Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 10,955
Hopefully posting this here is OK, I was hoping to get the opinion of some french people or their friends.
I talked to a good friend of mine today who's been living in France for a while. Apparently he was planning to rent a house for a year. he talked to friends of the owners, they agreed upon the details,they mailed him a contract, he signed it and mailed it back and with ~ 2 months to go before the tenancy started, a family emergency made it so he needs to go back home for the foreseeable future.
He e-mailed them and apologized profusely, offering to help them look for other tenants in the 2 months left (I've seen the property, it is great and low price, no way they couldnt find someone else in that time span) and they wrote back threatening to sue him unless he cuts the owners a cheque equivalent to 2.5 months rent.
I told him my opinion is this is a moneygrab (he's young) and that there is 0 chance this would get to court and a slim chance the contract actually IS legally binding, considering there was no notary public present. But moreover, I just feel like no-one could possibly take this to court and win given the tenancy did not even start and he actually let them know so long before the tenancy started and no money had been exchanged up to this point.
Any advice on this kind of thing would be appreciated. I'm mostly trying to calm him down as he's rly freaked out by this.
Thanks
