Chancer Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 There is a lycée aéronautique opposite me which is currently expanding and moving into the newly built science park. it does not have an internat, I rent apartments to workers en déplacement and have had several enquiries from the parents of students at the lycée, I have a studio coming vacant and one of the people on my waiting list is the parents of one of the students. Even if not this time, certainly in the future when I have more apartments the studios will probably be taken by the students.After getting over the shock that in France it seems normal that a 15 year old minor should be living on their own while studying I can see some advantages to me as well as the obvious disadvantages, noise, disruption, damage etc but as someone pointed out it will be a lot easier to influence a 15 year olds behaviour, one whose parents are paying his keep, who have signed the bail and are responsible for him than say a 20 year old independant adult.In the past I have had enquiries where the mother wanted someone to provide an evening meal and breakfast, I am not a chambre d'hôtes and enjoy the minimum of contact and involvement with my renters, I could also see that as accepting even if tacitly some responsability, in any case all of my renters to date have taken all of their meals apart from the morning coffee at the subsidised factory canteenMy question is one regarding liability or responsability, given that locations saisonnières are considered legally to be part of my foyer would having a 15 year old minor living Under what is considered to be the same roof mean any responsability for said ado? Or are they still considered to be part of the family foyer?Its hard to think of scenarios but perhaps alcohol related, an injury to a tiers, something like that, could any blame be laid at my door because I would have tacitly accepted responsability? Also what would be the position if it were a girl student?And of course if there is even the slightest amount of potential responsability where would that leave me when I take a trip to the UK for a couple of weeks.Any comments welcomed, also on angles that I havnt even considered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 I doubt anyone on the forum has any experience in this area. My tip would be see a professional. A few Euros, even a 100 could save you a fortune in the future. My gut feeling is not to get involved, young people being what they are and remembering my youth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loiseau Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Hmm, I share your unease about this, Chancer. You are not a student "foyer".It does seem strange that such a specialised lycée doesn't offer accommodation though. It must have plenty of distant students after all.Hopefully someone will come up with an official directive on the subject.Angela Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idun Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 I don't know, but even if I used to, rules change, so I would always check up again. I think I would go on one of my, 'ask everyone' campaigns.I'd start with the school in question and ask the conseillere d'education if they know, (or where you work?) then the DDASS. Then the Prefecture. And maybe the gendarmes too.Then with all this information, I 'd try and find it in writing or get someone like the DDASS to confirm it.Years ago, we took our sports club away for a weekend and caused a bit of a fuss, by being fussy and basically wanting to cover our backs if anything happened. Especially after being told that on a trip a few years earlier there was nearly a rape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Why not get the school to rent it and take full responsibility for it and they can place the students there. Any problems the school sorts it out. I mean what happens if the student turns out to be a right piece of work, parties, girls or boys popping in any time day or night etc. What do you do, phone the parents, what can they do if they live miles away. Also don't forget the age of majority in France is 18 so are you expected act as Loco Parentis for example especially at night when the schools closed and there is nobody to contact? It's all to complicated which is why if it were me I would stay away, I am sure you have loads of other clients. You have to hope they can cook as well, I can see them chatting on the phone for an hour with a nice chip pan sitting on the stove at full heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idun Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Just had a thought, that this must happen quite often, I agree, not normally for 15 year olds, but mineurs, will need lodging.Look at how french education works. CP starts the year a child is 6 and working one's way up, means that logically someone can start university the year they are 18, so some will not be 18 until the 31st of December that year.Add to the equation that some kids get a derogation and start school a year early and they will be ready for uni a year early. So bearing this in mind, I would also get in touch with a university and ask.I also found this, sure there is other info out there.http://blog.logic-immo.com/2012/02/tout-sur-la-location/peut-on-louer-un-appartement-a-un-mineur/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 One of my hates here is how people judge me by their own (lack of) moral standards so I try very hard never to judge people by my own standards including the virtual absence of them when I was young.In general I find most French ados far far better than I was at their age and compared to the current UK generation, well theres no comparison.Being away and independant at such an early stage and also a critical one in education terms also explains the absolute gulf between the young adults around here that went away to study and those that left school with nothing and remained within the influence of their dead beat parents, the former are a joy to know and converse with although to be fair none of them would dream of returning to live here in troudeculdemondeville, they just come back for family do's to be treated as the enemy.These kids are already being lodged elsewhere, have been for décades now, the one in question is in a studio 5kms away which makes it 8km from the town, its a tiny village with nothing, a very dangerous road, there have been many deaths and even I wont cycle it, thats the motivation for the parents and they have a lot to lose if it doesnt work out.I have not even met the lad yet, I judge first and foremost the parents.Being short term rental I dont and wont have to put up with anything but good behaviour, my real concern is whether there is some sort of in loco parentis responsibility that would be engaged, the contract naturally would be with the parents as a juvenile cannot enter into one.Why am I considering it? Well the money is good having found out what they pay for dumps elsewhere that I wouldnt house a dog in, the parents get a bourse and its considered completely normal to fund your childrens housing during education, the parents as cautionaires are a good risk. They will also not be staying at the weekends so will only use the apartment 4, maximum 5 nights a week and never be there in the daytime, also most of them work in the factory during the summer as their stage whereas if last year was anything to go by my worker rentals were non existant although I only need to develop the tourist market, I dont really want to do that though as they are much more needy and its labour intensive for one or two night stays albeit well paid, I want to keep that percieved goldmine up my sleeve for when I sell the business.I want to sell this business one=ce its established so it makes sense to tap into a captive and long standing resource, I have had people working on contract from Canada that have paid a very high rate for my (if I say so myself) very Superior accomodation, they were getting a per diem of €5000 per month for accomodation food and transport, yet some of their colleagues preferred to rent a bedroom in a doss house for €300 a month just to save the maximum from their allowance and I fully understand that, there is not the same price pressure when parents and the bourse are paying.The people who stay here from Toulouse or St Nazaire, I have a signed contract which has their home address (mine cannot be their principal residence) but I know in many cases that they either are estranged or perhaps no longer live there, the day I have some money to claim it will be virtually impossible to trace them whereas the families with children at the lycée live within the departement albeit 80 miles away, people around here in stable families dont move.As for the lycée taking charge forget it, they are as unhelpfull as everyone else around here, they dont even give out détails of accomodation in the area to parents desperately seeking it even though they have it and have visited me, just a shrug of the shoulders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 At the lycée pro that I teach at the kids are from 14 upwards, they do however have an internat and they do take their responsibilities seriously.Hereabouts responsabilities are to be avoided. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Unless you really need the money I would shy away from this. Having a minor under your roof can open up cans of worms.The French are very good at passing the buck as I am sure you know.What if he sets fire to a waste bin with a cigarette? Will your insurance cover it? If he smokes dope are you supposed to have known? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="NormanH"]Unless you really need the money I would shy away from this. Having a minor under your roof can open up cans of worms.The French are very good at passing the buck as I am sure you know.What if he sets fire to a waste bin with a cigarette? Will your insurance cover it? If he smokes dope are you supposed to have known? [/quote]This is what I am thinking and probably not get over clear, who is responsible, you or his parents as he is under 18? It's all well and good saying that in your experience these kids are no problem but what you see in school can be quite different to what goes on outside. Alternatively 99% are very good and you get 'the one'. I am with Norman and even though through you tone I understand where your coming from in wanting to help etc I to would keep away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lindal1000 Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Many of our friends children do this when they go to Lycee. All the decent Lycees are too far away to commute and so the parents pay for accommodation. The kids get dropped off Sunday night and return home Friday. Think about it from the parents perspective.. they are desperate to find a nice, clean place to stay for their offspring with someone that won't rip them off. The rental agreement and responsibility can only be with the parents. If it was me, I would make a decision based on the parents and the child..I would tell my insurance company and check that I was covered in the case of an accident, and I would probably keep a bit of a eye on them quietly, as if it was my child I would hope that someone would do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted February 2, 2015 Author Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="NormanH"]What if he sets fire to a waste bin with a cigarette? Will your insurance cover it? If he smokes dope are you supposed to have known? [/quote]My place is a strictly non smoking establishment with a no tolerance one strike and you are out (even friends) Policy, I have a proper fire alarm system in all the common areas and make a big point of telling everyone what happened to my very first ever guest on his first ever morning when he lit up as he was leaving the apartment at 7am. Mind you even though I sweep the trottoir outside regularly it is knee deep in butt ends and dog sh1t within a couple of days thanks to the ignorant bar stewards around here.To date none of my occupants have been smokers, I cannot refuse a smoker but when they realise that I am serious about what I say they look elsewhere.Quillan, do you realise that the questions that you raise regarding liability are exactly what I was asking in my first posting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted February 2, 2015 Author Share Posted February 2, 2015 This is one of the replies that I recieved on another forum:OK Daddy-O, my two pennyworth, we have mostly youngsters renting with us. Apart from the tenant known as the very old man (48 ish), all are girls, 2 @ 17, 1 @ 18 and 2 @ 19. (I choose my tenants wisely :grin:). Only once have we had an issue with undue noise and that was for one of the girls 18th birthday party, so most understandable and acceptable. Even the I made one of the barn/garages available for the party.In all cases of young or non-working prospective tenants, we ask for their rental payments and caution to be covered by the parents and signed as so. In some cases parents have not been in a situation where they were able to fulfil such conditions, but they were covered by the tenants employer. We have not been let down with this approach yet, eight years on. There will always be a possibility that problems may arise, that is how life works. We ourselves have only had two troublesome tenants, a professional bank worker, French and female and an English lad whom was given a tenancy over my better judgement, but in both cases, I got rid of them pretty damn quick.If I was in you position, I would go ahead and offer a tenancy, but in the end it is your call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="Chancer"]Quillan, do you realise that the questions that you raise regarding liability are exactly what I was asking in my first posting?[/quote]Yes I do and that’s the point. You will, if anything happens, be stuck with say a damaged flat due to misuse by the under aged tenant and a long drawn out legal battle with his/her parents who will no doubt try and shift the blame on to you and n the meantime not able to get the repairs done to get your income back. You may well win and the parents have to pay up bt then they may claim they don't have the money and can only afford €10 a month. Even if you have the correct insurance in place with legal protection insurance as well it will be a long drawn out process and you will be the one that really loses out. Of course all this is full of "what if's" and "possible" and at the end of the day you won't know how it pans out. On the positive side you may have a really nice student with good parents etc and there are absolutely no problems, who knows? It's the not knowing that’s the thing which is why I go with Norman on this.By the way who cleans the flat every week?At the end of the day the only person who can decide if it is worth doing is you but if it all goes tits up I promise I won't be the one telling you "I told you so", I'll leave that to Norman. [;-)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="Chancer"]This is one of the replies that I recieved on another forum:OK Daddy-O, my two pennyworth, we have mostly youngsters renting with us. Apart from the tenant known as the very old man (48 ish), all are girls, 2 @ 17, 1 @ 18 and 2 @ 19. (I choose my tenants wisely :grin:). Only once have we had an issue with undue noise and that was for one of the girls 18th birthday party, so most understandable and acceptable. Even the I made one of the barn/garages available for the party.In all cases of young or non-working prospective tenants, we ask for their rental payments and caution to be covered by the parents and signed as so. In some cases parents have not been in a situation where they were able to fulfil such conditions, but they were covered by the tenants employer. We have not been let down with this approach yet, eight years on. There will always be a possibility that problems may arise, that is how life works. We ourselves have only had two troublesome tenants, a professional bank worker, French and female and an English lad whom was given a tenancy over my better judgement, but in both cases, I got rid of them pretty damn quick.If I was in you position, I would go ahead and offer a tenancy, but in the end it is your call.[/quote]Yes well apart form the 17 year old they are all in the majority so you can sue them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lindal1000 Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Why is it any different trying to sue an adult tenant rather than the parents of an underage tenant? Both routes to try and be avoided I would have thought..but in the end the agreement is with the person who signs the lease. I have seen no evidence that, on the whole, teenagers are any more likely to cause problems than anyone else. Renting out apartments comes with a degree of risk.. I can't see why renting it out to schoolkids would be any more risky than to any other group.As to the cleaning.. well the tenant is always responsible.. and if they don't leave it clean you can keep an amount from their security deposit to pay for a cleaner. It's only a problem if you want to rent the apartment to someone else over the weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chancer Posted February 2, 2015 Author Share Posted February 2, 2015 I dont want to be suing anybody, my aim is always to refund 100% of a caution, any less and I feel that one or both of us have failed.The parents, and I would do this also for an 18 year old, are the ones that sign the contrat de location, pay the rent and the caution, a householder is responsable for damages that anyone from their foyer cause outside of the home, including, perhaps especially the children.Only the very poor and the Chancers like me wont have household insurance which covers all family members when they are renting saisonnière, its a condition of all the rental contracts and in the case of students from the lycée I will insist on a copy of the Policy.This is posted Under the gîtes owners forum, given the lack of response could it be that any owners on the forum rent mainly to UK clients? Do they realise that their customers wont have this insurance (it doesnt exist in the UK) that if one of them left a cigarrette burning in a waste bin your French insurers would wash their hands of the affair after demanding détails of the renters responsabilité civil cover?To date all of my tenants with one exception have been foreigners, Canadian, Marocaine, Polonaise, Egyptian and all transient workers, none of them would have the insurance cover that a 15 year old student would carry, I would have no chance of suing any of them in whatever country they are now even if I could trace them, for the parents of a lycée student I would just have to get in my car and drive no further than the limit of my departement.In the UK I have a dispute with an ex tenant who left damage, the monies held with the DPS more than cover my claim which is for a small fraction of what I should claim, the person refused to use their arbitration procedure so the money is suspended and they tell me I have to sue them, problem is they wont give a forwarding address, the DPS wont release it to me citing data protection and I know the person is in Australia, the city but not where, result stalemate, but I do have the pleasure of knowing it is costing him a lot more than me as I have already written off the money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="Chancer"]This is posted Under the gîtes owners forum, given the lack of response could it be that any owners on the forum rent mainly to UK clients? Do they realise that their customers wont have this insurance (it doesnt exist in the UK) that if one of them left a cigarrette burning in a waste bin your French insurers would wash their hands of the affair after demanding détails of the renters responsabilité civil cover?[/quote]Wrong....... it's in the Chambres D'hote section and its different from 'them' in the Gites section. We, as of the 1st Jan 2015, cannot include, by law, the rooms rented out in our normal house insurance like we used to, we now have to insure the rooms or property a different way (I did a post here on this last year). This protects us from all the things that would be included in the type of insurance your talking about.As for the comments about 'mainly UK' well I don't think so. We have had booking over the last 18 months from America (5), Australia (9), Belgium (26), UK (80), Canada (7), Denmark (1), Holland (11), Finland (1) , France (244), Germany (14), Republic of Ireland (2), Israel (2), Italy (6), Japan (2), Malta (3), Portugal (1), Russian (2), Slovenie (1), Eastonia (3), Scotish (2), Sweden (1), Switzerland (4) and Welsh (1). In other words the UK only accounts for 17% of our business. The nationalities listed are per room not number of people.I don't have a clue how you insure Gites by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 [quote user="Chancer"]This is posted Under the gîtes owners forum, given the lack of response could it be that any owners on the forum rent mainly to UK clients? Do they realise that their customers wont have this insurance (it doesnt exist in the UK) that if one of them left a cigarrette burning in a waste bin your French insurers would wash their hands of the affair after demanding détails of the renters responsabilité civil cover?[/quote]What utter rubbish. We have comprehensive insurance for a gite which specifically includes damage caused by guests of whatever nationality. This is written into our insurance policy in clear and precise terms. I don't know where you get your information but I suspect it is mostly hearsay. It is up to every property owner to check with their broker to make sure they are properly insured. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catalpa Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 [quote user="Chancer"]This is posted Under the gîtes owners forum, given the lack of response could it be that any owners on the forum rent mainly to UK clients? Do they realise that their customers wont have this insurance (it doesnt exist in the UK) that if one of them left a cigarrette burning in a waste bin your French insurers would wash their hands of the affair after demanding détails of the renters responsabilité civil cover?[/quote]Lack of response from gîte owners is probably because you aren't asking for advice on renting out a gîte. Most gîte people are doing holiday lets of less than a month so the difficulties implicit in lets of more than a month - and the tenants' rights that come into play - aren't something on which most gîte owners are qualified to comment. Plus they would avoid letting to students and certainly to 15-year-olds. It's a different business.As far as insurance is concerned, if you insure with one of the AXAs, Avivas, CAs etc, they are quite used to providing building and contents insurance that doesn't depend on the guest having appropriate cover themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Théière Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 Two options in my book Chancer, go to Lay my Hat forum or do what Maggie did and close down to minors (miners) [:)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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