Letting your villa for a few weeks: what changed, and what awaits you

For fifteen years, letting your holiday house for a few weeks a year was one of the simplest operations in French law. That time is over, and it is not coming back.

Here is the state of the framework as it currently stands. As always with tax and regulation, this piece gives bearings and does not replace professional advice on your own position.

I. Registration, now universal

Previously, notification to the mairie was compulsory only in communes that had introduced the procedure — already the case in several around the Bay.

The regime is now general. Every furnished tourist letting must be registered through a national service, which issues a thirteen-digit number. That number must appear on all listings, whatever the platform.

The legal compliance deadline was 20 May 2026. It has therefore passed: accommodation let without a registration number is now non-compliant.

Platforms are required to verify that the number exists and to remove non-compliant listings. That automated check makes non-compliance far more visible than before.

II. Taxation, appreciably less favourable

This is the heaviest change financially.

Two practical consequences.

First, classification as furnished tourist accommodation — the star-rating procedure, obtained through an accredited body — becomes markedly more attractive than before. The allowance gap between classified and unclassified has gone from 21 to 20 points, but above all the receipts ceiling for unclassified accommodation has collapsed.

Second, many hosts will move mechanically to the régime réel, which allows actual costs to be deducted and the property depreciated. The régime réel is more favourable in many situations, particularly where the property carries high maintenance costs — the archetypal coastal villa. It does, however, require accounts, and therefore an accountant.

A point not to overlook: the reform also changed the treatment of depreciation on sale, which affects the capital gains calculation. That aspect should be examined with an adviser before any decision.

III. Energy performance

The law introduces an energy performance requirement that ratchets up over time.

For new applications for change-of-use authorisation, an energy performance certificate of at least class E is required. By 2034, furnished tourist accommodation must meet the same requirements as long-term letting, that is class D as a minimum.

Many older villas around the Bay, particularly the oyster village houses and pre-thermal-regulation construction, currently sit at E, F or G. For those properties, the 2034 deadline means anticipating works: insulation, joinery, heating system.

Anticipating here means building them into the multi-year maintenance plan, not discovering them in 2033.

IV. Communes' strengthened powers

This is the most sensitive part locally, and the most likely to evolve commune by commune.

Communes now have extensive tools: lowering the letting cap on a main residence, introducing a change-of-use authorisation regime with compensation, setting quotas of furnished tourist accommodation by district, and designating areas reserved for permanent housing in the local plan.

Around Arcachon Bay, where pressure on housing for local workers has been a major political issue for years, these tools are closely watched and several communes have taken them up or are considering doing so.

Practical consequence for an owner: the applicable rules now depend as much on the commune as on national law. Before any letting project, the first step is a call to the planning department of the commune concerned.

V. To let or not to let

One calculation comes up often with our clients, and it deserves to be put honestly.

Letting eight to ten weeks a year on a villa around the Bay generates significant income, often covering most of the annual running costs. That is a serious argument.

Against it must be set: accelerated wear on the property and its contents, management costs — 15% to 25% for a letting concierge — a now less favourable tax position, the administrative obligations, and the loss of availability in the most sought-after weeks, which are precisely the ones you would want.

There is also something the spreadsheets do not show: a heavily let house is no longer entirely a family house. Some owners are comfortable with that; others discover after two seasons that they have turned a place of attachment into an operating asset.

That is not for us to decide. But the decision is better taken knowing both columns.