The French parliament on Thursday permitted a invoice aimed toward tightening the regulation of vacationer lodging akin to Airbnb to fight the scarcity of inexpensive housing.
France is the second-largest marketplace for Airbnb, with listings in additional than 29,000 cities and cities within the nation.
The Nationwide Meeting decrease home adopted the laws by a big majority, with the far proper voting towards.
The invoice — the results of a compromise between the 2 homes of French parliament — had been unanimously permitted by the higher home Senate on Tuesday.
Airbnb mentioned it regretted the brand new restrictions due to their affect on hosts, though it anticipated no main impact by itself enterprise.
“We regret the inclusion of additional measures that will burden everyday families with additional tax costs and bureaucracy,” the corporate mentioned in an announcement to AFP.
The laws, which has been within the works since April 2023, goals to slash tax breaks for vacationer properties in a bid to curb short-term leases amid shortages of inexpensive housing.
The invoice’s backers say that the growth in Airbnb-type leases has contributed to encouraging hypothesis, and made entry to standard housing tougher.
“Restoring the primary function of housing is our only goal”, mentioned Annaig Le Meur, one of many lawmakers behind the invoice.
‘Housing crisis’
Lawmaker Inaki Echaniz pointed to “a housing crisis” and “an explosive increase in the number of furnished tourist accommodation, which has risen from 300,000 to 1.2 million in eight years.”
The tax allowance for furnished vacationer lodging would fall to 50 p.c from 71 p.c, with a cap lowered to 77,700 euros (83,500 {dollars}).
The laws would slash tax breaks for non-classified vacationer properties to 30 p.c from 50 p.c, with a cap of 15,000 euros.
The laws additionally offers mayors a “toolbox” to control short-term lodging, Echaniz mentioned in an announcement.
It will likely be potential to chop the rental durations of main residences to 90 days a 12 months from 120 days now.
Native authorities will even be capable of set quotas for furnished vacationer lodging.
“Hundreds of mayors, from Paris to Biarritz, from Annecy to Saint-Malo, are impatiently awaiting this proposed law,” mentioned Laurent Lhardit, lawmaker and deputy mayor of Marseille.
In Marseille, “we are ready to deliberate as soon as the law is promulgated to apply the strictest regulations in France in this area,” added the Socialist MP.
Far-right lawmakers denounced the laws, slamming an “outrageous and punitive tax system.”
The regulation will “favour the giants of the hotel sector to the detriment of those who simply want to earn a supplementary income from their property,” mentioned Alexis Jolly, a member of the Nationwide Rally.
Airbnb mentioned it was already working with greater than 350 cities and cities throughout France “to enforce local rules”
“We want to work with municipalities to ensure that new powers are leveraged where there is a clear need and trackable impact,” it added.
Representatives of the resort business welcomed the transfer.
“The new law takes up measures that the tourism industry has been advocating for a long time in order to improve the regulation of furnished holiday accommodation,” the CAT and ADN Tourisme federations mentioned in an announcement.
The measures, they added, would assure “the diversity and quality of the accommodation on offer, which is so important in terms of attracting tourists to our regions”.
