Airbnb and tourist rentals: the rules are getting tougher in these cities of Seine-Saint-Denis

Less than a month before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Stress is mounting for athletes, but also for owners who want to rent out their apartment during the Olympic period, and even beyond. The practice is multiplying more and more in Paris and the inner suburbs.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the departments the poorest in France which is becoming more and more gentrifiedthis phenomenon reduces the supply of housing. To overcome this problem, the Est Ensemble intercommunality has just adopted a tightening of the rules for nightly rentals.

A housing supply that has doubled in one year

In detail, on the territory of the nine municipalities (Bagnolet, Bobigny, Bondy, Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, Les Lilas, Montreuil, Noisy-le-Sec, Pantin, Romainville), the inter-municipality has “noted since 2022an increase in the number of accommodations offered for tourist rental”, according to the wording of the wish presented to the territorial council from June 25, 2024According to their figures, there would be “2,800 announcements in the summer of 2023, or 2% of the private park of Est Ensemble compared to 1,300 in 2021.”

A situation that can be explained, according to the community of communesby “the shift of demand to cities bordering Paris”, but also by “the Climate and Resilience law which will gradually prohibit the rental of energy-intensive housing.” This law does not concern furnished tourist rentalsmany homes could turn into Airbnbs.

The law already requires that you apply for authorization to change the use of the property beyond 120 rental days per year. From now on, the inhabitants of the nine cities concerned will see a more restrictive regime put in place. Thus, the housing must be “decent” and cannot be social or subsidized housing. The change in use of housing will be limited to three years. It is therefore impossible to see accommodations definitively become Airbnb accommodations.

In Les Lilas, a town particularly affected by the phenomenon, a compensation scheme will be set up. Each owner who transforms his apartment into a tourist rental must offer alternative accommodation. An initiative that could spread to the entire inner suburbs, while gentrification is accelerating in the Parisian suburbs, particularly with the arrival of the Grand Paris Express.

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