The objective of the municipality is now to “regain a balance” between visitors and people who live and work in Annecy. “We have almost entire buildings dedicated to tourist rental, to the detriment of neighborhood life, the serenity of residents and the heritage of Annecy”, points out Sophie Garcia, municipal councilor responsible for affordable housing and social diversity.

This quota measure is accompanied by a tightening of the regulations on the changes of use of residential premises to tourist accommodation with, in particular, the limitation of authorizations to a single property per owner or the obligation of a renewal every five years.

The rental union protests against these quotas

The new rules are contested by the Syndicat Annecy Meubles, representing the interests of rental companies, which describes this policy as “discriminatory and disproportionate”. The union plans to take legal action against these deliberations.

The city of Annecy is one of the first in France to apply quotas in an attempt to regulate the development of short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb, Booking, Abritel… “We also hope to challenge the legislator so that the State takes a position on this phenomenon, the scale of which we could not have foreseen, ”underlines Sophie Garcia.

La Rochelle prohibits furnished tourist accommodation of less than 35 m2 so as not to penalize student accommodation

Beyond Annecy, everywhere in France, the towns are organizing the resistance. In La Rochelle, the town hall has banned furnished tourist accommodation of less than 35 m2 so as not to penalize student accommodation. “Since the Covid, it has become a speculative market, but we cannot discriminate against who arrives in the department”, sighs Pascale Leyon, real estate agent.

The Association of elected officials from the coast (Anel) asks to “remove the legal and tax loopholes which favor seasonal rental”, or even to reserve areas “dedicated to permanent housing” in town planning documents.

Socialist deputies tabled a bill in mid-February to combat the “tax niche” of platforms like Airbnb, accused of accentuating the “housing crisis in tourist areas”. On the initiative, the elected representative of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Inaki Echaniz insists on the rental tensions in “the coastal territories” as in his “district of the Basque Country and Bearn”.

In practice, it would be a question of “excluding furnished tourist accommodation” from a tax abatement scheme provided for the “benefit of the regime of non-professional industrial and commercial micro profits”. The text also intends to tighten the rental conditions for furnished tourist accommodation, with compulsory registration in a national register. And wants to lower from 120 to 60 the number of rental nights authorized for main residences.