Since 1 January 2025, a proposed ten-year works plan has in principle been compulsory for French residential co-owned buildings more than 15 years old, regardless of their size. Service Public sets out that rule, with an exemption where a qualifying technical diagnosis identifies no work needed over the following decade. For someone buying a ski apartment, it turns a vague question about future maintenance into a request for an actual document.
The document is useful. So is the money already saved. Neither, on its own, tells you what your first few years of ownership will cost. A building can have a plan without enough cash, cash without a decision to spend it, or an approved project whose payment dates fall awkwardly close to your purchase. The view from the balcony will not explain which of those you are buying into.
Start with the building’s next decade
The projet de plan pluriannuel de travaux, usually shortened to PPPT, is the proposed programme. The adopted version is the PPT. According to Service Public’s explanation of the works plan, owners can accept all or part of the proposal. Adoption does not replace the subsequent votes on individual projects and their financing. The planning horizon is 10 years.
Ask which version you have been sent. A technical report with recommendations is different evidence from approved minutes recording a funded roof project. Read the dates on both. If a seller says the building has “done the plan”, the useful follow-up is to request the report, the decision and the latest progress update together.
Our practical suggestion is to make a short project register. Give each possible intervention a separate line: roof, external walls, heating equipment, lift or another item actually identified in the paperwork. Record its proposed timing, the estimate’s date, the decision reached and the next unresolved step. Leave blanks where evidence is missing. A visible blank is considerably more helpful than an optimistic guess.
The reserve is not the annual housekeeping bill
The fonds de travaux is the building’s works reserve. Service Public explains that it finances qualifying future collective expenditure, rather than routine maintenance in the ordinary budget. For residential co-owned buildings, the obligation starts ten years after construction acceptance. That age test matters when comparing an older resale apartment with a newly delivered property.
For an adopted PPT, the annual contribution must meet both minimum tests: 2.5% of the planned works total and 5% of the annual forecast budget. Without an adopted plan, the latter minimum applies. Owners may vote for more. These are funding rules, not a promise that the reserve will cover every future invoice. See Service Public’s works-fund guidance, checked for this article on 8 October 2026.
When comparing sales particulars, ask what the advertised charges include. Put routine running charges, the reserve contribution and separate project demands in different columns. Otherwise, one apartment can look cheaper simply because its description omits a line included by another seller. Request the supporting statements rather than trying to infer the answer from a rounded annual figure.
A small contribution can sit beside a large project
Consider a deliberately fictional building, used only to illustrate the arithmetic. Its annual operating budget is €80,000 and its adopted works programme totals €400,000. The two minimum calculations produce €4,000 and €10,000 respectively, so meeting both requires at least €10,000 a year for the building. This is not a quotation for any DOMOSNO property or an estimate of Alpine construction costs.
Now suppose that same fictional building wants to undertake a €120,000 project next year and has €30,000 genuinely available for it. The simple funding gap is €90,000, before any further contributions or separately confirmed financing. The annual minimum has not made that gap disappear. Nor should a buyer assume that the whole bank balance is free for this particular project.
At apartment level, resist dividing the total equally by the number of front doors. Ask the managing agent, or syndic, to confirm the allocation applicable to your lot and the specific expenditure. Parking, a separate entrance or equipment serving only part of a development may require closer reading of the governing documents. You need the proposed demand for your purchase, not a convenient average.
For your own stress test, use the confirmed lot figure when available. Put an uncertain estimate in a clearly labelled scenario, separate from an approved demand. That distinction lets you budget conservatively without presenting an unvoted possibility as a debt already owed.
Read the sale file as a financial history
The official guidance on selling a co-owned apartment describes the information supplied to buyers, including meeting minutes for the previous three years, the maintenance record and the works plan or proposal where applicable. Financial information includes charges paid over the previous two accounting years and, where a works fund exists, the share attached to the lot and the seller’s latest contribution.
Those documents answer different questions. Historic charges show what has been paid. Minutes show decisions and discussion. The plan looks ahead. Read across them: a repeatedly postponed item in the minutes deserves an explanation even if last year’s spending was modest. Equally, a large past bill could reflect work already completed rather than a future expense for you.
Ask for a plain-language reconciliation where figures disagree. Has the estimate changed? Is the amount inclusive of the professional fees mentioned elsewhere? Is the statement showing the whole development or only one building? A non-resident buyer should be able to trace each important number back to its source without relying on a telephone conversation remembered three weeks later.
Our preference is to keep the original French files beside any translation and a dated question log. A translation helps you read; it should not silently turn a proposal into an approval. Send unresolved contractual points to your notaire with the exact document and page attached. Specific questions tend to produce more useful answers than asking whether the building is “all fine”.
Put payment dates beside the completion date
Under the default allocation described by Service Public’s sale-year charges guidance, the seller pays works calls falling before the sale and the buyer those falling afterwards, according to the approved timetable. Buyer and seller can agree a different allocation between themselves, but that agreement does not bind the syndic. Have the notaire explain how the contract implements any negotiated arrangement.
For example, take a fictional demand payable in February after a December purchase. The fact that owners approved the project in September does not, by itself, settle your payment position. Ask for the due date, the contract provision and the mechanism for any reimbursement. Put all three in writing before treating “the seller will pay” as an established part of your budget.
The works reserve has a separate sale issue: the syndic does not refund the seller’s contributions, which remain attached to the lot. The parties may agree compensation for qualifying unallocated sums in the deed. That is another reason to have your notaire identify every payment associated with completion rather than reading the purchase price as the entire cash requirement.
For buyers funding the purchase from abroad, the practical consequence is a euro cash calendar. Enter the completion balance and confirmed future calls on their actual dates. Keep rental receipts out of that calendar unless their timing and net amount are sufficiently certain for your circumstances. A February bill will not wait politely for a good Easter season.
Give resale and new-build evidence different jobs
An established resale building can offer years of accounts, maintenance history and decisions. A new development cannot offer a decade of operating evidence it has not yet accumulated. Compare each on what can be verified: the resale’s recorded condition and obligations, and the new-build’s specification, delivery information and documented proposed running arrangements. Neither deserves a free pass because its presentation looks reassuring.
In particular, do not transfer a mature building’s works-fund assumptions mechanically to a newly accepted building. Equally, an initial operating estimate for a new residence should stay labelled as an estimate in your comparison. Request its assumptions and ask which services are included. This article uses no current asking prices or advertised new-build guide prices because neither would establish the future maintenance liability of a particular lot.
For a shortlist, we suggest a second page beside the usual bedroom, balcony and walking-distance comparison. Call it “building commitments”. Give each property the same headings: evidence received, completed work, approved future work, proposed work, available funding and unanswered questions. You can then see where an attractive asking price comes with a larger unresolved research task.
Decide how much uncertainty you can carry
A works programme need not make a purchase unattractive. Planned spending may be precisely what you want to see in a building you expect to use for years. Our judgement is that an explained project with a credible funding schedule can be easier to assess than a low annual charge accompanied by missing records. The documents must earn that confidence.
Before committing, separate three sums in your personal budget: the cost of buying, the recurring cost of owning and cash held for identified future work. Test how a plausible change in the timing of an uncertain project would affect you. There is no universal reserve figure suitable for every Alpine apartment, and the fictional numbers above should not become one by repetition.
Then return to the property itself. Does it still suit your holidays, your letting plans and your ability to manage decisions from abroad once the building’s obligations are included? That is a more useful test than finding the smallest charges figure on a listing page.
If you are comparing Alpine apartments, talk to DOMOSNO about your shortlist. We can help organise the property information and identify the building questions to take to the syndic and your notaire before you decide.
