France (FR) — civil law.
Nothing on this page describes United States or Argentine practice.
Outre-mer
“French law applies overseas” is true enough to be dangerous. The degree of adaptation runs from none to an entire category of land is outside the market altogether.
The tiers
| Territory | Position |
|---|---|
| Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, La Réunion (DROM) | General regime, with adaptations. Covered by DVF. |
| Mayotte (976) | Departmentalised recently; its land situation is its own. Excluded from DVF, alongside Alsace-Moselle. needs_verification on the applicable forced-sale procedure. |
| Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon | Collectivities with their own statutes; the judicial map is distinct — Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon has a tribunal supérieur d'appel. needs_verification |
| Polynésie française | Legislates for itself in wide areas. Auction procedure is published through the territory’s own official channels (Lexpol, service-public.pf), not the metropolitan ones. needs_verification on divergence from the CPCE. |
| Wallis-et-Futuna | Tribunal de Première Instance de Mata-Utu. needs_verification |
| Nouvelle-Calédonie | Its own legal order. See below — this is the hard case. |
Nouvelle-Calédonie: land that cannot be sold at all
Under the loi organique of 1999, terres coutumières are
inaliénables, incessibles, incommutables et insaisissables
— the “quatre i”. They may be leased. They can never change owner, by any
route: not by sale, not by gift, not by hypothèque, and not by seizure.
Terres coutumières comprise the réserves, land held by groupements de droit particulier local (GDPL), and land allocated by territorial bodies or land
agencies.
For an auction index this is an exclusion zone, not a quiet area
A territory showing zero auctions can mean “we have no data” or “no auction is legally possible here”. For customary land in New Caledonia it is the second. Those two must never be rendered the same way — an empty result that looks like missing coverage invites someone to go looking for the listings, and there are none to find.
Why this is the French analogue of a jurisdictional carve-out
The Argentine wiki’s structural surprise is a forum with no territory — national courts selling property anywhere. France has the mirror image: the forum is always territorial (saisie-immobiliere, art. R311-2), but the territory is not legally uniform. The carve-outs are geographic, not jurisdictional.
That difference should be visible in any map built on this data.