I have been reading about the crackdown on apartment rentals in Paris and have been advised to just stay in a hotel for my 5 nights there. Does anyone know of legitimate vacation rental sites that I could check out? If there even are any...

I do but someone will say it isn't so don't bother anymore.
Vacationinparis.com call them, they are located in NJ and see what they can tell you. I looked at http://www.citadines.com/france/pari...lleMaraisParis

not bad, not much charm except the balcony but you have a bit of room even in a studio.

Sites are legit.

However they don't care if the owners they advertise for are frauding or not.

So in the end : nobody knows
Avoid cash transaction require an invoice and you will be doing your job.

Say you don't care and it us the job of authorities to sort it out and somebody will say you are accomplice to thieves and have no morality.

http://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dat...meubles/table/

The link Macross listed is useless. It only lists property addresses and not the individual apartments, which are not identified.

Agencies can and do list apartments without breaking the law.
But almost all apartments they list - virtually 90% - are illegal rentals.

The only choices you have in Paris as far as "legitimate vacation rental sites" are these legal apart'hotels:
Citadines
Adagio
Hotel Residence Henri IV
Le Roi de Sicile

They are all fine, have what you need and are legal.

And for 5 nights I would not bother checking I would stay in a hotel indeed. I sleep in good ones for less than 125 euros a night on average.

I just reached 160 different hotels in which I slept so about 10 pc of Paris hotels. (And I sent my itinerary to 54378,3 fodorites.