In Belgium and France, there is a way of buying and selling homes that seems quite peculiar to outsiders.
A property advertised en viager (for the lifetime’) is sold at a knock-down price. But the low price comes with a significant catch: the buyer must usually wait for the occupant to die before they can move in.
The viager system, which has been in operation in France since the 9th century, allows older homeowners to release equity from their homes while remaining resident in their property until their death.
Sellers are often widows or widowers without heirs to inherit their properties. It can be particularly appealing for elderly people on modest incomes.
In a typical viager sale, a buyer will pay the seller part of the property’s value upfront (usually around 20 to 30% of the value). The buyer is then obliged to pay the seller a fixed amount of rent every month – usually until they die.
The seller might die earlier than expected, resulting in a bargain for the buyer. But equally, the seller could live longer than average, meaning the buyer will end up paying more than they envisaged.
In one notorious example, a French woman named Jeanne Calment got a very good deal when she sold her property en viager.
In 1965, 90-year-old Calment sold her flat in Arles to her solicitor, Andre-Francois Raffray - a man who was half her age. Raffray agreed to paid her 2,500 francs per month until her death.
Calment went on to become the world’s oldest living person. She died at the age of 122, 32 years after the sale of her home, while poor Raffray died two years before her, having paid her more than twice the property’s market value.
“In life, one sometimes makes bad deals”, Calment drily observed after Raffray's death.
Jeanne Calment pictured at her 122nd birthday celebrations. Credit: Wikicommons.
What are the rules for buying and selling en viager in Belgium?
The risks of buying en viager aren’t quite as severe in modern-day Belgium as they were in Calment’s day. Today, there are protections in place for both the buyer and the seller.
It remains a fairly niche endeavour in Belgium. On average, there are between 1,200 and 1,500 viager sales in Belgium each year. The average age of a Belgian viager seller is 71 – much younger than in France, where the average age is 80.
There are two types of viager sale in Belgium: viager occupé and viager libre. The first and most common type of sale involves allowing the seller to remain in the property until their death. The latter type of tale allows the buyer to move into the property immediately after the sale is agreed.
These days, time limits are usually agreed on rental payments to avoid Jeanne Calment-style scenarios. Solicitor Jean Martroye told RTL that in Belgium, the parties involved generally fix a time limit of 15 years on rental payments.
According to legal website Notaire, sellers are protected in case of persistent non-payment of rent. They can ask for the sale to be cancelled while keeping the money they have already received from the buyer.
