France does have national short-term rental law. It fits in a handful of articles, it is stable, and it answers almost none of the questions a host actually has. Everything else belongs to the commune. That is where the money is.
- The floorTrue everywhere, from Brittany to the Alps
- Four settingsWhere the town hall decides alone, and how far
- Your inboxThe guest questions regulation manufactures
The national floor, what never moves
Four things hold across the whole country.
A main residence is let under a cap. The property must be occupied at least eight months a year. Short-term letting is capped at a number of nights per calendar year, between 90 and 120 depending on the commune. No single guest may occupy the property for more than 90 consecutive nights.
The registration number is a declaration, not a permit. Where the commune requires it, the online form returns a thirteen-character identifier immediately. It must appear on every listing. Holding one grants no right to let.
Penalties are civil and heavy. Exceeding the night cap exposes the host to a civil fine of €10,000. Failing to register where registration is compulsory exposes them to €5,000. Letting without a change-of-use authorisation falls under a separate, municipal regime, where the figures climb far higher.
Enforcement is being centralised. A national furnished-rental service is announced for the fourth quarter of 2026. Letting data, registration number and nights let included, will flow to it automatically. Until then, municipal registration remains the only route.
The night cap is not one national number. Since law no. 2024-1039, a council may cut it from 120 to 90 by resolution, and several large cities already have. An article that quotes 120 nights without naming your commune is wrong about half the time.
The four settings your commune controls
Everything else is local. Four levers, decided by four different assemblies, sometimes in the same month.
| Setting | Who decides | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Tourist tax scale | The authority that collects, often the intercommunal body | The amount per person per night, under a national ceiling |
| Additional taxes | The department, the region, the legislator | A multiplier on the scale, from 1 to more than 3 |
| Night cap on a main residence | The municipal council | 120 nights by default, 90 after a resolution |
| Change of use, compensation, quota | The municipal or intercommunal council | Whether letting outside your main residence is possible at all |
The first two decide what the guest pays. The last two decide whether you may let. None of the four appears in the automated messages guide: these are local decisions, not platform settings.
Tourist tax is two numbers, never one
The rate a council votes is not what gets billed. Additional taxes sit on top, and they are not the commune's doing: a departmental surcharge of 10%, a regional surcharge of 34% created by the 2023 finance act. The Paris region adds two more, of 15% and 200%.
Additional surcharges, eight communes
- Paris
- 225 %
- Bordeaux
- 44 %
- Marseille
- 44 %
- Biarritz
- 44 %
- Nice
- 34 %
- Lyon
- 10 %
- La Rochelle
- 10 %
- Annecy
- 0 %
Sum of the surcharges marked « OUI » on each commune's page. The base scale is capped by statute, so it barely varies: this column is what opens the gap. A palace night taxed at €4.90 in Annecy is taxed at €15.93 in Paris.
8 communes read on the resolutions portal, one page per commune ·Unclassified properties follow a different logic: a percentage of the nightly cost per person, capped. Most communes vote 5%, some less. A furnished rental without a star rating therefore pays a tax that tracks its own price, which changes everything in peak season.
Change of use, the real barrier
Outside a main residence the question stops being fiscal. In communes that have introduced it, letting requires a change-of-use authorisation, and authorisations get refused. Three forms exist, often combined.
Compensation
Turn something that is not housing, an office or a shop, into housing of equivalent floor area, inside a defined perimeter. This is the demanding form. In practice it often means buying commerciality rights from a third party, which has a market price.
Temporary authorisation
A time-limited permission: one year, two, four or nine depending on the city, sometimes non-renewable. It waives compensation but turns your operation into a short-horizon business, which financing plans dislike.
Quota
A maximum number of authorisations for the commune or for a district, and sometimes a maximum per owner. Once the quota is full the answer is a refusal followed by a waiting list. This is the newest lever, and the most litigated.
One recurring trap: the energy performance certificate. Several municipal rulebooks now require a rating between A and E when the application is filed. A poorly insulated flat is no longer merely hard to let long term, it becomes ineligible for short-term letting outright.
What local rules do to your inbox
This is the part nobody writes, and the part that costs you hours.
A dense local rulebook manufactures guest questions. Tourist tax produces two: why this amount, then why it was not in the advertised price. The registration number produces a third, usually from a suspicious guest. A temporary authorisation produces a fourth, the awkward one, when a guest asks to book dates that fall after it expires.
The right answer is three lines long. It only requires that the commune's scale be written down somewhere, current, and reachable by whoever replies. That is exactly what a well-kept property knowledge base does, and it is what lets Sentioo answer without waking you.
Three ways to hold these answers- CopiloteThe reply is drafted with the property's own scale. You read it before it goes.
- HybrideFactual replies go out alone. Anything touching an authorisation or a dispute comes back to you.
- AutopiloteThe reply goes out alone. Anything outside the written record is escalated rather than invented.
That leaves the question that decides profitability long before messaging does: how many nights may you sell, at what tax cost. Both numbers are municipal. They live in a council resolution, not in a general guide like this one.
Outside France the same question sits with a different body. In London the ninety nights are a planning threshold rather than a tax one, and a borough can lift the exemption for a single street: the mechanics are set out in the London rules.
