flpab

I used airbnb in NY State but not NYC so the rest of France is OK? They still need to pay tax.

julies

I have not followed this entire debate but know there have been other previous postings along the same lines. Here is what I want to know:

1) In reality how tight is the apartment rental market in Paris for residents who are searching for a permanent apartment? In other words, what is the apartment vacancy rate? (Is it just that one popular arrondisement that is causing this problem?)

2) Is this crack down really more due to the government wanting to collect taxes from apartment owners, or is it sparked by hotels who want to eliminate the competition since they are losing clientele to apartment rentals?

I'm asking as one who has stayed in both a hotel and an apartment (in the 11th rented through VRBO or Homeaway or some such) in Paris. We would like to return to an apartment for a longer (10 to 14 days) stay again. I would never stay that long in a hotel since we much prefer having the extra space to spread out and the ability to at least reheat food in some sort of kitchenette space. Wherever we visit, our rule of thumb is that for stays of three nights or longer we almost always seek out apartments. And, I don't need or want front desk people available at all times; we can manage just fine on our own.

kerouac

135,000 Parisians are on the waiting list for social housing in the city.

136,000 apartments are officially vacant in Paris. The majority of these "vacant" apartments are being rented to short term tourists.

Here is a list of 214 "appart-hôtels" in the city for people looking for legal apartment options: https://www.cityzenbooking.com/fr/r-3-85-paris.aspx

fuzzbucket

+1 for the advice kerouac has given.

Waiters, salespeople, teachers and even students have been forced to find lodging in the suburbs, due to the fact that property has been snapped up by foreign investors, subdivided and renovated with tourists in mind. Your waiter is probably grumpy because he faces a 90 min one-way journey, just trying to get to work in the morning.

The average rental apartment is 35 sq meters and rents for about 800 per week, which is well above the new rent control measures of about 600 per month for the same space. Residents cannot afford to pay this, but this rate is very attractive to tourists, since it's cheaper than many hotels.

The hotel industry is of course perturbed about the rental explosion, but has not lobbied to change laws against it, as has been done successfully in the US.

flpab - unless each person who owns and rents a single apartment in that building lives in it for 8 months out of the year or longer, and unless the building in toto had been converted to commercial use and pays commercial taxes to the city and made other concessions (such as constructing residential property equivalent to the apartment space that is rented short-term), your rental was not legal.

There are several popular rentals and agencies which state that "my family owns the whole building", but this does not make the apartments legal rentals, unless the other conditions I mentioned have been met.

flpab

The owner lives in building all year. I think our apartment is one she keeps for visiting kids and relatives. She likes being able to supplement her income and has no plans to rent the 55 sq meter apartment full time.
I live in a very transient/tourist state and we are use to rentals in buildings and condos. For the most part everyone is fine with it. We have a lot of people that live here only during the winter months and rent out their condos and house during the summer. It is the way they can afford a second home. I would take an apartment/house over a hotel anytime.

kerouac

And you do not live in a city with 135,000 people on a waiting list for housing?

stokebailey

Is this all a new problem? Some of our beloved fodors Paris experts have been recommending one rental apartment over another for years, then pivoted to condemnation in the past year. VRBO and their ilk were never an issue, or has it just reached critical mass and media awareness?

Will those waiting for social housing be able to afford for instance the Marais? or is the idea for better-heeled Parisians move up and vacate less-desired districts?

I'm all for real people inhabiting the city, naturally. Are more tourists going to Paris because of the attractive apartment rentals? Were those 135,000 tourists staying in that many hotel rooms before the internet made rentals possible?

julies

I'm trying to get a grasp on all of this.

What is "social housing"? Is this similar to subsidized or low income housing?

So, the government has set rental guidelines (rent control)of 600 per month. Owners/landlords are trying to make more money by renting to tourists. Tourists are ???? to blame for the situation since they are want to rent an apartment rather than stay in a hotel. If I have this correct, the fault, IMO, does not seem to lie with the tourists.

jaja

Amazon is collecting sales tax in Texas. *sigh*

brubenow

I'm just curious, the 135,000 people waiting for housing- what type of housing? Low income housing? High income housing in the most expensive arrondissements? Is it a need to find reasonably priced housing, or are the wealthy looking for housing as well?

pariswat

Hi

We are mixing a lot of different issues here.
the way I see this is as follwos :

Tax evasion
Renting appats in Paris just boomed recently. What was a minor way of housing tourists exploded recently thanks to Airbnb and others. Or so I read in the press. So the mayor realizes that by taxing these appts they would get a lot of money. I saw figures of 24000 appts being illegal - imagine about 200 nights a year (occupation rate of 60% ?) at 75 euros a night, means 360 M€. Tax rate of 33% (relatively low) would mean 120 M€ for the state.
Now you can play with the number of nights, of appt, of average rental cost per night...

Tax pressure
Taxes are increasing in France and French are suffering under this burden. Contemplating the possibility for the city of getting 100+ Me per year without bothering French taxpayers is a welcome idea for all in France.

Housing
There is a lack of housing in Paris, with prices per m2 skyrocketting. It is not unusual to see prices of 8000 €/m2 in suburbs (like Aubervilliers). An appat of 80 m2 for a family of 4 people would cost 640 000 e + Taxes so about 700 k€ - who can afford that ?
Not locals staring a career. So they go further and further away, clog the city each morning by commuting.
Putting more appartments on the market would make the price per m2 drop. These middle class people living outside Paris could come back closer. Don't expect too much social housing in arrondissement 6-7...

Hotel industry
They are yelling like pigs about unfair competition the same way taxis yell about Uber. They 'suffer' inspections, compliances to law and pay taxes. How they would house the hordes of tourists (at short term) since they are all full I don't know but still they yell. Note that the laws don't forbid appartment rentals but they have to be declared as commercial housings.

Safety
Illegal rentals don't necessarily comply with latest laws about safey (such as fire prevention etc). It is a small but real issue and one that looks good... Imagine hoiw Foxnews would relate a family of US tourists dying in a fire in an illegal rental in Paris. It is something waiting to happen the more you increase illegal rentals.

Sleep of the locals
Locals living in appartments (and renting them too) are not always happy about tourists coming back 'home' in illegal rentals at 3 am in the morning vomiting on the stairs and yelling at the top of their lungs while opening the doors to their rented appts. Locals wake up early in the morning and have little patience for uncaring tourists.

So in a nutshell :
The new law proposes to not inflict a burden on locals by taxing a few owners who rent illegally - everybody is happy about this... it is a typical example of a Pareto law !
Who care - locally - if tourists pay more to come to Paris ?

Now we can discuss about the niceties of imposing taxes on an old lady who placed all her hard gained savings in appats that she rents to tourists to supplement her meager pension. Yes, not nice for her. But there are also quite a lot of sharks who recently invested in appartments to convert them to illegal rentings.

We can also discuss about staying in appts vs hotels, I also prefer an appt but have never done it with a private owner. Again appartment rentals shoudl remain but would become more expensive if owners will want the same level of revenue. If tourists don't accept these levels of revenue, either the owners wil lget less or the tourists wil ltravel less or elsewhere.

Somehow it looks like market laws to me. You pay what you want to or exercise another option.

brubenow

Pariswat, thanks for the information.

NewbE

Yes, excellent summary, thank you.

Tulips

It's not just Paris; Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach have also put limits on short-term rentals. In Santa Monica any rental of less than 1 month is subjected to strict rules which basically make the majority of Airbnb rentals there illegal. In NYC many Airbnb rentals are illegal too.

kerouac

Here is an interesting interactive map showing the social housing financed by the city of Paris itself. You can zoom in to see each specific address. Many of them are apartments pre-empted by the city in standard buildings, often because they had been officially "vacant" for several years.

(Private companies also finance public housing exclusively through new construction of conversion of office or industrial buildings.)

http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/fr/map/...48.8761/2.3897

thursdaysd

Probably not a problem in Paris, but a serious issue with unregulated AirBnB rentals:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/yo...door.html?_r=0

Traviata

pariswat......I am glad we got to meet at the GTG.....yours is an excellent summary that helps me to understand the situation much better. Thank you!

fuzzbucket

The new rent control laws (Pinel) are based on neighborhood, as well as square footage - so prices range from about 16.7 EU/sq m to 8.7 EU/sq m for the same amount of space in different areas. This law only applies to new leases, and has just recently been decreed, so will take time to go fully into effect. Theoretically, vacation rentals should adhere to the rules, however, since the majority of them are illegal to begin with...

People applying for social housing (HLM) must be investigated, and have to meet guidelines regarding employment status and other criteria, which takes a long time. There are many more people seeking low-cost housing provided by the government than there are places to put them - apartment size doesn't always match the number of people in one family, for example. The city does expropriate buildings, but then they must be renovated and converted into living space, which can take years - especially if the building contains asbestos or has other defaults. The large gendarmerie near Place des Vosges is being readied for conversion to HLM, with more than 200 units expected. This project is expected to last 3 years, if all goes well.

The vacation rental explosion can be traced back to the financial crisis of 2008, when many people worldwide were forced to sell "extra property". This was also about the time when HomeAway bought VRBO and several smaller rental companies, bringing in marketing and internet experts to change the way people thought about vacations. Thanks to the immediacy of the internet, "living like a local" became the only acceptable travel option, and the the consumer became the driving force in this economy, dictating price levels, expected amenities, etc.

To make an example of some large buildings in the Marais: it was typical for one family to run a manufacturing industry in one or more buildings (bronze light fixtures, small leather goods, for example) on the lower floors, while the extended family and some privileged employees occupied the rest of the building. Over the years, the business was downsized, or ceased operating altogether. Family members died, and the apartments might have been rented to others, or left vacant. When taxes became unbearable during the 2008 crisis, one or more apartments were sold, often to a single foreign investor (or company) who renovated and put the unit(s) on the very profitable vacation rental market.

Most French residents cannot afford to purchase large amounts of property in the city centre, renovate and pay taxes on them - or simply are not interested in doing so. Foreign investors who live where the exchange rate is favorable or who prefer to take their fortunes out of their home countries are the ones who have profited and who continue to purchase and own most of the vacation rental units in Paris. They are not interested in lowering the rent or having permanent tenants (even if residents could afford their prices), because long-term tenants are protected by law, and it is extremely difficult to evict them even for just cause, which does not benefit the landlord.

ParisWat - it's not only tourists who come home drunk and disorderly, but at least residents have to face their irate neighbors and probably the police! Unfortunately, tourists have no real accountability (except to themselves and possibly a large damage deposit), which is what irritates people who live in buildings with many short-term rentals and rentals which are poorly-managed.
I agree with you that a fire-related disaster is likely to happen, and do not understand why tourists insist on staying in buildings that are technically firetraps, when they would most certainly not risk their family's safety during a vacation on their home turf.

pariswat

When I am drunk in Paris I consider I a tourist. When sober I am a local.
��
;-)

northie

pariswat-thanks for a great explanation. Unfortunately some tourists are still going to rent apartments and say "mine is legal".
Hopefully the crackdowns will proceed.