As the popularity of self-catering city holidays took off, property investors snapped up places across the French capital, turning former family homes into luxury rentals – at twice or even three times the previous rent.
The main thrust of the city’s crackdown on the sudden housing shortage has been to reduce the number of holiday rentals, thus making the business less attractive to property owners. Anyone wanting to stay in the tourism rental field in Paris has to either set up a rental business (which comes with the traditional weight of French bureaucracy) or maintain a non-professional landlord/lady status (which limits the number of days per annum that the property can rent, and limits how much can be earned).
Local taxes and social charges have also increased, in a bid to encourage more owners to return the properties to long-term rentals.
Property manager Gail Boisclair of PerfectlyParis.com has seen the rental market change but is not convinced that current measures can really solve the housing crisis nor reduce overtourism.
For Paris residents, the average monthly rental for an unfurnished apartment is €40/m² but that can vary between €35 and €52 per m2 depending on the arrondissement. Depending on what kind of rental lease vocational rental owners use, they can ask considerably more for short-stay lets.
What do tourists think of the crowds? Edie Twells-Eastwood went and asked.
When he was running for office, the new mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, promised to go after absentee owners of buildings deliberately left empty for part or all of the year. These include secondary residences, apartments use for vacation rentals, but also entire buildings owned by large companies who deliberately leave them empty, secure in the knowledge that the value of the building will increase, even without any rental income.
Boisclair believes going after those companies would do more for increasing the long-term housing offer than driving out people who have a secondary home in Paris that they occasionally rent to tourists.
One of Grégoire’s promises, which both Boisclair and Beatrice Dunner of the Association for the Défense of Montmartre believe is imperative, is a move to protect smaller shops and businesses from the open rental market, where big chains or luxury brands can afford to pay more and thus push up prices, driving local grocery shops, hardware stores or bakers out.
Reporting from Paris reached out to City Hall for comment but had received no reply at time of publication.
Elaine Cobbe is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist based in Paris. A former foreign correspondent with CBS News, she has covered many of the major international stories of the past three decades, including the conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, and Rwanda, and terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, and Barcelona. A regular commentator on French and international politics for news outlets in France and her native Ireland, she is also a researcher and trainer in journalism and trauma. Elaine is a committee member of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.
[videographer/editor: Celine Marchand]
