A real estate agency in the Basque Country and its manager, judged for having signed fraudulent leases in order to release apartments for the summer season in this very tourist area, were convicted of deceptive commercial practices. The company will have to pay a fine of 10,000 euros and its manager, 3,000 euros, not to mention a three-month suspended prison sentence.
The courts criticized this concierge service based in Biarritz for having provided post-dated notices. When signing the lease, which was supposed to last one year, the tenants also signed for an early departure notice, dated the following April or May, just before summer. “A number of owners thought it would be a good idea to rent for the eight months off before being able to get the property back for the summer and apply the monthly price to the week.», castigated the prosecution.
Do not take advantage of real estate tension
If ten victims were identified in the file, only two became civil parties. The president of the concierge service, who admitted the facts, explains having committed a “professional misconduct», par «lack of experience». «For me, it was very clear that the rental ran until June, this was done by mutual agreement with the tenants”, she said. His lawyer regrets that the president of the concierge service is trained “as an example”, supposed “single-handedly address the problem of poor housing in the Basque Country“. Me Pierre-André Truttmann said “strongly consider appealing».
The practices of this agency were highlighted in 2022 by the association for the right to housing Alda, civil party. “These post-dated leases are symbolic of the pressure that landlords and real estate agencies can exert on tenants who have no other choice but to accept these conditions.», declared Malika Peyraut, co-president of the association, at the bar.
Student leases to non-students, mobility leases for year-round resident workers, leases with post-dated notices… These practices led to the launch of an unprecedented struggle committee in France, led by the department prefecture and the Bayonne parquet. Two years after this creation, 33 reports were made, six of which resulted in criminal proceedings, according to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques prefecture. “The State wanted to send the signal that we cannot take advantage of real estate tension (…) and we are convinced today that this committee had a deterrent effect», Declares Joëlle Gras, sub-prefect in charge of housing, contacted by AFP.
