It’s a “first” hailed by the City of Paris: a real estate agency was condemned for having very regularly put an apartment up for seasonal rental, without authorisation, on the Airbnb and Booking platforms. In a judgment dated June 29 and consulted on Friday by Agence France-Presse, the Paris court sentenced the owner of an apartment on 20e arrondissement of the capital and the agency managing his property to a fine of 8,000 euros each. The concierge commissioned by the agency to manage stewardship was also fined 2,500 euros.
They are accused of having put this apartment on tourist rental sites, between October 2018 and August 2020, for a period longer than that authorized for individuals (one hundred and twenty days per year for a main residence) and without having carried out any change of use of the apartment. In 2020, at the end of the first confinement, neighbors of the apartment had protested against the nuisance caused by noisy tenants, by hanging banners “Stop Airbnb”.
“Caught up by the patrol”
According to the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing, Ian Brossat (French Communist Party), this is the first time that the town hall has obtained the conviction of an agency and a concierge in a case of illegal tourist rental. “It is fortunate that not only the owners are condemned, but also this parallel economy which has developed on the fringes of the law and which allows this cannibalization of our housing surfacereacted the elected communist. It’s a way of telling them that they will eventually be caught by the patrol. »
For his part, the real estate agency’s lawyer, Xavier Demeuzoy, “consider it a non-event [car] the City of Paris has already condemned concierge services on numerous occasions”. “We considered that there was no ground for appeal, because we have one of the lowest possible fines”added M.e Demeuzoy.
The City of Paris has been railing for a long time against furnished tourist accommodation, which it accuses of accentuating the housing shortage in the capital. According to the latest figures available, in May 2022, out of 500 procedures initiated by the City of Paris, 422 have already been judged, two thirds of them in favor of the Town Hall, which has recovered more than 4.5 million euros in fines. from lessors and 9.58 million euros from platforms.