Paris Court has fined Airbnb, the home-sharing giant to pay $9.6m for allowing over 1,000 listings to flout rules to register their rentals.
It was the latest clash between the US home rental platform and the French capital over accusations that the platform has failed to comply with local regulation when it comes to listing your apartment on the platform, ignoring rule-breakers and exacerbating a housing shortage that is driving up property prices.
The case was filed in 2019 after officials found 1,010 listings for Paris without the registration numbers required since a law passed in 2017.
The registrations are used to make sure that properties are not rented out more than 120 nights a year and that rental income is declared to the tax authorities.
While Airbnb argued that as a service provider, it should not be responsible for ensuring that users of its site comply with local regulations, the Paris court ordered a fine of $9.6m “given the severity of the violations… and their consequences with regards of the public interest of fighting against the shortage of rental lodgings” in the capital.
“This ruling, a first in France, is a great victory in our fight for housing for all and the regulation of the rental market,” Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Twitter.
After the penalty, Airbnb has tightened its policies for listings. It will now require Paris landlords to prove their apartments have been registered with city hall. Until now, Airbnb was not blocking renters who failed to supply the numbers with their ads.
The platform will impose similar rules in Bordeaux on July 30 before extending them to other popular French destinations such as Lyon, Nice and Marseille by the end of the year. It said, “This new step is part of several commitments by Airbnb to promote responsible tourism.”
Ian Brossat, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of housing, told the Parisien newspaper, said that more than half of the 30,000 Paris listings currently were not displaying registration numbers.
Airbnb told the AFP that 95% of listings in Paris have been reserved for less than 120 nights in the past year. It means that those last 5% of listings represent much more than 5% of nights.
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