France (FR) — civil law.
Nothing on this page describes United States or Argentine practice.
Alsace-Moselle
Three départements are not on the general regime
Bas-Rhin (67), Haut-Rhin (68) and Moselle (57) retain
droit localin property matters. A statement about French land registration or forced sale that does not carve them out is wrong roughly 4% of the time, and wrong in a way that changes which office you write to and which procedure applies.
The land register is a court, not a tax office
Everywhere else in France, publicity is handled by the service de la publicité foncière, under the DGFiP — a finance-ministry service.
Here it is the livre foncier, kept by a specialised magistrate, the
juge du livre foncier, under the Ministry of Justice. Governed by the
loi civile du 1er juin 1924, reformed in 2002 and 2009 to accommodate
computerisation.
That is not a difference of filing system. It is a difference of legal nature: entries are made under judicial control.
Forced sale is a different procedure
The local equivalent of saisie immobilière is exécution forcée immobilière, and the mechanics diverge at the very first step:
| General regime | Alsace-Moselle | |
|---|---|---|
| What effects the seizure | the commandement de payer vaut saisie | the commandement does not; it is the ordonnance de vente forcée, from the moment it is served, that makes the property unavailable |
| Publicity | service de la publicité foncière (DGFiP) | bureau foncier, juge du livre foncier (Justice) |
| Governing text | CPCE livre III | droit local, on the 1924 civil law |
needs_verification: the full step sequence, the local rules on mise à prix
and surenchère, and whether the avocat monopoly applies identically.
The tell in the open data
The national transaction dataset DVF — every recorded sale price in France for the last five years — excludes Alsace, Moselle and Mayotte. See dvf.
This is the cleanest possible confirmation that the enclave is real rather than ceremonial: the country’s own open-data programme cannot cover these départements, because the transactions are not recorded in the system DVF is built from.
For any index, this is a coverage hole, not a gap to interpolate over. Three départements have no open transaction comparables. Saying “we have French sale prices” without that caveat is false.
A judicial-map artefact worth knowing
The cour d'appel of Metz has a ressort corresponding to Moselle alone
— unusual in a system where a cour d'appel normally covers several
départements. And the tribunal judiciaire of Colmar straddles both
Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin, one of only five French first-instance courts whose
ressort crosses a département boundary. See carte-judiciaire.