Fines soar for Paris Airbnb rental landlords
Fines for illegally renting through avenues such as Airbnb are growing
A total of €615,000 was collected in fines from 31 properties between January to June 2017, in contrast to the much lower figure of €45,000 for the same period in 2016.
The fines were imposed on landlords who broke regulations by renting their properties for more than 120 days per year and who did not declare their rental income to the authorities.
Many of the properties are rented through Airbnb. Paris has the highest number of listings on the site for any city in the world.
Airbnb has faced criticism for driving up property prices in the cities where the service is used.
"These numbers do not reflect an explosion in the number of rental offers but in the effectiveness of the monitoring," city hall official Ian Brossat told AFP.
Residents in Paris, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Nice have voted to relax Airbnb rental rules in those cities from October 2017.
Airbnb France spokesperson Manon Desjardins-Mullie told France24 the latest fines did not only target the phenomenally successful rental service: “Even if all the hosts fined this year were Airbnb renters, they would represent less than 0.05 percent of all Parisian hosts”.
"[These fines are not] Airbnb-specific, and are far from representative of the Airbnb community in Paris, who typically share their space for less than three days a month," she added.
