Safety order (ex-peril order): what an asset subject to building police measures faces

A 30% discount on a Haussmannian building rarely attracts attention by chance. When a run-down asset comes onto the market at a price below the market value of the neighbourhood, the explanation often lies in a three-page document signed by the mayor: a safety order (arrêté de mise en sécurité), the direct successor of the former peril order (arrêté de péril). This document does not merely prescribe works. It freezes the rents, places an obligation to provide accommodation on the owner, opens the way to works carried out by the municipality of its own motion at the owner's expense, and creates a public claim secured on the building itself. This guide sets out the regime applicable since Ordinance No. 2020-1144 of 16 September 2020, the real financial consequences for the holder of the asset, and the timetable of checks to be completed before making an offer on a building subject to building police measures.

From the peril order to the safety order: what the 2020 reform changed

Ordinance No. 2020-1144 of 16 September 2020 on the harmonisation and simplification of the police powers over buildings, premises and installations, which came into force on 1 January 2021, merged some twelve pre-existing special administrative police regimes (ordinary and imminent peril, safety of common equipment, safety of furnished hotels, unfit housing) into a single police regime for the safety and sanitation of buildings, codified in Articles L. 511-1 et seq. of the French Construction and Housing Code (code de la construction et de l'habitation, or CCH). Decree No. 2020-1711 of 24 December 2020 set the implementing rules.

A point of terminology: the expression peril order has disappeared from the legislation in favour of the safety order. It is still used by practitioners, surveyors and municipal departments, and many orders made before 2021 still produce their effects. An investor who makes enquiries of a town hall should therefore put the question under both names, failing which the answer may be incomplete.

Two authorities, two bases

The police regime is unified in its rules but not in its authority. The mayor acts on safety grounds where defects affect the structural soundness of the building or its elements, the safety of common equipment or the safety of occupants and third parties. The prefect acts on sanitation grounds, where the condition of the building harms the health of the occupants or of the neighbourhood. In both cases the procedural foundation is now common, which makes analysis easier but does not remove the question of the right counterparty during due diligence.

The defects concerned

The most frequent grounds, in the older Paris and Île-de-France building stock, fall into a limited number of types: structural cracking of a load-bearing wall or internal partition wall, floor subsidence, failure to carry out underpinning after basement works, a cornice or balustrade threatening to fall onto the public highway, a deteriorated timber staircase, electrical installations in the common parts that are unfit for use, a lift put out of service without being brought into compliance. Danger to third parties, and in particular to passers-by, has historically been the fastest trigger for municipal intervention.

How the order works: from the adversarial stage to its lifting

Ordinary procedure and urgent procedure

In the ordinary procedure, Article L. 511-10 of the CCH requires the competent authority to inform the owner of the defects found and of the measures envisaged, and to allow a period for observations. This period, which may not be shorter than one month, is the most useful window for action in the file: it is at this stage that an informed owner produces an adversarial structural report, proposes a schedule of works and negotiates the scope of the requirements. Beyond this stage, the balance of power reverses.

In the event of imminent danger, Article L. 511-19 of the CCH allows the mayor to order the essential measures without delay, after having requested the appointment of an expert by the administrative court, which rules within a very short time. These measures are provisional: evacuation, propping, a safety perimeter, sheeting. They do not exhaust the procedure, which then continues in the ordinary form if the defects are not definitively dealt with.

The order itself, under Article L. 511-11 of the CCH, specifies the measures required and the time for carrying them out, and may impose a ban on living in and using the premises, temporary or permanent, as well as, in the most serious cases, demolition. A permanent ban on living in the premises is the measure that destroys the value of the asset most brutally, since it removes its use and triggers an obligation to rehouse.

Publication in the land register

The order is published in the land register (fichier immobilier) or land book, at the initiative of the authority that made it (Article L. 511-12 of the CCH). This formality is decisive from an acquisition perspective: it makes the situation enforceable against successive purchasers and turns a police act, apparently personal, into a burden that follows the building. A mortgage status report (état hypothécaire) requested before the offer reveals both the published order and, where applicable, the registrations made by the local authority in respect of works carried out of its own motion.

The lifting of the order is never presumed

The order continues to produce its effects, including the suspension of rents, until it has been lifted. Lifting requires the measures prescribed to have actually been carried out and recorded by the competent authority, on production of supporting documents and, in practice, a certificate from a construction professional (homme de l'art) establishing that the cause of the danger has gone. The order lifting the safety order is also published. Until that publication has taken place, bank financing will be difficult to obtain and a resale will be negotiated at a discount.

An application to annul for abuse of power (recours pour excès de pouvoir) against the order is brought before the administrative court within two months of notification or posting. It does not suspend the order. The only genuinely useful route, where the requirements are manifestly disproportionate or the investigation was botched, is the interim suspension application (référé-suspension) under Article L. 521-1 of the French Code of Administrative Justice, which requires showing both urgency and a serious doubt as to lawfulness. Urgency must be documented in economic terms: monthly rental loss, inability to keep to a disposal timetable, withdrawal of financing.

Works carried out of the authority's own motion and the municipality's claim: the debt that travels with the asset

Daily penalty, formal notice, works carried out of the authority's own motion

An owner who does not carry out the measures within the time allowed is first exposed to an administrative daily penalty. Article L. 511-15 of the CCH caps it at €1,000 per day of delay, up to a total of €50,000. It runs until the measures are fully carried out and is cumulative with the other consequences of inaction.

Next comes execution of the works by the authority of its own motion. After a formal notice that has gone unheeded, the competent authority has the prescribed measures carried out at the owner's expense, under Article L. 511-16 of the CCH. The cost thus incurred is far from theoretical: the local authority is seeking neither technical optimisation nor the best market price, it is dealing with the danger. Heavy propping, removal of a cornice over the public highway with occupation of the carriageway, underpinning ordered urgently by a public contracting authority all come out at amounts bearing no relation to a quotation negotiated by a professional investor.

Recovery and security

The claim arising from works carried out of the authority's own motion is a public claim, recovered in the same way as direct taxes. It also benefits from security over the building. Since Ordinance No. 2021-1192 of 15 September 2021 reforming the law of security interests, which came into force on 1 January 2022, the former special real property privileges have been converted into special statutory mortgages, governed by Article 2402 of the French Civil Code. The local authority's claims arising from execution of police measures of its own motion are among those that give rise to such security.

For an institutional lender, the issue is one of ranking. For a purchaser, the issue is more direct still: the building is encumbered, the claim is enforceable, and the clearing of the registrations must be dealt with in the deed, in the same way as the registration of a contractual mortgage. A clean mortgage status report at a given moment guarantees nothing if works have been undertaken of the authority's own motion and the collection notice has not yet been issued. The only safeguard is to ask the competent municipal department directly about the progress of the measures and the expenditure already incurred.

The case of co-ownership

Where the order concerns the common parts, it is notified to the association of co-owners (syndicat des copropriétaires), in the person of its property manager (syndic). The association becomes the debtor of the obligation to act; the co-owners bear the cost through calls for funds, according to the applicable co-ownership shares (tantièmes). Where the works are carried out of the authority's own motion, the public claim is apportioned among the co-owners in proportion to their share.

An investor who acquires a single lot in a building subject to an order therefore inherits a double exposure: the co-ownership charge corresponding to the works required, and the risk of the lot being immobilised if the ban on living in the premises affects the whole building. Reading the last three sets of minutes of general meetings, the maintenance log and, if there is one, the global technical diagnosis is not a formality: it is the tool for costing the exposure.

Suspension of rents, accommodation, rehousing: when the asset stops producing

The rent freeze

Article L. 521-2 of the CCH is the provision that turns a technical matter into a financial one. Principal rent, and any sum paid in return for occupation, ceases to be due from the first day of the month following notification or posting of the order, until the first day of the month following notification or posting of the order lifting it. Suspension is not an option left to the parties' discretion: it is automatic, and sums received in breach of this provision are unduly paid.

The lease is not terminated for all that. Its term is neutralised during the period of suspension: the occupant who has remained in the premises recovers, on lifting, the residual term that remained to run when the order took effect. The owner therefore bears a double loss: the rental income during the works, and the postponement of the contractual exit window.

Accommodation and rehousing

Articles L. 521-1 and L. 521-3-1 of the CCH distinguish two obligations of a different nature, which purchasers systematically confuse:

• accommodation (hébergement), owed where the ban on living in the premises is temporary: the owner must provide the occupant with temporary housing suited to their needs for the whole duration of the works;
• rehousing (relogement), owed where the ban is permanent or where the works make the dwelling uninhabitable on a lasting basis: the owner must offer housing suited to the occupant's needs and means, and pay a removal allowance.

If the owner defaults, the local authority steps in and charges the cost to the owner. The CCH also provides, in that case, for payment of an allowance representing the costs incurred by the local authority, the amount of which is set by reference to the expected annual rent of the dwelling. This item, rarely built into the business plans for acquiring run-down occupied buildings, can represent several years of net yield.

Criminal risk

Article L. 521-4 of the CCH punishes with three years' imprisonment and a fine of €100,000 the act of collecting rent in breach of the suspension, of refusing to provide accommodation or rehousing, or of forcing an occupant to give up their rights. Additional penalties exist, including a ban on purchasing residential property. For a structured investor, the reputational risk associated with a prosecution of this kind far exceeds the financial stakes of the file.

Commercial premises: a different regime

Articles L. 521-1 et seq. protect occupants of residential premises. Where the order affects a building containing commercial premises, the landlord-tenant relationship is governed by ordinary law: the obligation of delivery and maintenance under Article 1719 of the French Civil Code, tenant repairs under Article 1720, total or partial destruction of the thing let under Article 1722, and the defence of non-performance (exception d'inexécution). A tenant displaced by a safety perimeter or a ban on using the premises has serious arguments for suspending payment of rent, seeking a rent reduction or termination, or even claiming against the landlord for interference with enjoyment. On the landlord's side, the institutional response is to deal by contract with the occurrence of an administrative police measure, in the same way as a damage event. On the interaction between the termination clause and the argument based on the landlord's non-performance, see our analysis of the defence of non-performance in commercial leases.

Selling or buying a building subject to an order

Sale remains possible, the information requirements are stronger

No provision prohibits the sale of a building subject to a safety order. The constraint lies elsewhere. Since the order is published in the land register, it is enforceable against the purchaser, who takes over the obligation to act. The notary informs the competent authority of the transfer, which allows the local authority to identify the new debtor and pursue recovery of its claim. Concealment is sanctioned twice over: under the warranty against latent defects and under fraud (dol), since a professional seller could not be unaware of the existence of the procedure. The purchaser's remedies, the procedure and the time limits to be observed are set out in our article on the warranty against latent defects in property.

What exactly the purchaser takes over

Three distinct blocks, which must be costed separately in the financial model:

• the obligation to carry out the measures prescribed, within the time set by the order or the time newly allowed, on pain of a daily penalty and execution by the authority of its own motion;
• the local authority's claim for works already carried out of its own motion, ancillary costs and the daily penalty as liquidated, secured on the building;
• the obligations towards the occupants: suspension of rents until the order is lifted, accommodation or rehousing, and where applicable the allowance owed to the local authority that stepped in.

Contractual engineering

The headline discount does not protect. What protects are the following mechanisms, to be negotiated before the preliminary agreement and not after:

• a condition precedent that the order is lifted, where works are under way and the seller is funding them;
• an escrow held by the notary sized to the estimated cost of the measures prescribed, plus a safety margin, released on publication of the order lifting the safety order;
• a specific representation and warranty from the seller that there is no pending procedure other than the one disclosed, as to the sums already incurred by the local authority and as to the position of the occupants;
• a prior adversarial structural expert report, since the municipal report is not intended to cost a programme of works but to characterise a danger;
• a clear link with the financing: banks frequently make drawdown conditional on the order being lifted or on a dedicated works facility being put in place.

Compensation for the owner: little hope from the public authorities

A search for "building in peril owner compensation" points to a reality that is not favourable. The safety order is a police measure taken in the general interest; its lawfulness in principle excludes any compensation for the loss suffered by the owner, who is precisely the person whose building is the source of the danger. The municipality's liability can be engaged only on the ground of a wrongful illegality, for example where an order lacks a serious factual basis, where requirements bear no relation to the danger found, where the order is abusively maintained after the works have been carried out, or where there is a failure in handling the request to lift it. Such disputes exist, but they require rigorous technical demonstration and proof of a causal link with a quantified loss, most often a rental loss.

The least favourable situation is expropriation under Law No. 70-612 of 10 July 1970, known as the Vivien Law, which allows buildings subject to a permanent ban on living in them or intended for demolition to be expropriated under a simplified procedure. Compensation there is calculated on the value of the bare land, less, where applicable, the cost of demolition. In other words, the building itself is not compensated. An investor who buys at a discount a building subject to a permanent ban on living in it must treat this scenario as one of almost total loss of the value of the building.

The genuinely useful remedies therefore lie elsewhere: an action under the warranty against latent defects or for nullity for fraud against the seller, ten-year liability of the builders where the defect stems from recent works, a claim against the neighbour responsible for the undermining or overloading, calling on the dommages-ouvrage (structural damage) insurance policy, an action against the property manager (syndic) for failure of diligence. In each of these cases, preserving evidence is the immediate issue, which justifies a court-ordered expert report under Article 145 of the French Code of Civil Procedure before the prescribed works destroy the defects found. The conditions of admissibility and the course of this measure are set out in our article on summary proceedings for an expert report before a property dispute.

The decision timetable before making an offer

The central point of attention is chronology. Once the offer is accepted, room for manoeuvre shrinks; once the deed is signed, it disappears. The following checks must be carried out before commitment, and not during the period leading to completion:

• a written enquiry to the competent municipal department (housing health and safety, depending on how it is organised) on the existence of a peril order or safety order, current or lifted, and on the progress of the measures;
• a mortgage status report on the building and, in co-ownership, on the lot, in order to identify the published order and the local authority's registrations;
• obtaining the report on which the order was based and, where applicable, the report of the expert appointed by the administrative court in the urgent procedure;
• the position of the occupants: leases, rent amounts, date of notification of the order, sums collected since that date, whether an accommodation or rehousing procedure is under way;
• in co-ownership, minutes of general meetings over three financial years, maintenance log, global technical diagnosis, statement of unpaid charges and calls for works funds;
• a counter-expert structural report and costing of the works programme by a qualified contractor, independent of the municipal report;
• checking the time remaining to challenge the order, and assessing whether an interim suspension application is worthwhile if the act appears vulnerable.

Conclusion: the discount is not a price, it is an assumption

A building subject to a safety order is not a discounted asset; it is an asset whose value depends on an administrative timetable that the purchaser does not control. The purchase price is only a fraction of the real exposure: to it must be added the cost of the measures prescribed, the daily penalty in case of delay, the municipality's claim for works carried out of its own motion, secured on the building, the loss of rent until the order lifting the safety order is published and, where occupants are in place, the cost of accommodation or rehousing, with a separate criminal risk. These items can be quantified; they can be quantified only before the offer.

Our recommendation is simple. Never make an offer on a run-down asset without having obtained in writing, from the competent municipal department, the exact state of the procedure and of the expenditure already incurred, and without having had the works programme counter-assessed by an independent professional. If the order is recent, have the lawfulness of the act assessed within the two-month time limit for challenge: a vulnerable order can be argued, a final order must be endured.

Frequently asked questions

Does the peril order still exist in 2026? Legally, no. Ordinance No. 2020-1144 of 16 September 2020, which came into force on 1 January 2021, replaced the ordinary and imminent peril regimes with the single police regime for the safety and sanitation of buildings, Articles L. 511-1 et seq. of the French Construction and Housing Code. The act is now called a safety order. In practice, orders made before 2021 remain applicable and the term "peril" is still widely used by municipal departments and professionals.

Must a tenant pay rent during a safety order? No, where the order carries a ban on living in the premises. Article L. 521-2 of the CCH provides that rent and any sum paid in return for occupation cease to be due from the first day of the month following notification or posting of the order, until the first day of the month following notification or posting of the order lifting it. Collecting rent despite this suspension is a criminal offence under Article L. 521-4 of the CCH, which provides for three years' imprisonment and a fine of €100,000.

Can a building subject to a safety order be sold? Yes. No provision prohibits the sale. But the order is published in the land register under Article L. 511-12 of the CCH and is therefore enforceable against the purchaser, who takes over the obligation to carry out the measures prescribed. The notary informs the police authority of the transfer. The claim arising from works already undertaken of the authority's own motion remains secured on the building, which means it must be dealt with in the deed in the same way as a mortgage registration.

What do a municipality's works carried out of its own motion cover, and who pays for them? Where the owner does not carry out the measures within the time allowed, the competent authority may, after formal notice, have them carried out of its own motion at the owner's expense (Article L. 511-16 of the CCH). The claim is recovered in the same way as direct taxes and benefits from a special statutory mortgage within the meaning of Article 2402 of the French Civil Code, in the version resulting from Ordinance No. 2021-1192 of 15 September 2021. To this is added the administrative daily penalty under Article L. 511-15 of the CCH, capped at €1,000 per day of delay up to €50,000.

Can an owner be compensated for the consequences of a safety order? Very rarely. A lawful order is a police measure taken in the general interest and gives no right to compensation. A damages action against the municipality requires showing a wrongful illegality, for example requirements bearing no relation to the danger or a failure to lift the order after the works have been carried out. In the case of expropriation under Law No. 70-612 of 10 July 1970, compensation is calculated on the value of the bare land, less the cost of demolition.

How long does it take to obtain the lifting of the order? The time depends on the works programme and the responsiveness of the department handling the file, not on a uniform statutory period. Lifting requires full completion of the measures prescribed, production of supporting documents and a certificate from a construction professional establishing that the danger has gone, then a finding by the competent authority and publication of the order lifting the safety order. Until that publication has taken place, the suspension of rents continues and bank financing remains constrained.

What happens if the order concerns the common parts of a co-ownership? The order is notified to the association of co-owners and the obligation to act falls on it. The co-owners bear the cost through calls for funds according to their co-ownership shares, and where the works are carried out of the authority's own motion, the public claim is apportioned among them in proportion to their share. A purchaser of a lot must therefore analyse the minutes of general meetings, the maintenance log and the statement of unpaid sums before making an offer, since the real exposure is not limited to the lot acquired.