Of course this is prohibited in France too. The thing now is to prove things, and so I have to check out what I have signed, etc...
I made a mistake in my previous post : in fact the reparation of the basement should be due this very year, and I don't have a spare penny for that.
This is just ridiculous.
And my feeling is that, on top of that, I've been screwed by everyone in the affair : ex-owner, housing agency, technical company, notary, banker... All of them may have got more from what I should have paid, they're all dirty pigs that I have fed. Especially, the technical company (which charged me 125 € for a hypothetical checking of the flat, in order to deliver a paper for one of my loans (BTW the checking is full of errors)) is friends with the housing agency (one is recommended by the other) ; a lump of money I had refused to give until last week. The guy from the "syndic" (company managing the building) has more or less been asked for bribing by the guy from the housing agency. It has all ended up in the opposite party (ex-owner + her notary) being ready late for the signing day because of this, and then I had to pay an extra 20 € for my bank check to be delivered quickly to the notary...
I type as I think, so it's all messy in this post. To sum up : I've been fucked in the arse, but the petroleum jelly worked fine.