Marseille was the place to be this summer, but while plenty of us enjoyed it as a summer vacay spot, the influx of visitors means it’s hardly surprising that the French city is the latest destination to launch restrictions on short-term holiday lets.
Marseille mayor Benoît Payan has announced a brand-new proposal to prevent holiday rental owners from ‘wanting to make money off the people in Marseille’ – how, you ask? Well, Payan wants landlords who rent holiday apartments on Airbnb to ‘buy back’ another property and let that to long-term renters.
‘I’m going to oblige anyone who wants to [rent out a property on] Airbnb to buy an apartment and put it up for long-term rental,’ he said, according to euronews. ‘I’m going to use everything the law allows me as a weapon… It’s going to make them stop wanting to make money off the people of Marseille.’
Right now, people in Marseille who want to let out a second home must request authorisation from the town hall, but that’s something Payan has also clamped down on. He claims that when he took office in 2020, the acceptance rate of these requests was 82 percent – apparently, that’s now down to four percent.
And while this might sound like a strong stance to adopt, the rest of France has a similar attitude – largely to curb the impact of overtourism on housing supply. The whole country has strict rules on short-term holiday lets, but local authorities are allowed to impose stricter rules if they wish.
In its infamous battle with Airbnb, Paris secured a ruling from the European Court of Justice that local authorisation must be granted for any short-term lets to be approved. The city has now banned all letting of second homes and restricted the number of days a primary home can be let.
Both Paris and Marseille have respective ‘Airbnb Brigades’ to help them crack down on illegal listings – clearly they’re committed to restricting the impacts of overtourism.
Wondering why Marseille was so popular this summer? You can find out here.
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