nukesafe.. wow.. your last paragraph.. I am stunned..You are basically saying you don't give a crap about breaking the laws in foreign countries.. cause why?.. How would you feel about that attitude coming from a foreigner who moves in beside you at home?
You have decided that the laws or bylaws in another country are not worth of your concern.. ?

You are somehow special?

All I am saying, Justine, is that the problem of conforming to the minutiae of all the laws of any place I travel and rent property is not my concern or responsibility. It is the concern of the person with whom I am making a contract.

I have no way of knowing if the apartment is "legal", if the host pays his taxes, if the building is in conformance with all of the building codes, if the shrubbery conforms to the covenants of the tenants association, etc. That is the responsibility of the owner of the property. I have no way of knowing if he is in conformance. I have no dog in that fight. All I care about is that the rental property matches the description provided and that I have a place to stay.

It is the same as if I rent a hotel room in NYC, and the sprinkler system does not pass a fire inspection just before I get there. The place gets closed down and I don't have a room. I could not have known about the requirements or the condition of the system, and would not have thought it my business to ask. The assumption is that the rental property meets requirements and I also know there is some residual risk I take when I make my reservation.

So, no, I do not consider myself "special" or above the law. I also am a host for a guest room in our home and take full responsibility to assure our place is fully in compliance with all local requirements. I live in the real world and travel with some trust that my landlord will also be honest.

I have not stayed with airbnb but have had great experiences with Friendly Rentals. Staying in an apartment is the way to go-especially with kids!

Just looked at the location. This would be wonderful with children. With the Tuileries Gardens adjacent to the Louvre, easy access to Metro Line 1. Also, you'll be close to the Louvre Batobus stop which takes you up and down the Seine River. Kids love this and it is usually a relaxing way to get away from the crowds. Apartments are the way to go with kids. Enjoy!

nukesafe ok, I do understand that point.. but what if you arrive and suite is suddenly not available because owners just got closed down.. there you are stuck trying to find last minute accomadation. Would you blame the owner.. or yourself for taking the risk of booking the place to begin with??

I booked an apartment this past summer in PAris,, with a fellow I have booked with before, then all this broke out about the apartment rentals being illegal. I had no idea. I also did not want to arrive and find out suite had been reported.
I contacted fellow. He explained he had all necessary permits to rent( he said the permits were very expensive ) .. and the owned all the units except one in one of his buildings.. so very unlikely any complaints from other owners.. I wanted to know we wouldn't end up on street.

More self-justifying of a non-justifiable position.

You DO KNOW Airbnb has illegal listings nukesafe. If you didn't know before, you certainly do now after reading this thread.

So YOU have a choice, to look at listings on a site where you KNOW many are illegal OR to look at sites where you know the listings are legal.

You do NOT get to put your responsibilities onto someone else. YOU are responsible for your actions. If you KNOWINGLY chose to participate on a site where you KNOW illegal activity is being promoted, YOU are as responsible as the host or Airbnb.

You made it very clear what your attitude is and now you are attempting to backpedal.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am a truly despicable person, Souourntraveller, by your definition. I also jaywalk on occasion, speed several miles over the limit, tell small fibs to my tax man, may even have been known to buy a pair of tennis shoes that I suspect have been made in an Asian sweatshop, and to sneak a bit of unpasteurized cheese past the customs.

Quelle Horreur

Any more stones you would care to throw?

Geez Sojourntraveller - who made you judge and jury?!?!?

actually Sojourntraveller (and a few others on this thread) think they are paid by the word. Anyone who wades through all the bloviating deserves a medal . . .

Here's a few words about the "gardienne" (concierge) situation:
It used to be that these people were responsible for overseeing who came and went in the building, as well as dealing with trash, cleaning the common areas and distributing the mail.

Nowadays, these employees (paid by building's residents) are only allowed to work during certain hours of the day, which means they don't have much time left to deal with people who need help - whether they are visitors or residents. You aren't allowed to disturb them outside of their "office hours" - it's against union regulations. The gardiennes are making a lot of noise about the short-term rentals, since it causes them extra work. Some of them get paid extra by the people who own the rentals, but they still don't like it.

Due to their relatively high salary, which includes many benefits, lots of co-proprietes are deciding to eliminate the gardienne. Instead, they contract with an enterprise that just takes out the trash and mops the hall once a week. So, you can't count on that nice person being there to help you, as in the past.

In my building, our gardienne does not work long hours and doesn't speak English. So, when someone has a problem, she sends them to knock on my door. People would much rather do this, instead of calling the rental manager, who will charge them 25 - 75 EU for "extra services". I haven't decided whether to stop answering my door or to demand payment up front...

Funny how when people cannot mount any kind of defense of their actions, that they then turn to attacking the person who points out what the issue is.

Airbnb knowingly allows listings of illegal rentals. Therefore by any moral code you can think of, they are part of the problem. Equally, those who use their site and know there are illegal rentals being allowed to list on it, they too are part of the problem. There is no argument anyone can mount against that truth.

Unfortunately, society today is all about me, me, me, selfish in the extreme. 'I bought shoes I know came from a sweatshop that abuses child labour but hey, I'm not a bad person, I just wanted cheap shoes. I'm not responsible for the business practices of the sweatshop.' Yeah right. Quelle horreur is indeed correct.

You read commments by manouche who is telling you all the reality of what is happening. You then say nothing in response, simply ignore what you don't want to hear.

You may feel you are not a bad person, that you are not someone the residents would complain about, that you don't make a lot of noise or have wild parties till 3am in the apartment you rent. That may all be quite true but read what manouche is telling you all over and over here. You are NOT WELCOME, no matter how well behaved you feel you are, you are an annoyance to residents and are taking housing stock off the long term rental market for local residents.

Try to put yourself in manouche's shoes. You live in a building where tourists are constantly coming and going. You do not live in a hotel, it is a residential building. How long will it be before you figure out all the problems with that?

Why do I not see any of you saying to manouche, right, we will not rent in the building where you live manouche or any other building you know of where we are not welcome.

Manouche, I suggest instead of answering questions for these tourists, you pick up the phone and report the illegal rental. Ask them to send around the appropriate person to have the tourists kicked out immediately. When that starts to happen more often, guess what, they'll on be here posting about how it was the person they rented from who was at fault, not their own fault. Nothing is ever their fault or their responsibility.

Actually, because our gardienne was complaining so much to the coop board, the members voted to denounce all the illegal rentals in the building to the Mayor's task force. Since the current president of the board has some political influence, we are hoping something comes of this.

The problem is that none of these owners lives in France, and they never visit their property. Their managers don't "meet and greet", and keys are either received by mail or picked up at an office in Montmartre. So, any demands made by the City will probably go unheeded, which will complicate matters. There is no easy way to get anything done about the current situation, which is making everyone even more frustrated.

Even if the Mayor's office isn't able to get results - assess significant fines and prohibit rentals - my neighbors are not afraid to take matters into their own hands. I would not want to get on the bad side of the gentleman on the 4th floor, who has offered to personally change all the locks on those apartments. I wouldn't put anything past an 82-year-old war hero.

I do know 2 property owners (French) in the Marais who have been threatened this year - so far, they have cancelled those bookings and the apartments are sitting empty. Since they own multiple properties, they were able to juggle those clients to other locations. They told their renters that they had to do unexpected repairs and offered them discounts for the inconvenience. A person (American) across the street was fined last year and forbidden to rent short-term, but is appealing the fine and renting by the week, anyway. The people who show up are told to say they are family or friends of the person who signed the lease - who has never actually been seen in the building.

Just curious - one must be a legal rental to be listed on Gites-de-France, but it doesn't seem that one must list there if they are legal. Is that not true? So it is perfectly feasible that an apartment is legal (and listed on AirBnB) but they choose not to list on gites-de-france? I find it somewhat hard to believe that there are only 47 legal apartment rentals in all of central Paris. That's how many Gites-de-France list, btw.

I've rented an apartment in Paris where we have to provide information about each person staying there as that is the deal the owner has with the rest of the owners in the building. So in that case the other owners ARE happy to have us there. One persons bad experience doesn't mean that the same situation is happening everywhere. And this apartment is in AirBnB, btw.

If I read reviews of an apartment that they did not feel welcome from other tenants in the building I would certainly take that into account. Honestly, however, I didn't see that on any for the apartments I was looking at in Paris and I read a lot of reviews.

The deal with VRBO and Parisians renting their apartments.. is it IS still legal IF the apartment they rent is THEIR primary residence and they are only renting it while they themselves are away for a few weeks etc.
You see those apartments are not contributing to the shortage of rental apartments needed for locals.. as it is an owner occupied rental.. not an unoccupied suite being used strictly for short term rentals income, which keeps it off the market for locals who need places to live.

I have no moral problem with people renting an apartment illegally any more than I have a problem with "illegal" immigrants. I actually oppose a lot of the rules. Next time I go to Paris for a vacation I would like to rent a short-term apartment there. I don't like a law that would prevent this.

However, on a travel message board, people need to help other people understand the new laws in Paris because many people have never heard about it they and their family could end up without anywhere to stay in Paris if they inadvertently rent an apartment that isn't being legally rented. That to me is the moral issue -- whether or not people are going to talk truthfully to people looking to rent in Paris these days.

A "primary residence" that an owner is temporarily vacating to rent to a tourist is pretty much exactly the kind of rental that Paris and other cities are trying to eliminate.

Whether or not this practice is creating a housing shortage is beside the point. The point is that the law in Paris presently gives neighbors and law enforcement the upper hand. If the apartment isn't being rented with the full blessing of Parisian authorities, with the owner possessing the appropriate permits, I don't know how they can guarantee the availability of the rental to a third party.

I would think that anybody in Paris offering a rental apartment who is claiming to have obtained the necessary permit can send a copy of the official document to a potential renter. I wouldn't book an apartment believing I had solved the issue of where I would be staying in Paris without seeing that document.

I do not have the numbers, but I would suppose the vast majority of rental apartments currently on the market in Paris are not fully "legal", per se. I also don't know how many of them there are, but I assume that the number of visitors the current ones accommodate is enormous.

If the city really clamps down and shuts off that many beds I hate to think of what that will do to hotel room availability and cost. Parisian hotels rooms are already in short supply, and can almost name their own price. If beds become even more scarce I (selfishly, some would say) fear for us ever taking another vacation in the city we love so much.

Oops, last line should read, 'out of town for a week or two.'

Would you please give it a rest, Sojourntraveller? This thread is so off track it is just the silliness of endlessly debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Can we agree that you have finally been able to have your last word?

I completely disagree that "When people go online to write reviews, they usually tend to do so when their experience was positive". If I showed up to a place that had a sign saying "AirBnB not welcome here" I would definitely post that on a review. However, what if the place IS legal and some residents just don't like it? I'd rather see something like "There are no legal short term rental apartments in this building. If you have rented an apartment here please note that your tenancy is illegal. Please call the owner and/or the agency you booked with to locate alternative accommodation".

Sojourntraveller, you are overly aggressive and angry out of all proportion to the matter at hand. Calm down or you risk having a stroke over a thread on a travel forum, for pete's sake.