Subletting your offices: sublet or service agreement?

Your team has gone hybrid, a hire has been pushed back, or you took a slightly oversized office floor betting on growth: the result is empty desks you pay for every month. The instinctive response is to sublet your office. But under a commercial lease, subletting is a narrow, tightly regulated and risky path.

There is another route that most business owners don't know about: hosting other companies under a service agreement, just as a business centre or office operator does. Since a June 2024 ruling by the Cour de cassation, France's highest court, this arrangement has been clearly distinguished from subletting. Here's how to choose, and above all how to do it without putting your lease at risk.

In short: subletting requires your landlord's consent and their involvement in the agreement, and it gives the occupier lasting rights. A service agreement (space plus genuine services, at a single all-in price) falls outside this regime: no sublet authorisation procedure, no adjustment to your rent, and month-to-month contracts. One condition: your lease must not prohibit making the premises available to third parties altogether.

Sublet or service agreement: the difference in one sentence

With a sublet, you rent part of your floor space to another company: you become its landlord. With a service agreement, you sell a complete office service (an equipped workstation, reception, cleaning, internet, meeting rooms and so on) for a single all-in price: you become its service provider, just like an office operator.

The distinction sounds like a legal technicality. Yet it changes everything: who has to give consent, how long the occupier can stay, and what you risk if things go wrong.

Subletting under a French commercial lease: what the law says

The rule is set out in Article L145-31 of the French Commercial Code: "unless otherwise stipulated in the lease or agreed by the landlord, any total or partial subletting is prohibited". In practice, four constraints apply.

1. Landlord consent, and their involvement in the agreement

First, your lease must allow subletting, or your landlord must agree to it. Then, even once the sublet is authorised, the landlord must be invited to take part in the agreement: you notify them of your plans (by recorded delivery letter or via a bailiff) and they have 15 days to say whether they wish to take part. The Cour de cassation has repeatedly confirmed that a general authorisation to sublet does not exempt you from this formality.

2. Your rent can go up

If you sublet for more than you pay, your landlord can demand a corresponding increase in your own rent. In other words, the margin you were hoping for may end up in their pocket.

3. A subtenant who is hard to remove

A sublet cannot last longer than your own lease. But a lawful subtenant may benefit from French commercial lease protection, and in some cases request renewal directly from the landlord (Article L145-32). That's a far cry from the flexibility you're after when you simply want a few desks to pay their way until you hire.

4. Heavy penalties if it's done wrong

Subletting without consent exposes you to termination of your lease, or to a refusal to renew without eviction compensation. The Cour de cassation has also ruled that sub-rents collected without authorisation belong to the landlord: first applied in 2019 to a residential let, this reasoning was taken up again in 2023 in a commercial lease dispute. You could therefore have to hand back everything you've collected.

Note: there is no exception for companies within the same group. Subletting to a subsidiary also requires the landlord's consent, unless the lease says otherwise.

For an overview of your options when you have unused space, see also our 5 solutions for unused floor space.

The service agreement: often the simpler alternative

On 27 June 2024, the Cour de cassation settled a question that had divided the courts (3rd Civil Chamber, no. 22-22.823, published judgment). A tenant was offering companies "services and the provision of offices". Its landlord saw these as sublets and demanded a rent increase. The Court ruled against the landlord:

"Characterisation as a sublet […] is excluded where the tenant makes the leased premises available to third parties for a price set on a global basis, which inseparably remunerates both the provision of the premises and specific services sought by the clients."

In other words, when what you sell is a complete office service rather than square metres, you are not subletting. The consequences are very practical:

• No sublet authorisation procedure and no landlord involvement in each contract: Article L145-31 does not apply.
• No adjustment to your rent on the grounds that you charge more than you pay.
• No commercial lease for your occupiers: they are clients of a service, with no right to renewal and no eviction compensation.
• Short, flexible contracts: term and notice period are up to you. Month-to-month contracts, a 3- or 6-month commitment: choose according to how clearly you can see your hiring plans.
• You stay in charge of the premises: you manage access and organisation, and you can take back your desks when your team grows.

This is exactly the model used by managed offices and business centres, on your own scale. To compare the two contractual approaches from the occupier's side, see our article commercial lease or service agreement.

3 conditions for a service agreement to hold up

The courts look at the reality, not the title of the contract. Calling a sublet a "service agreement" is not enough: in September 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal recharacterised "service contracts" as prohibited sublets, because providing the premises was the main service and the other services were marginal. The outcome: a finding of serious breach, loss of eviction compensation and eviction of the tenant. Three conditions therefore have to be met.

Condition 1: genuine, specific services included in a single all-in price

Wi-Fi and a cleaner coming round are not enough: they are standard features of any rental. What makes the difference is a real package of services your clients actually want: visitor reception, mail handling, meeting rooms, furniture and equipment, business-grade internet, cleaning, security, shared areas (kitchen, phone booths), insurance. All billed per desk or as a flat fee, in a single price, not per square metre with optional services.

Condition 2: you keep control of the premises

You manage the badges and keys, access hours, security and how the space is organised. If the hosted company has a self-contained floor with its own lock and never sees you, it starts to look like a sublet.

Condition 3: your lease doesn't prohibit it

This is the point many people overlook. The 2024 ruling rules out the sublet regime, not the clauses in your lease. Re-read two of them:

• The occupation clause: many office leases prohibit not only subletting but "any provision of the premises to a third party, even free of charge" or "any occupation by a third party on any basis whatsoever". The Cour de cassation has already applied this type of clause to an arrangement that was not a sublet, and upheld the termination of the lease. If your lease contains this clause, your landlord's written consent is still required.
• The permitted use clause: a lease "for office use for the company's business" does not necessarily cover providing office services. If that activity falls outside what you are authorised to do, you will need to go through a change-of-use procedure (déspécialisation, Articles L145-47 and L145-48).

If your lease is silent on these points, or expressly allows shared offices to be made available, you're free to go ahead. Otherwise, it's a conversation to open with your landlord, and it often goes better than you might fear: a tenant who makes their space pay is a tenant who stays solvent.

Manage it yourself or outsource the management

Once you've chosen the arrangement, there's the day-to-day to deal with. Hosting other companies under a service agreement means taking on a small-scale operator's job: finding clients, vetting them, signing, invoicing, handling move-ins and move-outs. There are two ways to organise it.

Option 1: you manage it in-house

This is workable for one or two clients, if your office manager has the time. In practice, you will need to:

• write and publish the listings, then respond to enquiries;
• screen candidates: reliability, financial standing, fit with your teams;
• organise viewings;
• draw up service agreements that meet the 3 conditions above;
• invoice every month, track payments and chase late payers;
• handle move-ins and move-outs: badges, access, notice periods, restoring the space.

The risk: that this "little side project" eats up several hours a week, and that a poorly drafted contract tips the arrangement into a sublet.

Option 2: you outsource everything (contract management)

Specialists handle the entire process for you: this is contract management, and it's what Desk to Desk offers. We market your space to companies looking for offices, screen and qualify enquiries, organise viewings, and handle contracts, invoicing and payment tracking, as well as move-ins and move-outs.

You keep control of what matters: you approve every company you host, and you take back your desks when your team grows. Another advantage: service agreements built on the same model, with genuine services and a single all-in price, reduce the risk of recharacterisation.

Sublet vs service agreement: side by side

Before you start: the checklist

• Re-read your lease: the subletting clause, the third-party occupation clause and the permitted use clause. If in doubt, have it reviewed by a commercial lease lawyer: a few hundred euros is nothing compared with the risk of losing your lease.
• Define your service offering and a single all-in price per desk. Set it out in a service agreement that details the services, access, term, notice period and house rules.
• Tell your insurer so they can extend your comprehensive business policy, and ask each company you host for a certificate of liability insurance. As far as your landlord is concerned, you remain liable for any damage.
• No registered business address without approval: if a company wants to register its head office with you, that counts as a business address service (domiciliation), which requires prefectural approval (Article L123-11-3 of the French Commercial Code). Providing it without approval is a criminal offence. Simply hosting a team that keeps its registered office elsewhere does not raise this issue.
• Charge 20% VAT on your services, and check the treatment with your accountant.
• Plan for safety: if your meeting rooms receive outside visitors, check with your town hall whether the rules for buildings open to the public apply to your space.

Desk to Desk's advice

For a handful of desks freed up by hybrid working or a delayed hire, a service agreement is almost always the right tool: it leaves you in control of your premises and free to take them back when your team grows. Subletting makes sense in one specific case: you want to hand over a self-contained part of your premises for the long term (an entire floor, with its own entrance) and your landlord agrees.

Either way, the most profitable conversation is often the one you keep putting off: talking to your landlord. A written agreement, even a short one, secures everything else.

FAQ: subletting your office

Make your empty desks pay

Got more office space than you need? Desk to Desk markets your space to qualified companies that are actively searching, and can take care of all the management: viewings, contracts, invoicing, move-ins and move-outs.

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This article outlines the general legal framework as at 29 September 2026 and does not constitute legal advice. Every lease is different: have yours reviewed by a lawyer before making your premises available to third parties.