The Compromis de Vente in Morocco: What You Are Signing

Moroccan property practice uses two preliminary contracts that look similar but commit you differently. A compromis de vente is a reciprocal agreement: both of you are bound from the moment you sign, and both of you are expected to complete at the final deed unless a stated condition fails. A promesse de vente is one-sided: the seller alone is bound, taking the property off the market for a set period while you, the buyer, hold an option to go ahead or walk away.

The compromis is the far more common of the two, and it is the one agents tend to reach for by default. That is exactly why it is worth checking which one you are actually being asked to sign. Treating a one-sided promesse as if it binds the seller to sell at any cost, or treating a reciprocal compromis as if you can still walk away freely, is how disputes start.

A change to Article 4 of Morocco's Code des droits réels (Law 39-08), reported in Finances News Hebdo in September 2024, means a compromis de vente now has to be drawn up either as an authentic act, received by a notary or an adoul, or as a dated act prepared by a lawyer admitted to practise before the Cour de Cassation, whose signature then has to be homologated by the clerk's office of the first instance court. A document signed privately between buyer and seller, with none of those professionals involved, is not recognised for this purpose.

Nabil Haddaji, a lawyer at the Casablanca bar, and Abdellatif Yagou, a former president of Morocco's national order of notaries, both confirmed the change to Finances News Hebdo on the record. The reform closed a gap buyers had relied on for years: a quick private paper from an estate agent, signed to lock in a price while the real paperwork followed later. That paper can no longer do the job on its own.

In practice, this leaves you with the same two routes a Moroccan notary or an adoul already handles for the final sale, just applied one step earlier. Which of the two depends on the property's title. A registered titre foncier is handled by a notary, while a property still held on melkia goes through two adoul instead, and the difference between the two systems changes more than just who signs. The lawyer route exists as a third option, but it is narrower than it sounds: only lawyers admitted before the Cour de Cassation qualify, which is a smaller pool than the general bar, and the extra homologation step adds a court visit most buyers would rather avoid.

For a straightforward resale, going to the same notary or adoul who will later handle the final deed is usually the simplest route, since they already have the title certificate in hand and can draft the compromis around what it actually says.

Most compromis agreements come with a deposit paid on signing, generally described as a percentage of the price rather than a fixed sum. What that deposit actually protects depends entirely on where it sits while the sale is being finalised. A Moroccan notary holds purchase funds in an escrow account controlled by the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion, ring-fenced from their own finances, which is a materially different position from handing cash or a transfer directly to the seller or their agent before the final deed exists.

If your compromis is drafted by a lawyer rather than a notary or adoul, ask explicitly where the deposit is held until completion, because the same ring-fenced structure does not automatically apply. A deposit sitting in a seller's personal account is a deposit you may struggle to get back if the sale falls through for a reason that was supposed to protect you.

A compromis de vente is only as useful as the conditions written into it. The two that matter most for a cross-border buyer are a financing condition, releasing you if your mortgage is refused, and a title condition, confirming the certificate pulled from the ANCFCC is clean before you are locked in. The fuller checklist a lawyer or notary actually works through on a resale is worth reading before you agree to any deadline in the compromis itself, since several of those checks take longer than a first-time buyer expects.

Vague wording is the most common way a condition fails to do its job. "Subject to financing" with no bank, no amount and no deadline attached gives a notary nothing concrete to release you from if the loan falls through. Each condition needs a named institution, a figure, and a date, or it is not really a condition at all.

The compromis should set out plainly what happens if you withdraw without a valid condition behind you, and what happens if the seller does. Moroccan practice generally has the buyer forfeiting the deposit on an unjustified withdrawal, and the seller returning it if they are the one who pulls out, though the exact terms are whatever the two of you negotiate into the contract rather than a fixed rule. This is exactly where having the compromis drafted by a notary, adoul or qualified lawyer earns its keep: a professional reviewing the clause before you sign is checking that the consequences are actually written down, not assumed.

If you cannot be in Morocco to sign the compromis yourself, a power of attorney lets someone else sign in your place, provided it is drafted and registered correctly first. Combined with the rest of what changes when you are buying from abroad, this is usually how MRE buyers and foreign buyers handle a compromis that has to be signed on short notice while they are still overseas.