Paris Travel Forum

Is anyone familiar from the Paris side or *any* VTer who rents apartments
with the new supposed "crackdown" on owners of pied-à-terres / apartments in Paris who rent their places the majority of the year?

Supposedly the Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë has ordered his housing agency, the Bureau de la Protection des Locaux d’Habitation, to enforce via large fines
(as much as 25 thousand euros!) against anyone who violates the law.

If you know more about it (this is the first I've heard of it) or like me, if you are interested, please if possible take the time to read both short pages of this recent New York Times piece about it,

"To Address Its Housing Shortage, Paris Cracks Down on Pied-à-Terre Rentals"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/global/07rent.html?src=me&ref=business

and then please let me know (I'm no expert, I just enjoy renting apartments in Paris) what you know or think about it.

This part of the article (aside from the size of the fines) really caught my attention:

“We decided to apply the law in a strict manner,” said Franck Affortit, the agency’s assistant director. “Letters have been sent to owners, who include many Italians, some Americans and British AND FRENCH.” (emphasis mine)

Pedro / pedmar, as one of my favorite Paris forum contributors, I hope you and any other VTers might please find the time when it's convenient to weigh in on this, even if you think it's no big deal.

Please, with all due respect, no "I prefer hotels" comments if possible:
My best to you, but there are still some of us (probably in the minority) here at vt and elsewhere who personally prefer apartment rentals in Paris to hotels.

It would imo be such a drag if due to this "crackdown" the availability pool dried up for us Paris apartment lovers.


Thanks in advance to *anyone* willing to research a little by reading the article and share their opinion, questions, or anything they know about it.

Bonne journée!

I suspect many of us read the article in the NY Times this morning and that's what we know. It makes a certain sense if there is a housing shortage in Paris. I can also understand neighbors being upset about a different family or group living upstairs-downstairs-next door every week especially if there have been noisy groups or people who don't take care of the place. There are good and bad sides to renting out apartments. I'm not sure if housing values would go up or down if rentals were disallowed. I do know a lot of people have bought Paris apartments as an income property so if they can't rent them, they lose money. They are, of course, allowed to rent them out for a year or more. I guess the law has been on the books for a while that apts. must be rented for at least a year but no one has bothered to enforce that law . . . until now.

It will be interesting to hear the Parisian side of this.

Bookmark! That is interesting but I never heard of that in the French news.

....flatmark....

Odin, What is "flatmark?" Is it like bookmark? Do Norse Gods do everything differently? I suppose if you're a Norse God, you can do anything you want. ;^)

Sorry, - flat = apartment .......(thought I might learn something......)

Bookmark - flatmark.....

Aha . . . good idea. And I'm the one who learned something. Thank you. 8^)

Dave: I understand your disappointment, but you need to take into account the despair of the local population. The price per mont of short term rental in Paris is, on average, 4 x times the monthly rent (e.g. 2,500 a week for 3 bedroom apt). What does it mean? It means that a landlord has more interest in renting his family-size apt for a summer (which is a full year of rent in 3 months!), and then, leave it empty the rest of the year. To give you an idea of the size of the phenomenon: that's currently 1,4 millions homes in Paris. How would you live that if in your hometown you would be kicked out to the very far suburbs to let room for Summer visitors? If you come to Paris in the Fall & Winter, you will see: all façades are dark. Building are just empty, and 4 millions people are commuting everyday to an empty "dead museum" city. And then, of course, tourists complain, because Parisian night-life is dead (no wonder, without habitants), because restaurants are expensive (no wonder, no competition, prices are targeted on tourists)... If you really love Paris, then you should fight for Paris to return to what it was when I grew up here: a lively, happy city with all social levels, bakers, drivers, little employees jumping in their buses in the morning. The slumlords who took over this market (and they are French, American, British...) are actually destroying the Parisian lifestyle & life that you adore. They also destroy employment, because a city inhabited by tourists does not need many industries & services (beyond restaurants & museums). They also drain down the quality of hotels, as the upper clientele rushes on 2 bedroom apt, you end up finding only either very low-quality hotels, or expensive ones for business people and the happy few. Please, love Paris: Support the law.

Great posts.
Thanks!

They're trying to do this in NYC as well:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/bill-could-make-subletting-a-tad-illegal/?scp=1&sq=sublet&st=cse

Ped - Much appreciation for keeping your list updated - I check it (and sometimes recommend it to others) all the time.

The NY thing doesn't surprise me either. I sometimes rent apartments (often the same one from a reliable realtor) in the west village - have heard many horror stories, especially about Craigslist ripoffs (not to mention the latest bedbug infestations). Ugh!

We've done really well with homeaway.com and VRBO rentals. Haven't had a loser yet. And we did rent an apartment in NYC - which made that trip possible as hotel rates were pretty bad. Don't think I'd ever rent from Craigslist though - too risky.

Haven't used Homeaway but got stuck on a VRBO rental this past May. The web site lookked great; the place looked spare but fine. Got there and the gal that owned it was the most disorganized person I've ever met. It wasn't very clean and she charged for absolutely everything as extra, as in an 8 euro laundry where we were expected to put darks and lights in the same load and she was pretty grudging about loaning us clothespins to hang things (no dryer but that's fine). We still (2 months later) don't have our security deposit back because I assume she's lost it. It hasn't been cashed and she said we left the place cleaner than we found it (true). I don't know how VRBO could prevent this so we plan to use them again . . . but not the particular place we didn't like.

This is the first place we've ever rented that wasn't up to snuff so it's certainly not going to deter us from renting again. The place we had the two weeks before up in the Dordogne was an absolute dream and that was also VRBO.

Yikes - sounds like you had a less than happy experience there, Sally. I will admit that our NYC efficiency wasn't quite as clean as I would have liked it but had that fixed (myself) in 1/2 hour or so. Then again, we've stayed in hotel rooms that weren't great either - and no cleaning supplies with which to work with.

Well, part of the problem was no cleaning supplies. We begged for a sponge and I swept all week (9 days) with a whisk broom. It was not fun . . . no mop, no broom, no cleaning materials at all. It wouldn't have been so bad except we had been in a truly lovely gite the week before that had everything you could want or use.

Pedro - on VRBO and Homeaway you also work directly with the owners. The sites are just for listing their properties and when interested in one, all of your dealings will be with the owners themselves.

The issue is that, like has been happening on Craiglist, some evil individuals occasionally post fake properties that they don't own, take the downpayments and disappear so one has to be careful. I only choose those with lots of reviews (you can usually tell if they're legitimate) and which don't require wiring of money.

Right - just saying that you DO talk directly with the owner not, say, a management team for the site. Oh well, I guess pitfalls can be found anywhere. As mentioned before, we've also landed into hotels that promised lovely and were, er, not so lovely. :)

Good advice, Pedro!

We did deal directly with the owner with VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner). The problem was the owner . . . and she had excellent reviews. I'm waiting to get my deposit check back before I put my review on and it won't be excellent. Perhaps she has a drawer full of deposit checks to prevent poor reviews. Annoying.

The other places we've rented from VRBO have been wonderful and the owners delightful. It was just an oddity.

Have a great trip, Pedro!!!

I don't know where you found www.airbnb.com but I saw it in a recent NY Times article. Since it was recommended by the NY Times, I'd say you are pretty safe. My only experience with Times recommendations is that they tend to be overpriced. If you have checked and found something in your price range, that may not be a problem.

We've used Paris Attitude http://www.parisattitude.com and they were fine. pedmar has several agencies on his VT Paris Pages that will all be fine. If you have already paid your deposit, you will probably be better off sticking with your original choice.

Enjoy your trip. Paris at Christmas . . . wonderful.

They just ran that same article today in our Minneapolis Star and Tribune.