The seasonal rental of second homes is now strictly regulated and requires, in certain cases, a declaration to the town hall as well as a change of use. In order to help you see things more clearly, HelloBnb summarizes what you need to know before offering your second home for rent on Airbnb.
Renting out your second home
When you occupy your home for at least 8 months a year (except for professional obligations), we speak, according to the law, of a principal residence. This residence will then appear on your tax return. All other properties are then by default declared as secondary residences. In France, and according to the tax code, you can only declare one main residence, except in exceptional cases of double residence (notably for professional reasons, but proof must be provided).
If you frequently travel abroad for work but wish to keep your tax residence in France, your main residence will be the one where your family usually resides or the place where you have your strongest social ties. According to the Direction de l’information légale et administrative, “your main residence is the place where you have your main establishment on December 31 of the year in which you receive income. This is the place where you actually and usually reside. When it is not possible to use the family criterion, the main residence is the one where you have the strongest ties “.
What are the rental conditions?
In the case of a seasonal rental (on the Airbnb platform for example), your advert falls into the category of furnished tourist accommodation. You must therefore declare the activity to the town hall. Since the adoption of the ELAN law in October 2018, failure to comply with this obligation may now cost you a fine of up to €5000 (instead of €450 previously).
Seasonal rental platforms are now mobilizing to fight against the abuses that the seasonal market can cause. Some municipalities are implementing the decree of April 29, 2017, which authorizes cities in the tense zone to use a registration via the internet of seasonal rental accommodations, to facilitate controls.
Paris has implemented such a system, which is mandatory as of December 1, 2017.
Specific conditions for certain cities
In cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants or in the inner suburbs of Paris and in agglomerations with more than 50,000 inhabitants located in a tense zone, you will have to carry out a change of use procedure at the town hall in order to be able to rent out your second home. Your property will thus be transformed into a “commercial” premises intended for tourist rental and can be rented out. If you have any doubts about the regulations in force in your town, we strongly advise you to contact your town hall to avoid any infringement of the law.
In most cases, the change of use procedure is only declarative, but in certain cities considered as “tense zones”, it may be subject to an authorization. Defined by the Alur law in order to limit the increase in rents in certain French cities, the “tense zones” are subject to specific rental rules and, in certain cases, to rent control. Today, 28 cities in 27 departments, including Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Bordeaux, are subject to rent control because it is considered that the supply of housing is not sufficient to meet demand.
In these cities, you will have to respect a compensation rule: for each square meter of commercial space, an equivalent amount of commercial space must be converted into housing space. It should be noted that the compensation is even doubled in certain Parisian districts where the housing shortage is greatest (this is known as a reinforced compensation sector). In other words, to combat the drying up of the residential housing market, some large cities require you to buy a commercial space as compensation, transform it into housing and rent it out. If you can’t find an equivalent space, the city hall also offers you to buy a compensation title, with a price per square meter.
The procedure for renting out a second home is therefore more delicate than that of a main home. New laws and regulations have been introduced to regulate this practice and owners must comply with them or face increasingly heavy fines.
Find all the regulations of short-term rental on our dedicated article:
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Legislation of the short term rental Anyway, HelloBnb recommends you to do your own research before starting any seasonal rental process – this article cannot be considered as a real legal and/or fiscal advice. As the laws concerning vacation rentals change quickly, our articles are not always updated accordingly. We therefore recommend that you check that the laws mentioned in an article are still in force before using them. You can find more information on the regulation of seasonal rentals on the Airbnb Citizen platform, dedicated to the regulation of seasonal rentals in France.