The Purchase Promise – offer purchase.

If you want to sell your house in France and you find a buyer who says he is interested, you will of course start negotiations. At a certain point you agree on the price and an agreement must be made about the date for signing a compromise de vente. This provisional purchase agreement has nothing provisional, because once it has been signed and the 10 mandatory cooling-off period for the buyer has expired, both parties are bound to this contract.

Anyway, it usually takes a few months before a purchase contract can be signed. As a seller, if you want more certainty that the buyers will honor their offer, you can ask them ‘offer d’achat‘ to draw. This is an official offer at a certain price, which the buyer cannot easily get out of. A means of pressure for the seller. Such an offer d’achat is quite simple. Below I give you a model of such a written purchase offer.

[First and last name of buyers]
[address]
[ZIP code]

[Seller or agent]
[Address]
[ZIP code]

[Today’s date]

Proposed purchase offer for the property at the address :
[address and reference of the property]

Registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt

Dear,

On the date of [date], we, the undersigned Mr. [surname, first name, address, date and place of birth] and Mrs. [surname, first name, address, date and place of birth], referred to as the(ies) promisor(s), we firmly and irrevocably commit to purchase the following property:

(An apartment/house/other), located at [full address] with a living area of ​​[xxx] m². The price requested by the seller is [xxx] euros.

We, the promisor(s), make this offer to purchase at the price of [xxx] euros. If this offer is accepted, the amount will be paid in full on the day of signing the authentic deed.

[This purchase will be made subject to obtaining a bank loan of at least [xxx] euros.]*

Without formal acceptance of this purchase offer, it will expire on [response deadline] at midnight. The seller’s acceptance may be made in writing or at the domicile(s) of the promisor(s) or by email, sent [to the following address/addresses]: [address(es) promising email(s)].

[Date and signature of all buyers, preceded by the handwritten note “Good for purchase”]

[Your Signature(s)]

[*option]

I give this ‘offre d’achat’ in French, because I assume that the transaction will take place in France. For a Dutch version you can have the text translated by the unsurpassed deepl.com.

Below is a downloadable form that you can use if necessary. As a buyer, you can include all kinds of conditions in your offer, such as a condition that you can get a loan, that there is no right of way, that the municipality has no building plans, that no asbestos is found or that there is certain work is carried out without which the purchase will not proceed. In principle, you can include anything you want in an offer purchase. Although it must of course remain reasonable in relation to the price you offer.

By the way, if we look very realistically at the practice, almost every contract when selling a house in France turns out to be a bit of a wash, especially for the buyer. As a seller it is difficult to avoid this, because your house is, as it were, the collateral for your word. But an unwilling buyer can simply do nothing and stall, miss deadlines and end up buying something else. As long as there is no collateral – for example 10% of the purchase price in a suspense account of a notary (as should be the case when concluding a compromise, as a stick behind the door) – the seller remains empty-handed. And what can you also do as a seller? Are you going to start a process to force someone to buy your house after all? Didn’t think so, no. Anyway, this offer gives you a little more power, as hard evidence that a serious offer has been made by someone identifiable.

Good luck everyone!