Automating property management with AI in France: receipts, arrears and tenant files by the rules

This guide covers rental management. Sales-side automations (leads, viewings, mandates) are covered in AI automations for real estate agencies, and choosing a provider in our comparison of AI agencies for real estate. For the sector overview, see our AI in real estate guide.

An ANIL study published in April 2025 (Bail Rénov' programme, Cerema 2023 land files) counts 7,735,917 privately owned rental homes in mainland France, 73% of them flats and 51% in co-ownership buildings. Each one produces at least a rent notice and a receipt every month, which is the volume rental software sets out to absorb.

On arrears, the Chambre nationale des commissaires de justice, the profession's national body, published its figures on 17 March 2026: 175,000 commandements de payer in 2025 against 171,000 in 2024 (+2.4%), 147,000 court summonses against 145,000, and 30,500 evictions with police assistance against 24,000 (+27.2%). These figures come from the profession itself.

The right-hand column marks the points where an error by the automation has a legal effect: an irregular commandement is void, and refusing an applicant on the basis of a banned document exposes the landlord to the fine in article 22-2.

Article 21 of the law of 6 July 1989, as amended by the ALUR law (in force since 27 March 2014), sets five rules an automatic generator has to encode:

• Free of charge: the landlord provides the quittance at no cost when the tenant asks for it.
• Itemised: rent and charges are shown separately. This is the only content the article requires.
• No management fees for the rent notice or the quittance may be charged to the tenant.
• Electronic delivery only with the tenant's express agreement. Store that dated agreement in the file, since it is what allows sending by email or through a portal.
• Partial payment: the landlord issues a receipt. The workflow therefore needs three branches: full payment (quittance), partial payment (receipt plus a reminder for the balance), no payment (reminder).

Article 4 completes the picture: a clause making automatic direct debit the required payment method is void (point c), and so is one charging the tenant for sending the quittance (point p). Software can offer direct debit as one option among others.

Reconciliation means matching each bank statement line to an expected rent. Everything else depends on it: without reliable matching, a receipt goes out by mistake or a reminder reaches a tenant who has paid. Two methods exist: importing statements, or connecting directly to the account through an aggregator licensed under PSD2.

• Bridge states on its regulatory page that it is a payment institution licensed and supervised by the ACPR, offering account information and payment initiation.
• Powens (formerly Budget Insight) presents itself as a payment institution. Check its licence on the Banque de France REGAFI register before signing.
• Smovin says it uses Ponto and Budget Insight, now Powens, for bank sync.

Rivage claims up to 95% automated reconciliation. That is the vendor's claim, with no published method. The hard cases are well known: one transfer covering several rents, a reference that names neither tenant nor lease, payment by the CAF or a third party, a rounded amount. A language model can suggest a match from the transfer label; approving a discrepancy should stay manual. These flows handle bank data, so access control and logging matter: see our AI agent security guide.

The commandement de payer

Since law n° 2023-668 of 27 July 2023, in force on 29 July 2023, the termination clause takes effect six weeks after an unpaid commandement de payer (it used to be two months). The commandement must state, or it is void: the six-week deadline, the monthly rent and charges, a breakdown of the debt, a warning about possible eviction proceedings, the contact details of the housing solidarity fund (FSL) and a reference to article 1343-5 of the Civil Code on payment delays.

For leases already running on 29 July 2023, commentators on the Cour de cassation opinion of 13 June 2024 (Lexis Veille, SCPLD law firm) report that the deadline written in the lease clause still applies. Your tool therefore needs to store each lease's signature date and clause deadline instead of applying six weeks across the whole portfolio.

CCAPEX and the winter truce

The commissaire de justice reports the commandement de payer to the CCAPEX, the departmental committee for eviction prevention, when the tenant has been in arrears for two months without a break, or when the debt reaches twice the monthly rent excluding charges. The referral covers commandements served for an individual landlord or a family SCI, a property company formed only between relatives (article 24-I, read again on 4 November 2026). Other corporate landlords cannot sue to terminate the lease until two months after the CCAPEX has been notified (article 24-II). From 1 November to 31 March, article L412-6 of the Code des procédures civiles d'exécution suspends evictions unless rehousing is guaranteed. Court proceedings can continue; only enforcement is paused.

The first letter when a third party recovers the debt

Articles R124-1 and following of the CPCE govern amicable debt recovery on behalf of others. Under article R124-4, the first letter must state: who is recovering the debt, their address and that they carry out amicable recovery; the creditor's name and address; the basis and amount of the debt, broken down into principal, interest and other items; how to pay; and the text of paragraphs 2 and 3 of article L111-8. Article R124-1 excludes people acting under their own professional status or regulations. Whether a property manager holding a Hoguet card falls within that exclusion is a reading of the text, which does not say so expressly. As a precaution, build these mentions into the first reminder template.

The starting point is the bank reconciliation described above. French law requires the tenant to pay rent on the dates agreed in the lease (law of 6 July 1989, article 7 a), so the agent uses the due date written in the lease. The 1989 law sets no schedule for friendly reminders. The dates below are therefore our default setting, to be adjusted to each lease and management mandate.

A transfer sent on the due date may only show on the statement the next day. The agent therefore waits for the first statement after the due date before sending anything, so a tenant who has paid is never chased.

None of these messages mentions a reminder fee or a penalty: article 4 of the 1989 law treats lease clauses providing for them as void (points i and p). The tone stays the same from one message to the next, factual and polite. The agent never mentions termination, eviction or court action. Those words go with a decision that a person takes.

Each message starts from a template the manager has approved. The language model fills in the fields (name, period, amount) and can answer a simple question, such as the date a transfer was received. It never changes the amount owed, which comes from the management software.

The log is evidence if the tenant says they were never told. It is also the file the manager sends to the commissaire de justice: lease, debt breakdown, history of reminders and replies. How long it is kept after the lease ends follows the CNIL framework set out in the tenant files section.

The point where a person takes over

The agent hands the file to the manager, with the debt breakdown and history, in five cases:

• the tenant replies mentioning a difficulty, disputing the amount or asking for more time;
• the tenant offers to pay in instalments: negotiating a payment plan is for the manager or the landlord, and the agent promises nothing;
• day 15 passes with no payment and no reply;
• payment is still partial after the third reminder;
• the day 1 messages bounce on every channel.

From then on, the agent prepares and a person decides. Service-public.fr, the French government's information site, describes the mise en demeure (formal notice) by registered letter with proof of receipt as the step that follows an ordinary letter with no effect. The agent drafts it with the debt breakdown; the manager reviews, signs and sends it.

The commandement de payer is a formal demand for payment served by a commissaire de justice, the French court officer who serves legal documents and enforces judgments. When the lease has a termination clause, it starts the six-week period under article 24 described in the unpaid rent timeline. The agent exports the file; it does not contact the commissaire on its own.

Two further decisions belong to the landlord and their lawyer. According to the service-public.fr page on unpaid rent (checked on 6 August 2026), an attempt at conciliation or mediation is mandatory before asking the court to terminate the lease when the debt is €5,000 or less. That conciliation can lead to a repayment schedule. Once the schedule is signed and entered in the software, the agent can remind the tenant of each instalment under the same rules: no fees, and it stops once paid.

Guarantor, Visale, rent insurance, CAF: the alerts the agent sets

According to service-public.fr, the landlord may claim payment from the guarantor from the first unpaid rent. Making that claim is the manager's decision. The agent only flags that a guarantor (caution), Visale or rent insurance (GLI) covers the lease.

Article 2303 of the Civil Code, in force since 1 January 2022, requires a professional creditor to inform an individual guarantor of the first missed payment not made good within a month of falling due. Otherwise the creditor loses the interest and penalties accrued between the missed payment and the notice. Whether a landlord or their agent counts as a professional creditor under this article is a question for a lawyer. As a precaution, the agent drafts this letter when the month after the due date ends without payment, and the manager decides whether to send it.

Later, if a commandement de payer is served, article 24-I requires it to be served on the guarantor within fifteen days of being served on the tenant. Otherwise the guarantor cannot be held liable for penalties or late-payment interest. The commissaire de justice does the serving; the agent records both dates and alerts the manager if the second is missing.

For Visale, the free rent guarantee run by Action Logement, service-public.fr says the arrears must be declared "within 30 days" without stating when that period starts, which is set in the Visale contract. The visale.fr site refused our access on 4 November 2026, so the agent takes the date from the landlord's contract. For rent insurance, each policy sets its own claim deadline, and the agent reads it from the policy. In both cases the manager files the claim.

If the tenant receives housing benefit, the landlord must report the arrears to the CAF or the MSA, the bodies that pay it. For arrears reported from 1 January 2027, service-public.fr (news item of 6 March 2026, décret n° 2026-84) says arrears exist once the debt exceeds €450 or after 3 months without payment, and the landlord has 2 months to notify. The agent works out this threshold every month and alerts the manager, who makes the report.

Lumyniq builds this agent inside the agency's management software and CRM. We give no legal advice: the wording of the templates, the move to formal steps and any court action are decided with the landlord's commissaire de justice or lawyer. The other rental management tasks we automate are summarised in the property management section of our real estate guide, and sales-side follow-ups, for buyers and sellers who have not heard back, in the follow-ups use case.

Décret n° 2015-1437 of 5 November 2015 lists the documents a landlord may request from an applicant and their guarantor: identity, address, professional activity and income. The CNIL page updated on 10 October 2025 adds that before a viewing only identity, contact details and search criteria may be collected. Among banned documents it names the family record book, the carte Vitale, bank statements, a marriage contract or divorce judgment and a criminal record extract. The administrative fine can reach €3,000 for an individual and €15,000 for a company (1989 law, art. 22-2).

In practice, an AI agent reading incoming documents should file each one under a category of the decree, delete or return anything off the list, schedule deletion at three months for rejected applicants, and never make the refusal decision alone (GDPR, article 22). DossierFacile, the public service the CNIL points to, delivers documents that have already been checked. On who owns and hosts this data, see why agencies should own their data.

Décret n° 2016-382 of 30 March 2016, in force since 1 June 2016, lists what the app has to capture:

• whether it is an entry or exit report, and its date;
• the address of the property, and the names and addresses of the parties;
• meter readings and details of the keys;
• for each room, the condition of floors, walls, ceilings, equipment and fittings.

The exit report also needs the tenant's new address, the date of the entry report and changes since entry. The report can be on paper or electronic and is handed to each party once signed. Photos are allowed but not required, and a wear-and-tear grid from a collective agreement may be used. AI helps compare entry and exit descriptions room by room and prepares the deposit deductions, which the manager approves.

No stacking. Since 1 January 2022, article 22-1 of the 1989 law bars a landlord covered by rent insurance or another rent guarantee from also requiring a guarantor, or the guarantee is void, unless the tenant is a student or apprentice. This is a simple rule to encode when the file is built.

Visale in 2026. According to Que Choisir (4 February 2026) and Galian (12 February 2026), the scheme changed on 6 January 2026; the visale.fr site could not be reached to confirm. Per those sources: it remains free, 18 to 30 year olds qualify with no income condition, the income ceiling for employees over 30 rises to €1,710 net per month, and rent is capped at €1,940 in zone 1, €1,575 in zone 2 and €1,365 in zone 3 for non-students. In private housing, unpaid rent cover runs up to 36 months and only during the first 3 years of occupancy. The visa must be obtained no later than the day the lease is signed, and Visale cannot be combined with another guarantee. For automation, that means an alert before the covered period ends and a block if the visa date is after the lease date.

Rent insurance (GLI). The garantie des loyers impayés is taken out by the landlord, individually or through the agency's group policy. Insurers set their own eligibility criteria and claim deadlines, and it is those contractual deadlines the workflow has to track, policy by policy.

Managing property for others requires the professional card under law n° 70-9 of 2 January 1970 (article 3): proven professional ability, a financial guarantee for client funds, professional liability insurance and a clean record. Article 6 requires a written mandate stating how fees are paid and how funds are handled. Décret n° 2016-173 of 18 February 2016 sets continuing education at 14 hours a year, or 42 hours over three consecutive years, with a non-discrimination module added by décret n° 2020-1259.

Two practical consequences: automated payouts to owners must follow the terms of the mandate, and no software or AI agent lets someone without a card manage property on behalf of others.

On the sales side, the same law draws the line between what an AI agent prepares and what an authorised person must do. We read the Hoguet law task by task for an AI agent, from answering a contact to receiving funds.

Software for individual landlords handles receipts and reminders well. A professional manager usually needs more: linking rental management to the CRM, the phone system, accounting or the rent insurer. That is where a custom workflow or an open CRM such as Twenty comes in.

A typical design, buildable with n8n on top of the existing management software:

1. Bank feed: every morning, fetch transactions through the PSD2 aggregator or import the statement.
2. Reconciliation: exact match on amount and reference; for ambiguous labels, a language model suggests a tenant with a confidence score, and anything below the threshold goes to a review queue.
3. Paid branch: quittance for full payment, receipt for partial payment, sent electronically only if express agreement is on file.
4. Unpaid branch: friendly reminders with no fees, controlled wording (no penalties, R124-4 mentions if a third party recovers), stopping automatically as soon as payment arrives.
5. Human approval before any formal notice or handover to a commissaire de justice: the manager gets the debt breakdown and history and clicks to approve.
6. Log: every message, agreement and decision is written to the CRM with its date, which serves as evidence if the tenant disputes it.

Workflows of this kind, sector by sector, are described in our n8n workflow examples by sector. For hosting and maintaining n8n, see our n8n agency page.

An agent answering tenants (certificate requests, repair reports, balance questions) has been subject since 2 August 2026 to article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744: people must know they are dealing with AI, at the latest at the first interaction. The details are in our guide to the AI agent transparency obligation.

An AI-computed solvency score for applicants might fall under Annex III (high risk, applicable from 2 December 2027); whether rental screening is covered is not settled. Until it is, keep AI to checking that files are complete and compliant. Our guide to the AI Act duties of an estate agency gives a full section to tenant scoring and where high risk begins.

Lumyniq, an AI automation agency based in Paris, builds n8n workflows, custom AI agents and CRM integrations for property managers and agencies. Every project starts with an audit of the process in scope before any quote.