Rent your second home (furnished tourist)

Verified 01 January 2022 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)

It is possible to make your second home a furnished tourist, that is, you can rent it for a transient clientele, for its exclusive use and for short periods. Several steps need to be taken. It is possible to ask for its classification, as a hotelier would do.

The furnished tourist is an individual accommodation type villa, apartment, furnished studio offered for rent. The following 3 conditions must be met:

  • The dwelling is for the exclusive use of the tenant, i.e. the owner is not present
  • The tenant does not take up residence there, it is a transient clientele
  • The tenant resides there for a short period (rental by the day, week or month) and for a maximum cumulative duration of 90 days

To qualify as furnished, the accommodation must include the following equipment:

  • Furniture
  • Bedding
  • Gas stove or hot plates
  • Refrigerator
  • Kitchen utensils

FYI  

if the dwelling is part of a condominium, it must be checked beforehand that the condominium regulation does not prohibit the making of a furnished apartment. This prohibition generally concerns buildings for exclusively bourgeois residential use, that is to say, where all professional activity is prohibited.

It is mandatory to declare your furnished tourist in town hall.

The procedure for doing so depends on the municipality in which your secondary residence is located.

3 procedures exist:

  • Some very large cities require the owner to request a change-of-use authorizationFirst of all. These include Paris, Annecy, Aix-en-Provence, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Cannes, Lyon, Nice, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Tours.
  • The others large cities (municipalities of more than 200,000 inhabitants and municipalities located in the Hauts-de-Seine, the Seine-Saint-Denis and the Val-de-Marne) require the owner to make a declaration and then request a change-of-use authorization.
    However, any other municipality may decide to apply this procedure.
  • In all other cities, the owner must make a declaration.

Ask your city council about the procedure in effect.

Who shall I contact
Very big city
Application for authorization to change use

You must obtain authorization from the City Hall to change the use of your accommodation in furnished tourism (transition in furnished tourism).

Failure to comply with this obligation shall be punished by a civil fine of up to €50,000. The restoration of the dwelling to its original condition and a periodic penalty payment of €1,000 per day per m2 may be ordered.

FYI  

obtaining such authorization may be subject to compliance with a rule known as of compensation. This rule requires you to purchase an equivalent area from a commercial space that you will have to convert into a living space. Ask your local council for more information.

If the authorization is granted, you must then proceed to change the destination of the premises into hotel accommodation.

Declaration of the furniture

You must declare the property to the City Hall in order to obtain a declaration number.

Contact your city hall to find out how to proceed.

Who shall I contact

Upon receipt of your declaration, the City Hall will immediately issue you an acknowledgement of receipt including a declaration number. This number will have to be indicated in each of the advertisements for the rental offer of this accommodation.

FYI  

failure to declare your accommodation in the city hall is punishable by a civil fine of up to €5,000.

You will need to include this number in all rental listings for your accommodation.

Large city
Declaration of the furniture

You have to declare the housing in town hall. Failure to comply with this obligation is punishable by a fine of up to €450.

You must use the following online service:

Declare in town hall a furnished tourist

Application for authorization to change use

You must obtain authorization from the City Hall to change the use of your accommodation as a tourist furniture.

Failure to comply with this obligation is punishable by a civil fine of up to €50,000. In the event of a conviction, the housing must be restored to its original condition and a penalty payment of €1,000 per day per m2 may be ordered.

FYI  

obtaining such authorization may be subject to compliance with a rule known as of compensation. This rule requires you to purchase an equivalent area from a commercial space that you will have to convert into a living space. Ask your local council for more information.

Other city

You have to declare the housing in town hall. Failure to comply with this obligation is punishable by a fine of up to €450.

You must use the following online service:

Declare in town hall a furnished tourist

You must declare your start of business within 15 days.

To do this, you must use the following online service:

This approach allows you to obtain a SIRET number.

This number allows tax authorities to identify you when:

Please note

if you use an internet platform, it must provide you in january with a document showing the gross amount of transactions from the previous year.

Benefits of filing

The classification of a piece of furniture allows to indicate its level of comfort and equipment to the customer. There are 5 categories (from 1 to 5 stars).

FYI  

classification sometimes allows you to benefit from tax advantages (exemption from housing tax and property tax) in ZRR, flat-rate allowance on rental income for micro-enterprises). In addition, it avoids the application of an increased tourist tax.

To do this, you must use these forms:

Request the exemption from the housing tax for bed and breakfasts and tourist furniture located in rural revitalization areas (RRZs)

Property Tax Exemption on Built-up Property (TFPB): Hotels, Tourist Furnished or Bed & Breakfast in Rural Revitalization Areas (RRZs)

The forms are to be sent to the public finance center.

How do I get the ranking?

You can ask for the classification of your piece of tourist furniture to the accredited or approved evaluating body of your choice (listed on the lists on the Atout France website) using a form:

Request for classification of a piece of furniture for tourism

The evaluating body shall carry out a classification visit of the accommodation. Within one month of your visit, you will receive a certificate of inspection that includes the following:

  • Report and Control Grid
  • Proposal for a decision to classify your furniture for the category mentioned in the inspection report

You have 15 days from the receipt of the certificate of inspection to refuse the classification proposal. After this period and in the absence of a refusal, the classification is acquired.

The decision is valid for 5 years. It shall indicate the following:

  • Your name (and possibly the name of your representative)
  • Address of the tourist furniture, capacity expressed in number of persons that can be accommodated and category of its classification

You have the obligation to display the classification decision visibly inside the furniture.

In case of absence or serious insufficiency of maintenance of your furnished furniture, the prefect can delete it from the list of classified furnished.

If the advertised description or the ranking displayed does not correspond to the characteristics of your furnished apartment, the tenant can apply to the Departmental Directorate for the Protection of Populations (DDPP or DDCSPP) for deceptive commercial practice:

If you use an intermediary (intermediary or negotiator, or digital platform provider), they must inform you of your obligations (declaration, application for authorization).

Prior to the publication of the rental advertisement, you must provide this intermediary with an attestation on honor. Your honor must certify that you have fulfilled the prior obligations (declaration, or even authorization for change of use) and that the dwelling is not your principal residence. If you have been assigned a housing declaration number by the City Hall, you must also provide this number.

You can help yourself with this model of attestation on honor:

Attestation on honor

Furnished rental ads can be found in the city hall, in a tourist office and on online booking sites.

To report a deceptive commercial practice on a furnished rental, you can contact the Departmental Directorate for the Protection of Populations (DDPP or DDCSPP).

You must comply with the other rules applicable to tourist furniture:

In some municipalities, you will have to collect the tourist tax with the holidaymaker and return it to the municipality. Since 2019, if you use an internet platform as a payment intermediary, it is up to them to collect the real tourist tax.

You can use an online service to find out how much city tax your municipality charges.

Tourist tax rates per municipality

FAQ