Advice on apartment rental in Paris
 

Just learned from this forum about legal versus illegal apartment rentals in Paris and now feel nervous about renting. I’ve rented many times from Vrbo and Airbnb with no issue. We will be traveling in JULY. Dates not confirmed yet. We are looking for a 2 bedroom apartment. Unfortunately we must have a kitchen so a hotel room won’t work for us. Budget $300-400 USD. Might need to go down to a one bedroom depending on prices. Does anyone have a recommended apartment or company you have used which are legal? I’ve done a google search but it’s pretty vast and I can’t seem to weed out the illegal ones. At this time, not picky about location.

Paris vacation apartments. They’re legal. The Luxury two bedroom is beautiful, located on the gardens of the Palais Royal. Good luck!

Sorry, website: https://www.parisvacationapartments.com/en

Ditto Iwan2go recommendation regarding PVA. We stayed in one of their Palais Royale 2 br apartments years ago (2008) and loved it.

I will third the PVA recommendation. DW and I stayed with another couple here: https://www.parisvacationapartments....t-two-bedroom/

It was on the Mairie website in 2016 when stayed, but I haven't checked since.

The Citadine chain of aparthotels offers all the services of a hotel with the privacy (and kitchen) of an apartment. They have various locations in Paris. I was considering them for our recent trip to Paris, but they had no apartments big enough for our group of seven. They did have two-bedroom apartments, as well as one-bedroom apartments with a sofabed in the living room.

https://www.citadines.com/en/destina...UaAr01EALw_wcB

These are all legal.

The apartment linked to is indeed lovely and in a super location, but I do have two concerns.
1. The registration number according to law should be shown on the website
2. The apartment is rented for way more than 120 days/year. Check the calendar

What's the deal?

I have found many with the registration number. Where do you want to stay?

I'm having trouble understanding these rentals.

From the link furnished by Macross
"As we travel a lot, checkmyguest is helping us to manage our airbnbs"

How can this be? A legal rental can only be one's primary residence rented for less than 120 days/year, In the above case airbnbs is plural. These people have plural primary residences? Again how can this be?

Check my guest is an airbnb service, most of these apartments have services that check people in and out and clean the apartment. I am not a huge fan but people that own them have a life and aren't always in Paris. My fav place was owned by the lady on the 1st and 2nd floor. We stayed in her daughter's 3rd floor apartment that was working in Eygyt. She owned the building and rented the top floor out to a man full time.

Speaking of apartment rentals, Dublin news said there are a 1000 more apartments listed on airbnb since the ban went into law. We stayed at our normal place where our friend has 3 apartments in the building and would love to sell one or two but no buyers. She has them listed but no buyers or renters at the price they are worth. I imagine Paris is the same. Housing needed but no one can afford the monthly rental or price of the apartment. A one bedroom in Dublin is over 200,000 plus monthly fees and these are across from Dublin castle. Busy area. I love the one we had this trip facing the courtyard. She said she never took her ads off of airbnb. We just rent directly with her as we know each other. Our other friend in the city has a med student renting a room in his house. He is gone so much he never sees him. He said most on his street have one. Win-win.

PVA's website says: "Please note that all our apartments have a Paris official registration license number. It can be sent to you upon request. "

Can think of no good reason why the number is not on the apartment listing.

Some have said they steal them and put on their listing but seems easy enough to track them if they did. My last two rentals had the number listed.

Since the law went into effect, there have been many questions asked. I suppose if one has plural residences in the affected areas of France, one can choose one address to be a primary and have, with the tax authorities, listed the others as secondary. But, even with a primary it can only be rented 120 days or less a year. If the property is mortgaged, that's probably not cost effective.

As Macross points out "She has them listed but no buyers or renters at the price they are worth. I imagine Paris is the same." What they are worth as tourist rental properties is not at all what they are worth as regular rentals or for occupancy sales. This is directly related to the effect of driving up housing costs to price points locals can't afford, and in effect, what this anti-short term rental controversy is all about.

I'm very interested in watching all this play out. Some have said that this year's Paris elections will hit the Airbnb controversy hard as many Parisians are fed up. We'll see.

I actually emailed Alex at PVA to ask why the registration number isn’t listed, and he said exactly what one of you said - people cheat and put the number on their own rentals. He does have the number for each apartment, and they’re legal. And they’re rented more than 120 days per year because they are not primary residences - they are strictly business rentals. Hope that answers some of your concerns.

Means it's illegal

"a" number listed. no one can know whether it's "the" number.

Maybe book an apart-hotel as bvlenci suggested.

It wouldn't answer mine, but that's me.

I have asked for the registration # from PVA in the past and received a 2 page document, a declaration of deposee (?) I don't speak French but it included lots of information about the business and a registration #.

You can use Google Translate to get a fairly decent translation.

I ended up staying in Bagnolet, right on the border of the 20° arrondissment. Bagnolet, as far as I could determine, has no regulations about short-term rentals.

"Bagnolet, as far as I could determine, has no regulations about short-term rentals"

Not so..

Although distance from the center lessens an owner's chances of being caught, Paris suburban rentals are regulated as in the quote below from:one of many sources on the web
https://www.morningcroissant.com/hel...-in-france-114

In some cities, the rental of your secondary residence (i.e. pied-à-terre) requires the prior authorization or temporary authorization of the municipal government to modify the use of your accommodation within the premises intended for the tourist rental. It may concern:
- Municipalities of more than 200,000 inhabitants,
- The communes of the inner-ring suburbs of Paris (the departments of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne),
- Municipalities of more than 50,000 inhabitants forming part of the so-called stretched areas (with a high imbalance between supply and demand for housing).

I did a careful search specifically for Bagnolet, and the only restrictions I could find applied to longer-term rentals, and were intended to make sure all rental properties that would be the primary resident of the tenant were up to standard. This is the where I got that idea:

https://www.ville-bagnolet.fr/index...._de_louer.html

If I missed some other restriction, it was not due to carelessness. Is it impossible to find a legal apartment in the Paris area unless you're a real estate lawyer?

An apartment’s being a legal rental or not has nothing to do with the company renting it. Paris Vacation Apartments may or may not be a legal entity but the apartments they rent are a different matter entirely.

Some ground floor apartments have no short term rental restrictions. There are a handful of apartments legally rented short term in the city. Paris Perfect has a few of these but if you do not see a registration number, consider the property illegal.

Flagrantly illegal. The city will eventually catch up with them making them high risk rentals in my view.

I can think of one. The owner is hiding from the city and does not want to add fraud (misrepresenting an apartment) to potential charges of renting illegally.

The law clearly states that the registration number must be visible in any advertisement. An owner himself has zero risk if someone steals his registration number and uses it somewhere elsewhere.

All that is important to an owner is that:

1. he is the primary, full time occupant of the apartment
2. he rents it fewer than 120 days annually
3. he has registered with the city
4. the registration number is clearly visible on any advertisement or solicitation.

Effectively, the registration number is used by the city to audit owners and evaluate their compliance with the city´s rental laws.

There are a few business rentals in Paris. It is very expensive and difficult to get these licensed in Paris which is why there are fewer than 170 in the city. You can check the building addresses (not the apartments themselves) in which these apartments are located using this city website.

You can go by their Paris office at 86 Blvd. de Clichy in the 18th and ask. So can the authorities. I suspect that it is because their apartments are not likely even residential, but in fact approved as commercial, which is why they don't have to follow the registration requirements generally, just like hotels don't have to follow them.

I checked on the city website linked above and all of the addresses I've rented from PVA are on that list. In instances where I know they have multiple units in a building, that is noted on the above list. I'm sure there are many I am not aware of but I am comfortable renting from this agency

"Is it impossible to find a legal apartment in the Paris area unless you're a real estate lawyer?"

No. Booking.com openly states that all the apartment rentals listed on the Booking.com site are legal. One can also find the 13 digit regis. number openly on the website listing involved. It's required by law. The law is there to help. If the listing doesn't have the regis. number. it's most likely illegal.

I agree that a missing registration number is indicative of an illegal rental. However, the fact that an apartment has a number does not mean it is legal, it only suggests that it is legal. A registered apartment must be the owner´s primary address, and he may not rent his apartment for an excess of 120 days annually.

It is entirely possibly to register a vacation home as a rental but doing so does not make the apartment legal for renting. Vacation homes are not, by definition, primary residents. Eventually, the city will catch up with those fraudulently registering apartments which are not primary residents. In the meantime, all anyone can do is assume that an apartment with a registration number is legal.

Thank you for the PVA recommendation. They definitely look beautiful. Unfortunately there is limited availability and they are quite expensive approx. $500 USD/night which is approx $650 CDN. Far too much for us!

Thank you for your recommendation on Citadine. Unfortunately they don't have any 2 bedrooms available. I like the suggestion of aparthotels which I will search to see if there are others. Does anyone know of others they would recommend.

Thank you Envierges for the booking.com suggestion. Where on the site does it state that all the apartment rentals are legal? I can't seem to find it. This is definitely a good option as they have a lot more choices and prices seem to be more reasonable for some.

My understanding is that Booking.com will not accept listings that are not legal and I have never heard comments otherwise. The registration number should be posted.

https://partner.booking.com/en-us/he...nd-regulations

For Amsterdam booking has certainly accepted short let listings that were illegal.

I rented this appartment through booking.com. There are no registration numbers for Bagnolet.

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. The 2-bedroom apartment I was considering was in the Adagio chain, not Citadine. It was this:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/pvb...ont.en-gb.html

Enter 5 people and request 1 room to see the 2-bedroom apartment.

We stayed in a hotel room last year in Paris with a small kitchenette. If you need a proper kitchen, with full facilities, that wouldn't work but we could put together a simple meal easily. Especially as there was a Marks and Spencer just down the road that had a reasonable small supermarket. Monoprix also nearby from memory. The hotel was Hotel Excelsior Latin. I think we had a fridge, microwave, kettle, plates, cutlery etc but no cooking equipment like pots and pans. There must be other hotels around with kitchenettes, if this would work for you. I just noticed they have a family suite but our room was a normal queen type room, though more spacious than we expected.

https://www.excelsior-paris-hotel.com/rooms
Kay

Agree with Kay that the number of hotels with basic kitchenettes is slowly growing and a viable alternative if needed. booking.com allows you to filter by 'hotels' and 'self catering' or 'kitchen'.

I would still go with airbnb, did you look at the one I posted? What area do you want to be in?
Airbnb is teaming up with the Olympics to house people in Paris. Explain that.

'Airbnb is teaming up with the Olympics to house people in Paris'

Paris and Mayor Hidalgo are furious. Another development that will be interesting to watch.

Something else to think about in the light of this
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...r-and-tourists
https://parispropertygroup.com/blog/...s-real-estate/

Is a city a museum for tourists or a residence for citizens...can it be both? My neighborhood at the outskirts of Paris has become much livelier as people move from central Paris. Paris is dynamic and changing at its outer edges, while a tourist ghetto is being created in the center.