Buyer’s Agent vs Real Estate Agent in France: What’s the Difference?
The short answer: a French real estate agent is hired by the seller, paid by the seller, and legally obliged to get the seller the best possible outcome. A buyer’s agent is hired by you, paid by you, and obliged to get you the best possible outcome. They are not two versions of the same job. They sit on opposite sides of the table.
This trips up foreign buyers constantly, because in most English-speaking markets the person showing you around is at least nominally on your side. In France, they are not, and nobody is required to tell you so. The agent who spends a Saturday driving you between three apartments is doing it because they hold the mandate on all three and are paid when one of them sells.
None of that makes French agents dishonest. They are regulated professionals doing the job they were hired to do. It simply means that if you want someone whose duty runs toward you, you have to appoint them yourself. Here is exactly how the two roles differ, what each one costs, and how to decide whether you need both.
Talk to Homelike Home about what you are looking for and where, and we will start from your brief rather than from a list of properties.
At a glance
- Real estate agent (agent immobilier):Â holds a sale mandate from the seller, shows you only their own listings, negotiates for the seller, is paid from the sale price.
- Buyer’s agent (chasseur immobilier):Â holds a search mandate from you, covers the entire market including properties held by every other agency, negotiates against the seller, is paid by you on success.
- Notaire:Â a public officer, neutral, handles the legal transfer for both parties. Not your advocate and not anyone’s advisor on price.
- Both agents are regulated under the same 1970 law and both require a professional license, insurance and a financial guarantee.
- The practical test:Â ask who signed the mandate. That answers who the person works for, whatever they say in conversation.
The core difference: who holds the mandate
Everything follows from a single document. A French estate agent works under a mandat de vente, a sale mandate granted by the owner of a specific property. That contract authorizes the agent to market that property and entitles them to a commission when it sells. Their obligations run to the person who signed it.
A buyer’s agent works under a mandat de recherche, a search mandate granted by the buyer. It authorizes us to search on your behalf, to a specification you set, and it entitles us to a fee only if we find something you actually buy. We hold no inventory. There is no property we need to place, no stock sitting on our books, and no seller whose expectations we are managing. If the right answer is that you should walk away from a property, saying so costs us nothing and protects you, which is a structurally different position from the one an estate agent occupies. Our search process is built around that mandate from the first meeting onward.
Both professions are regulated by the same statute, the loi Hoguet of 1970, and both require a professional card, professional indemnity insurance and a financial guarantee. The regulation is identical. The direction of the duty is opposite.
Who pays, and how much
The seller’s agency commission is built into the price you see advertised. French listings are usually quoted FAI, meaning agency fees included, so when you look at a property at âŹ800,000, the agency’s commission is already inside that figure. It typically falls somewhere in the range of 3% to 6% depending on the region and the price band, and the seller settles it out of the proceeds at completion.
A buyer’s agent is paid separately, by you. At Homelike Home the fee runs on a decreasing scale, from 2.90% on the first tranche down to 1.00% on the largest budgets, and it falls due only at the signing of the final deed. If we never find you a property, you never pay us. Our rate is also the same whether the property comes from an agency, another intermediary or directly from a private seller, which means we have no financial reason to steer you toward one source over another. That is not universal in the profession, and it is worth asking any buyer’s agent you speak to.
Some French buyer’s agents split the selling agency’s commission instead of charging the buyer, an arrangement known as inter-cabinet. It sounds attractive and it introduces a subtle problem: if your representative is paid out of the seller’s commission, their interests are no longer purely aligned with yours, and properties that are for sale privately become less appealing to show you. Ask how any buyer’s agent is remunerated before you sign anything.
What each one can actually do for you
The estate agent
They will show you the properties they hold. They will answer factual questions accurately, because misrepresentation is a legal risk they will not take. They will handle the paperwork on their side of the sale and coordinate with the notaire.
What they will not do, because they cannot, is show you a competitor’s listing, tell you the asking price is 15% too high, point out that the building has a âŹ400,000 façade renovation coming, argue your case in a negotiation, or advise you that the neighboring street is a better bet. None of that is bad faith. It is simply outside the mandate they signed.
The buyer’s agent
We start with the brief rather than with properties, and a meaningful share of the value is delivered there, in correcting a specification that would otherwise waste six months. From there we cover every source simultaneously: agency mandates across the market, private sales, notaire sales, and the off-market properties that circulate through local networks and never reach a portal.
France has no MLS. There is no shared database and no listing syndication, which means the same apartment appears on three portals at three prices under three mandates while a good part of the best stock appears nowhere at all. Covering that fragmented landscape is the practical reason the profession exists here, and it is the part that a buyer working alone from abroad simply cannot replicate. Our buyer’s agents across France work their own cities daily for exactly that reason.
We then pre-visit, report honestly on what a listing omits, verify the building and the co-ownership accounts, price the works before you commit, negotiate, and stay on the file through to completion.
Where the notaire fits in
This is the piece foreign buyers most often misread. The notaire is not a real estate attorney in the American sense and not your advocate. They are a public officer, appointed by the state, responsible for the legality and registration of the transfer. A single notaire commonly acts for both sides, and when each party appoints their own, the fee is shared rather than doubled.
The notaire will verify title, run the searches, hold the deposit and make sure the transaction is legally sound. They will not tell you the price is too high, will not negotiate, and will not advise you on whether the purchase is a good idea. That gap between legal safety and commercial advice is precisely the space a buyer’s agent occupies. Our glossary of French property terms covers the vocabulary around all three roles.
Side by side
| Real estate agent | Buyer’s agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Appointed by | The seller | You |
| Contract | Mandat de vente | Mandat de recherche |
| Paid by | The seller, from the sale price | The buyer, on success |
| Typical cost | Around 3% to 6%, included in the advertised price | 2.90% down to 1.00% at Homelike Home |
| Properties shown | Their own mandates only | The whole market, including off-market |
| Negotiates | For the seller | For you |
| Will advise you against a purchase | No incentive to | Yes, and often does |
| Regulated under | Loi Hoguet, 1970 | Loi Hoguet, 1970 |
| Works when you are abroad | Waits for you to visit | Visits, films and reports in your place |
Am I paying twice?
This is the first objection everyone raises, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales one.
Two fees do exist. But the seller’s commission is inside the asking price whether or not you appoint a buyer’s agent, so it is not an incremental cost of hiring one. The genuine additional expense is our fee, and the honest way to assess it is against three things it is meant to offset: the negotiation, which on a well-argued file frequently exceeds the fee outright; the properties you would never have seen, which is where most of our clients’ purchases actually come from; and the purchase you did not make, which is the largest saving of all and the hardest to see because it never appears on a statement.
If you are buying at the bottom of the market in a city you know well, the arithmetic may not favor us and we will tell you so. If you are buying from abroad, in a market with no MLS, in a language you do not fully command, it usually does.
When you probably don’t need a buyer’s agent
Rare in an article like this, but worth stating. You likely do not need one if you live in the target city, know its streets and price levels, have time to visit properties on weekday afternoons at short notice, are comfortable reading co-ownership minutes and diagnostics in French, and are buying something standard rather than scarce.
The calculus changes sharply when any of those fails, and it changes most for buyers purchasing from another country. Time zones, travel costs and the speed of the French market compound: a well-priced property can be under offer in forty-eight hours, which is roughly the time it takes an overseas buyer to arrange a viewing. We set out how that plays out in practice for buyers purchasing from the United States.
How this maps to the American system
Americans need less explanation here than most nationalities, because buyer representation is already familiar. Since the National Association of Realtors settlement took effect in 2024, US buyers sign a written representation agreement before touring a home, and the notion that someone works contractually for you rather than for the owner is now built into the way the market operates.
France never adopted that as a default, and the closest equivalent it has is the chasseur immobilier, a profession that has existed here since the 1990s. The main structural difference is who funds it: in the American model the seller’s side has traditionally paid both agents, whereas in France the buyer pays their own. We work with AmCham France, the American Chamber of Commerce in France, largely because that translation is the single most useful thing an American buyer can understand before starting a search.
Bottom line
An estate agent sells property. A buyer’s agent buys it. Both are legitimate, both are regulated, and in most transactions both are present, because a buyer’s agent frequently negotiates with a selling agency on your behalf. What you should never do is assume that the friendly agent showing you a house is representing your interests, because the mandate they signed says otherwise.
Homelike Home has worked exclusively as a buyer’s agent since 2003, across more than fifteen French cities and Milan. We are members of the FĂ©dĂ©ration des Chasseurs Immobiliers, the professional body for the sector in France, and we hold no sale mandates of any kind. You can read more about who we are, or about why the French market rewards buyers who are properly represented.
Frequently asked questions
Does a French estate agent work for the buyer or the seller?
The seller, under a sale mandate. They are paid from the sale price and their obligations run to the owner. They can be perfectly helpful to a buyer, but they are not representing you and are not required to act in your interest on price.
What is a chasseur immobilier?
The French term for a buyer’s agent, sometimes translated as property hunter or property finder. A chasseur is appointed by the buyer under a search mandate, holds no properties for sale, searches the whole market and negotiates on the buyer’s side.
How much does a buyer’s agent cost in France?
Fees vary across the profession. At Homelike Home the scale is decreasing, from 2.90% on the first tranche down to 1.00% on the largest budgets, calculated on the price recorded by the notaire and payable only at the signing of the final deed.
Can I use a buyer’s agent and still buy through an estate agency?
Yes, and it happens in most of our transactions. We contact selling agencies on your behalf, arrange the viewings and negotiate with them. The agency continues to represent the seller and we continue to represent you, which is exactly how it should work.
Is a buyer’s agent regulated in France?
Yes, under the same 1970 legislation that governs estate agents, with the same requirements for a professional card, professional indemnity insurance and a financial guarantee. Ask to see the license, as you would with any regulated professional.
Do I need a lawyer as well?
Not usually. The notaire handles the legal transfer and the associated checks. Cross-border tax and estate planning are a separate matter, and for non-residents that is worth settling before you make an offer rather than after, particularly if you are buying in France as an expatriate.
Get a buyer’s agent on your side
If you are about to start looking in France, the useful first step is not a viewing. It is a conversation about what you are actually trying to buy, what your budget realistically reaches in the city you have in mind, and whether the plan holds together at all. We will tell you honestly if it does not.
Contact Homelike Home and we will put you in front of the buyer’s agent who covers your target city.
