Rent your main residence (furnished tourist)

Verified 07 August 2020 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)

Your home (or principal residence) is the accommodation you occupy at least 8 months of the year. You can make one furnished tourist, that is to say, to rent it for short periods (during your holidays, the weekend, ...) for a clientele passing through and for its exclusive use. Several steps need to be taken.

Type of customer

If you meet the following 3 conditions, you can rent your main residence:

  • The rented accommodation is for the exclusive use of the tenant (you are not present during the rental)
  • The tenant resides there for a short period (rental by the day, week or month)
  • The tenant does not make it his home (transient clientele)

Rental period

You can rent your accommodation for a maximum of 90 days per guest.

In some municipalities, there is a total rental period of the dwelling (or part thereof) not to exceed per year (120 days per year calendar year). In these municipalities, this period may be exceeded solely on the grounds of professional obligation, health and force majeure.

Please note

you can rent part of your home only (guest room). In this case, other rules apply.

If you are a tenant

If you are a tenant of your main residence and you want to sublet this accommodation, you will also have to:

  • get written permission from your landlord
  • and do not charge your sub-tenant a higher rent than yours.

Warning  

subletting your home without authorization may result in the termination of the lease of the original tenant and its subtenant. The tenant may also be ordered to pay the landlord the amount of the sub-rents received, or even damages in case of damage.

If the unit is part of a condominium

If the unit is part of a condominium, you must verify that the condominium by-law does not include an exclusively bourgeois housing clause. The presence of this clause prohibits any professional activity, in particular tourist furniture.

Principle and exception

General case

In general, it is not necessary to go to the town hall to rent out your main residence.

Exception

Some municipalities require the owner to declare his main residence in town hall in order to grant him a declaration number. These include Paris, Annecy, Aix-en-Provence, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Cannes, Lyon, Nice, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Tours.

How do I know about my community?

Ask your municipality if your municipality has implemented this procedure and how to proceed if this is the case.

Who shall I contact

Consequences of the mandatory declaration in town hall

Upon receipt of your declaration, the City Hall will immediately issue you an acknowledgement of receipt including a declaration number.

As a result:

  • This number should be provided in each of the advertisements for the rental offer of this accommodation.
  • The total rental period of this dwelling must not exceed 120 days per calendar year. This period may only be exceeded for reasons of professional obligation, health or force majeure.

You will then have to declare to the City Hall the number of days of rental where you rented the accommodation.

This approach is different depending on whether you are renting through an internet platform or not.

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You use an Internet platform

The digital platform must first inform you of your obligations (declaration, authorization from the owner if you are a tenant of this accommodation).

Before the rental advertisement is published, you must provide it with an affidavit stating the following information:

  • You have fulfilled your prior obligations (declaration, authorization of the owner if you are a tenant)
  • The accommodation is your main residence
  • Housing declaration number

When publishing the announcement, the internet platform has an obligation to:

  • deactivate it as soon as the accommodation has been rented 120 days (between 1er January and 31 December of the same year) through it,
  • provide the city council with a statement of the rental days of your accommodation, if requested by the city council.

You don't use an internet platform

If you do not use an internet platform, the city hall can ask you to count the days of rental of your accommodation, until 31 December of the following year. You must provide this information within one month, recalling the address of the dwelling and its declaration number.

Whether you own or rent your principal residence, you must declare your start of business within 15 days.

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

Company Formalities Window

This approach allows you to obtain a SIRET number.

This number allows tax authorities to identify you in the following steps:

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.

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

Tourist tax

Depending on the housing of the dwelling, you may be obliged to collect the tourist tax from the holidaymaker and return it to the municipality. If you use an internet platform as a payment intermediary, it is up to them to collect the real tourist tax.

To find out the amount of the tourist tax charged by your municipality:

Tourist tax rates per municipality

Recommendations

Certain precautions must be taken when renting. Among them:

  • Protect your internet connection so that it is not used for fraudulent purposes
  • Make sure your insurance company covers any damage that may be caused by holidaymakers
  • Inform holidaymakers of the specificities of the condominium (location of the garbage room, name and times of the caretaker, rules relating to the presence of animals and noise...)