable, which is worth knowing before you plan around it. And article 815-14 gives the other co-owners a pre-emption right if one of them sells their share to an outsider, exercisable within a month of being notified. Without that, you could find yourself owning a flat with a stranger.
The SCI, when there are more than two of you
An SCI turns the property into a company, and your ownership into shares in that company.
The société civile immobilière holds the title, the buyers hold parts sociales, and the statutes decide how the group votes, who manages the property and how shares may be transferred. Selling out becomes a transfer of shares rather than a fight over the building, which is precisely why groups of three or four use it. The cost is formality: statutes to draft, a manager to appoint, accounts to keep and an existence to maintain year after year. For two friends buying a small flat, it is usually heavier than the problem it solves. For four people buying a house to renovate together, it earns its keep.
The tontine clause, and why it is not a shortcut
A tontine, or clause d’accroissement, is written directly into the purchase deed and says that whoever survives the others is deemed to have been the sole owner from the day of purchase.
It is used by unmarried couples and by friends, and it does one job extremely well: it stops a deceased buyer’s share going to their family. What it does not do is make the tax question disappear, and that question is brutal in France. An inheritance between people who are not related is taxed at 60%, which is enough to force a surviving friend to sell the house in order to pay the bill. The tontine has its own tax treatment, which depends on the value and the use of the property, so this is exactly the point at which you stop reading blogs and pay a notary for an hour of their time.
| Structure | Best suited to | Main weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Indivision | Two buyers, short horizon | Any co-owner can force the sale |
| SCI | Three or more buyers, long horizon | Set-up costs and ongoing formalities |
| Tontine clause | Protecting the survivor | Tax treatment needs checking case by case |
The mortgage does not care how you split the ownership
This is the part that surprises people, and it surprises them at the worst moment.
Co-borrowers on a French mortgage are jointly and severally liable, which means the lender can demand the entire outstanding balance from any one of them. The bank is not bound by the ownership percentages in your deed, nor by any private agreement about who pays which share. If one friend stops paying, the other pays in full and then has to chase them for reimbursement separately. Pooling incomes genuinely does increase what a group can borrow, and that advantage is real. Just go in knowing that the loan and the ownership are two different maps of the same house. Before you compare offers, it helps to be clear on what a mortgage is and how to get one.
A note for readers coming from English-language guides
Joint tenancy and tenancy in common are common law concepts and they do not exist as such in France.
The closest equivalent to tenancy in common is indivision, where shares can be unequal and pass to your heirs. The closest equivalent to joint tenancy with right of survivorship is the tontine clause. They are similar in spirit and different in every practical detail, particularly on tax, so a British or American article about co-buying is useful for the questions it raises and unreliable for the answers it gives.
Co-living: read the lease, not the brochure
Co-living in Europe is a managed rental product, not a path to ownership, and the vocabulary in the marketing tends to blur that.
The model is consistent: an operator runs the building, residents rent a private room or micro-studio, and shared kitchens, lounges, coworking space and sometimes a gym come with it, usually on a single all-inclusive monthly payment with flexible terms. Europe had more than 110,000 co-living beds in operation as of 2025, and investors have been piling into the sector, which tells you it is a maturing asset class rather than a countercultural experiment.
What that means for you: the things to scrutinise are the notice period, what happens to your deposit, how the community rules are enforced and what the all-inclusive rent actually includes. Genuinely resident-owned shared housing does exist, under the name cohousing, but it is a much smaller and slower thing to join, and it is not what a co-living operator is selling you.
What I would settle before signing anything
- The exit: how someone leaves, on what notice, and how their share is valued. Written down, before the offer.
- The money: who contributes what to the deposit, and whether unequal contributions are reflected in unequal shares in the deed. They should be.
- The works: who decides, who pays and whether a renovation increases one person’s share.
- The death scenario: unromantic, essential, and the only reason the tontine question exists.
- The occupation: if one of you lives there and the others do not, agree an occupancy indemnity in advance rather than discovering the concept in a dispute.
Buying with people you like is a perfectly sound way to get onto the property ladder in an expensive region, and this coast is an expensive region. It works when the friendship is treated as the thing to protect and the paperwork as the thing that protects it, rather than the other way round.
General information only, not legal, tax or financial advice. Structures and tax rates differ by country and by personal situation: consult a notary and a qualified adviser before you commit.
Still at the viewing stage?
Buying as a group multiplies the number of things you should have asked, not divides it.
