Airbnb, which had claimed it wasn’t responsible for enforcing a Paris rule requiring apartments listed on the platform to be registered with the city will now enforce the rule—after paying a €10 million find for past violations.
The law was passed in 2017 by Paris and several other French cities to avoid loss of apartments from regular rental markets. It requires registration, and for the registration number to be included in listings, and it requires that the rental income be reported for tax purposes. Rentals are limited to 120 days per year.
Although repeated checks have shown that thousands of the 65,000 Paris listings were unregistered, Airbnb claimed it was not their responsibiltiy to enforce the law, and the city sued in 2019. The court awarded the fine, based on €8000 per unregistered apartment. That apparently got Airbnb’s attention and compliance, which will also roll out later this year in Bordeaux, Nice, Marseille and Lyon and possibly others.
