pariswat

If the owner asks you to pay cash, you know it it illegal.

BTW, for fun I wanted to book a property on Airbnb at a date in november.

I click on the first property I found, 275 a day + about 20 € of fee. It looked nice.
Then I clicked on a link saying that owner has other properties (ding... like exactly waht ALUR law wants to forbid).

This is the last comment I saw on his site :
I'm sure the guy who rented is glad to get 100 USD for cancellation of his reservation ONE WEEK before coming.

Iris, a comment ?

https://www.airbnb.fr/users/show/673378

The host canceled this reservation 7 days before arrival. This is an automated posting.

Eduardo
Réponse de Eduardo :
As stated on other reviews, we've had issues with a neighbor downstair the apartment, I prefer then not to receive other reservations until the situation is completely solved. I assume the penalty of 100,00 dollars for this cancelation.

iris1745

Of course. Tens of thousands of apartment rentals in Paris and certainly you have shown us a large sampling of problems.

Then we have the bed bug issue, like no hotels have this problem.

lauren_s_kahn

Contact [email protected]. He is a reasonable rental agent I have used for Paris apartments before. He is generally cheaper than the big agencies.

pariswat

Ah Iris...

I'm not disappointed in your answer.

Tesn of thousands of rentals, but I click on one, and I find this. The Gods must favour me

What has the bed bug issue to do with it ?
I've been sleeping in hundreds of hotels and never had the problem.

Are you showing me a large sampling of problems ?

In french for people like you we say :
Faites comme je dis, pas comme je fais..

iris1745

I think what I have attempted to show is 'both' sides of the issue via the last web site I posted.

Seems to be a bit more than some!!

yestravel

I know I contributed to taking this thread off topic, but I don't think all the posts are helping the original OP, who hasn't returned--dont blame him/her.

manouche

Most people who ask questions like this - including the "don't hate me" part - expect a lively discussion that would help them make up their mind. It's easy for anyone to pick and choose from any posts they might find helpful or not. I don't think it's necessary for anyone who asks a question on a forum like this to come back and say "thanks" or anything else unless they are so inclined.

I agree with ParisWat that the bedbug issue took an awful lot of initiative and was probably included as one of the many red herrings that cloud the issue.

Nobody has mentioned the newest law concerning rent control in Paris. Currently, the average 35 m2 vacation rental goes for approx 750 EU per week, which is far beyond the legal monthly rental fee of approx 900 EU for the same property. Agencies as well as individuals will have to do some creative thinking in order to get around this problem.

iris1745

At least I'm happy I didn't bring up the 'bed bug' issue. lol

bvlenci

Manouche said << Apartments can pay to list on any advertising portal, from VRBO, AirBnB, www.booking.com and so forth. Many illegal apartments list themselves as "apart'hotels",...>>

I have found the apartments I rented on booking.com to be completely above board, requesting the passport, collecting the tourist tax, giving me a fiscal receipt. I assume that the illegal apartments would be hesitant to use a site like this. They haven't all allowed full payment by credit card, and they have often met me with a key. I don't consider these necessarily a sign of illegality. Even some B&Bs don't have 24-hour receptions, and a small owner may not be equipped to process credit cards. (However, now, in Italy it's illegal to make cash transactions of more than €1000; I've never been in a situation where that would have been a problem.)

I prefer hotels myself, all other things being equal. However, when traveling in a family group, or when staying for a longer time, I do like the space of an apartment. I don't care for shopping and cooking, and especially not housekeeping, when I'm on holiday, though. I've never seen an apartment kitchen where I could do any sort of serious cooking. I once cooked Christmas dinner in an apartment in London, where absolutely nothing is open on Christmas, but I made sure to have most of the menu pre-cooked, or requiring minimal intervention, and I brought my own plum pudding from home!

iris1745

Here is another web site in order to attempt to portray both sides of the issue.

Unlike a few who continually talk with blinders on, or one side of the story and then talk to pastry stuffing people. so funny.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...aring/29263881

MmePerdu

A very interesting article, iris1745. So the figures for May mean, if they examined 2000 properties and collected 344,000€ in fines. So applying fines collected to cost of busting the criminals, it cost them 322€ to examine each property. And only found 100 illegal ones, 56 of which were fined. I wonder if Paris residents believe that's cost effective? And is it accomplishing anything toward returning these rentals to the local-resident market?

And as for Berlin, "Berlin inspectors regularly check room-sharing sites to make sure no one is violating the rule. Residents are eager to help. In the first seven months after the ban's introduction, neighbors notified authorities of about 700 potentially illegal rentals, Kuehne said." Remind you of anything?

FrenchMystiqueTours

A piece of important info that article leaves out is that most of the time when inspectors knocked on a door they got no response. One article I read a while ago (sorry, forgot the source article) recounts the experience of an apartment inspector and they noted that most of the time no one was home, or at least no one answered. In fact it was only a small minority of apartments they visited where they were able to speak with anyone. So while only 100 of 2,000 apartments visited received a fine that doesn't mean the other 1,900 are in compliance with the ALUR law. The article also gave a very sketchy description of short term rental property requirements, certainly not enough for an interested party to understand fully what is involved to be in compliance with the law. Not that I have a dog in this fight, nor have I read much of this thread, but I think what is important no matter what your opinion about short term rentals in Paris is to understand how a property owner must be in compliance with the law to legally rent out their residence on a short term basis.

FrenchMystiqueTours

And perhaps I even misinterpreted the article because it says 2,000 apartments were inspected but that doesn't specify if that means an inspection/interview with the owner was conducted when they visited for the inspection or if they simply opened an investigation on that apartment but were unable to make contact with an owner/occupant at the time of site inspection. The way the inspections are being performed is that cursory evidence is gathered (through AirBnB, Homeaway etc.) and then an inspector goes to knock on the apt. door to do an inspection and ask questions.

Sarastro

<i>Here is another web site in order to attempt to portray both sides of the issue. </i>

It´s not clear what you mean by <i>both sides</i> unless you are referring to those who abide by local laws and those who blatantly flaunt them.

France has recently enacted new, stronger laws for all real estate transactions. This group of new laws is known as ALUR which stands for Accès au Logement et Urbanisme Rénové. Among its many provisions are restrictions, in cities having more than 200,000 residents, against short term rentals, defined as rental periods of less than one year. The law holds owners responsible for violations, not rental agencies, and it is owners who pay the fines if they do not register their rental property with the city.

Owners may rent their primary residence for a period not to exceed 4 months per year. Full time renters may not sub-rent their primary residences without written permission of the owner. There have been fines, typically around 2,000€ per violation, given to renters who sub-let their primary residences without the written permission of the owner. Violations of this type will not result in anyone´s reporting them to a US news agency but the apartments will be withdrawn from the market and the violator will pay the fine none the less.

What is confusing is the number of airbnb´s 40,000 Paris listings that are, in truth, legitimate offerings by owners renting their primary residences while on vacation. Airbnb, according to the link posted by iris1745, states that 83% of their 40,000 listings are of this type or just over 33,000. Laurence Boccara, an independent journalist estimates the total number of qualified owners who rent to vacationers in Paris does not exceed 7,000, a number which would indicate that over 80% of Airbnb´s listings are for illegally offered apartments, assuming that Airbnb also lists all of the legitimate offers. She talks at length about the laws and short term rental apartments in this segment (in French only):

http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/vide...3631059669001/

In the end, it makes absolutely no difference at all if a group of foreign travelers does not like these changes; changes which might interfere with their travel priorities. It makes no difference if the mayor´s task force is moving rapidly or at a slower methodical pace. The vacation rental landscape in Paris has been altered. It will change even more visibly in the upcoming months and years. Not everyone will be pleased.

MmePerdu

FMT, the number who received fines was only 46 of the 2,000, not 100. In any case, I found the numbers interesting and have no real "side" as far as the situation in Paris are concerned. Yes, I'm an Airbnb customer in general, and have rented a studio apartment in Paris once through the site. But that doesn't mean I favor breaking the law and understand entirely how the situation can result in residents of a city being priced out of a home. I'm not in favor of it, by any means, and will likely stay in hotels in future. Or in an apartment in a smaller community outside the city, which I'd enjoy, and where housing is less at a premium, vacation rentals less intrusive. It could be a compromise with an up side for everyone. Especially if the owner of the apartment, many of which are attached to owners' homes, needs the income, as I do when I rent my guest room.

FrenchMystiqueTours

I understand you MmePerdu and I don't want to get involved in this issue because i don't want to take sides. But I thought with all the distractions and tangents it was important to mention that the only issue is whether the owner of a rental unit is in compliance with ALUR. That's really the crux of the whole issue. I'm not going to get involved in blaming people or pointing fingers. Just not my thing.

sandralist

Regarding bedbugs:

I did not bring up the issue of bedbugs. That was the reason a tourist was given for the very sudden cancellation of a booked apartment. That bedbugs had been discovered in the rental just that very morning and therefore it was impossible to go through with the contract because it would take 3 weeks to get rid of the bedbugs.

This is more "shoot the messenger" stuff from Iris, who takes that attitude even when he doesn't read or understand what is being posted.

Were there bedbugs in that suddenly unavailable apartment? Who knows? None were seen by the person who booked the apartment because he never was let into that apartment -- if it existed in the first place But I was asked to provide some specific recent examples where people with booked contracts, who were relying on having a place to stay in Paris, suddenly had that yanked away from them, and what they were told was that the apartment was uninhabitable for some unfortunate reason beyond everyone's control -- and yet is not unreasonable to wonder aloud whether the apartment was being rented illegally and that the owner suddenly slammed the door because he or she got a warning from authorities, a lawyer or unhappy neighbors to stop the illegality or there would be consequences.

bvlienci,

If most of your experiences of renting apartments is in countries or cities where it is legal to do so -- and by and large it is legal in Italy -- you might be unaware of the many pitfalls and risks that do exist for people looking to rent apartments in cities like New York or Paris (and increasingly Berlin and Barcelona).

Finally, regarding the OP, her self-description of being someone who works with NGOs makes me think she has realized she should probably network within her professional circle. Because of what I do, I spend some time every day cleaning out my mailbox of sublet offers all over the world from NGO workers who will be traveling from home to work in refugree centers, Ebola camps, international conference events, etc, who would LOVE to have someone sublet their apartment for X weeks or months (and water the plants)! It would be a better use of the OPs time to make those kinds of contacts than to hang around Fodor's looking for "permission" from people with an emotional investment in insisting that others should take unnecessary risks with the lodging situtation when they travel for work and stop listening to anyone who sounds a note of caution.

MmePerdu

FrenchMystiqueTours, agreed. The law doesn't seem unreasonable considering the city's particular circumstances and, in any case, who wants to visit a city and have no locals left in the neighborhoods that we can pretend to live like? And when the dust settles, Adrian Leeds will have bought up all the foreign-owned formerly-illegal rentals she originally sold, for a relative song and rented them out on 1 year leases and made a second killing.

FrenchMystiqueTours

I liked the way you framed that. Pretty much sums it up MmePerdu.

yestravel

OP didn't seem to me to be asking for permission from Fodors.