This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change and individual situations differ. Always confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.
Before the SCI, before the tax regime, before any of the court rulings we write about, there is a plainer question that every owner of a French flat has to answer: who is going to live in it, and for how long? A weekend guest from Rotterdam, a nurse on a six-month posting, or a family who will still be there in 2029? Everything else follows from that choice, and most of the trouble we see comes from owners who let the answer drift.
This guide sets the choice out as a decision rather than a syllabus because that is how you will use it. Five questions come first, then the rules for each option, drawn from the loi of 6 July 1989, the code du tourisme, the tax code and the ministry’s own guidance. Woven through them are the 2024 Le Meur law and the 2026 figures that turned short-term letting into a regulated business.
Five questions that decide it
In a buy-to-let, you may let the property for a short or a long period. Before opting for one or the other, and depending on your personal situation, you should weigh their advantages, their disadvantages and the rules each one imposes. Here are the five questions that do the weighing.
- Do you want to use it yourself? If you want the flat for a few weeks a year, only short-term letting gives it back to you between guests. A long-term tenant has a right to stay that you cannot interrupt for your own holidays.
- Where is it? Short-term income depends on how attractive the place is to visitors, and the empty weeks are yours to carry. Long-term rents in the big cities are capped in the zones tendues, and some communes now limit tourist letting of primary residences to 90 days a year.
- Is it in a copropriété? A règlement drawn up since 21 November 2024 must say whether tourist lets are allowed, and an older one may ban them through its wording or by a vote. Check that first because no business plan survives a règlement that says no.
- How much work and which risk? Short-term means turnover, cleaning, listings and vacancy. Long-term means one tenant, strict rules on ending the lease, and the risk of unpaid rent instead of empty nights.
- How will the income be taxed? Furnished income, short or long, is taxed as business profit, BIC. Unfurnished income is taxed as property income, revenus fonciers. The flat-rate deductions and the ceilings differ, and since 2025 the ordinary tourist let gets the worst of them.
Short-term letting: what it is
Letting a property short-term means letting it occasionally or seasonally, by the day, the week or the month, to people passing through who do not make it their home, and for the guest’s exclusive use. Exclusive use means you are not present during the stay. The French term is meublé de tourisme, and the definition in article L. 324-1-1 of the code du tourisme says the same thing in slightly longer words: furnished villas, flats or studios, for the exclusive use of the guest, offered to passing customers who do not take up residence there.
The trade is an honest one. Short-term letting lets you take the property back whenever it is empty, so that you can enjoy a second home for a few weeks a year. In return, it exposes you to the risk of vacancy, which depends on how attractive your property is to visitors. A flat in Annecy and a flat in Angoulême are not the same business.
Then comes the warning that we would put in capitals. Any règlement de copropriété drawn up since 21 November 2024 must state explicitly whether meublés de tourisme are permitted or not. If your property sits in a copropriété, check first of all whether it can be let furnished for short periods. Service-public.fr adds the rule for older règlements: one with a clause d’habitation exclusivement bourgeoise bans any professional activity, tourist letting included. Where the règlement bans commercial activity in non-commercial lots, the general meeting may vote a ban on meublés de tourisme by the two-thirds majority of article 26, a power the Conseil constitutionnel upheld on 19 March 2026.
The same law obliges a co-owner who registers a tourist let to tell the syndic, who puts it on the agenda of the next general meeting. Our pieces on the copropriété Airbnb ban and the Conseil constitutionnel’s decision cover how those votes work.
The short-term rules
Six rules govern a meublé de tourisme. The first five apply to every tourist let. The sixth depends on whether the property is your home or your second home, and for most readers of this site it is the second.
1. Furnish it to the legal list
Letting short-term obliges you to equip the property as the regulations require. In practice that is the list in the décret of 31 July 2015. It runs to bedding with a duvet or blanket, shutters or curtains in the bedrooms, a hob, an oven or microwave, a fridge, and a freezer or freezer compartment at minus 6°C or below. It then asks for enough crockery for the occupants to eat, kitchen utensils, a table, seats, shelving, lighting, and cleaning equipment suited to the flat.
2. No guest for more than 90 consecutive days
You may not exceed the quota of 90 consecutive days a year of letting to the same guest. Beyond that, the law no longer treats the stay as seasonal.
3. Set the price freely, but put it in writing
In a short-term or seasonal let you set the price freely, so for the same property you may ask a passing guest more than a long-term tenant. Every seasonal letting offer or contract must be in writing and state the price asked together with a description of the premises, a rule set by article L. 324-2 of the code du tourisme.
4. Register before you list
To let a second home for short periods, you must first declare your meublé de tourisme. Until this year the rule was that in most large communes you made a declaration with registration, which produced a number for your listing, while in the other communes a simple declaration at the mairie was enough, so the first step was to approach the mairie where the property is located and ask which procedure applied. Since 20 May 2026, article L. 324-1-1 requires every person offering a meublé de tourisme to make a prior declaration, subject to registration, through a single national online service, and the registration number must appear in every listing. Non-compliance carries an administrative fine of up to €10,000, and a false declaration up to €20,000.
The ministry’s own page on tourist lets, written in March 2026, says the same: registration goes through a single portal across the whole of France from 20 May 2026, and a mairie that finds the property unfit may suspend the number and have the listing taken down. Asking the mairie still makes sense because the mairie is where the data lands and where any change-of-use permission is decided. Our Airbnb guide walks through the registration step by step.
5. Collect the taxe de séjour and keep the fiche de police
In a commune that levies a taxe de séjour you collect it from each guest and pass it on, unless a platform handles the payment and does it for you. A guest who is not French must also fill in a fiche de police, which you keep for six months. Both are on service-public.fr.
6. Your home or your second home: two different regimes
The law treats the occasional letting of the home you live in very differently from the letting of a second home, and a foreign owner needs to know which side of the line they are on before reading any further.
| Primary residence (résidence principale) | Second home (résidence secondaire) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it means | The home you occupy at least eight months a year, under article 2 of the loi of 1989 | Any other home, which for a non-resident owner means the French property almost by definition |
| How many nights a year | 120 a calendar year, which a commune may cut to 90, and the platforms block the listing beyond it | No legal ceiling, so it can be let to tourists all year if the commune allows it |
| Change-of-use permission | Not needed for short lets within the day cap | Required in the communes on the decree list whose council has opted for it, Paris and the big cities among them, sometimes only against compensation and sometimes as a temporary permit of under five years |
| DPE condition | None for the tourist let itself | A to E for a first-time tourist let needing change-of-use permission, A to D from 2034 |
| Registration | Before 20 May 2026, only in the communes that had opted for a registration number, Paris since December 2017; since 20 May 2026, the national registration, and the declaration states that it is your primary residence | Before 20 May 2026, a declaration at the mairie everywhere, with a registration number in the communes that had opted for it; since 20 May 2026, the national registration |
| Copropriété | Règlement must allow it, and the syndic must be told | Règlement must allow it, and the syndic must be told |
The day cap is the primary-residence rule everyone has heard of: no more than 120 days a calendar year, which a commune may cut to 90 by reasoned decision, with a civil fine of up to €15,000 for going over. It does not apply to a second home, and that is the point. A second home may be let to tourists all year, but only where the commune allows it. In the communes that require change-of-use permission the mairie decides, sometimes only against a compensating conversion of commercial space into housing, sometimes through a temporary permit of under five years.
A property offered as a meublé de tourisme for the first time in such a commune must also show a DPE rated A to E in metropolitan France, rising to A to D from 1 January 2034. Existing tourist lets are not caught until the commune asks to see their DPE from 2034. The primary-residence rules we wrote up in the spring cover the 120-day side, and the Airbnb guide the second-home side, Paris included.
Long-term letting: how it works
Long-term letting is for people who move into your property to make it their principal residence. You may offer it empty or furnished, and that single word, meublé or vide, decides the lease length, the notice rules and the tax category, so hold on to it.
There is also a bail mobilité, a short furnished lease for tenants in one of the following situations: professional training, an apprenticeship contract or an internship, higher education, volunteering under a service civique, or a professional transfer or temporary assignment. The property must be furnished and the lease runs for between one and ten months. Service-public.fr adds the details that matter: the lease cannot be renewed or extended beyond ten months, the tenant must prove the qualifying situation, and if landlord and tenant sign again for the same property, the new lease is an ordinary residential one. A law of 26 November 2025 created a variant of one week to eighteen months for homes in a résidence à vocation d’emploi, which is waiting for its decree.
The long-term rules
Five rules shape a long-term let, and the first word to settle is still meublé or vide.
1. The lease: three years unfurnished, one year furnished
A residential lease between you and the tenant runs for three years if the property is unfurnished, and for at least one year if it is furnished, reduced to nine months when the tenant is a student. In both cases the lease can be renewed. The texts are articles 10 and 25-7 of the loi of 6 July 1989, and article 10 adds a detail that matters to anyone letting through a company: where the landlord is a company, an SCI included, the unfurnished lease is six years, not three. An unfurnished lease that nobody ends simply rolls over for another three years, and a furnished one for another year.
2. Rent caps in the zones tendues
In certain communes, the zones tendues, rents are capped. You can check whether the commune where your property sits is affected with the official simulator. The ministry’s page on the zones tendues explains that the cap works in two layers. In every zone tendue, more than a thousand communes, the rent you may ask a new tenant is in principle the rent the last tenant paid, with limited exceptions.
In about fifty of them, Paris, Lyon and Villeurbanne, Lille, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Est Ensemble, Plaine Commune and the Pays Basque, the level itself is capped at a loyer de référence majoré set each year by the préfet. Meublés de tourisme sit outside both layers, which is one reason the law has worked so hard to limit them. Our guide to raising the rent takes it from there, and the DPE rules add a cap of their own: no new let of a G-rated home since 1 January 2025, and no rent rise on an F or G.
3. Unpaid rent: GLI, Visale and the tenant’s file
You may also be worried about unpaid rent. To guard against it, you can take out a garantie loyers impayés, an insurance against rent arrears. If rent goes unpaid, you can ask SOS loyers impayés for advice, a service of the national housing information agency ANIL, on 0 805 16 00 75. We would add that a GLI policy screens the tenant on your behalf, which is half its value, and that the Visale state guarantee is the free alternative for tenants who qualify.
ANIL’s landlord page adds the practical frame. You may not combine a GLI policy with a guarantor, Visale included, unless the tenant is a student or apprentice. The deposit is capped at one month’s rent unfurnished and two months furnished. The documents you may ask a candidate for are fixed by a decree of 5 November 2015, and the lease must follow the statutory model of the décret of 29 May 2015, annex 1 for an unfurnished let and annex 2 for a furnished one. Our piece on checking a tenant’s tax notice covers the one document worth verifying. The ministry’s list of recoverable charges tells you which building costs you may pass on, as a provision with an annual reconciliation on an unfurnished let, or as a flat sum on a furnished one.
4. Giving notice: six months or three, and a lawful reason
Unlike seasonal letting, a number of rules on notice periods and formalities must be respected before you can give a tenant notice. The core of them is this. You may give notice only for the end of the lease, and only for one of three reasons: to sell, to take the property back for yourself or a close relative, or for a legitimate and serious reason such as the tenant’s breach. The notice must reach the tenant at least six months before the end of an unfurnished lease, and three months before the end of a furnished one. Service-public.fr has the forms and the traps, and our pieces on the congé pour reprise and the notice that failed because the flat was not decent show how strictly the courts read them.
5. The fifteen-day registration, for furnished lets only
Within fifteen days of the first day of a long-term let, you must declare the creation or start of your activity. You do it by filing a declaration of business creation or start of activity online through the guichet des formalités des entreprises, and the step is free. One clarification: this is the registration of a loueur en meublé, which gives you a SIRET number for your tax returns, and service-public.fr confirms the fifteen days. If you let unfurnished, your income is property income and there is no such registration.
How each option is taxed
Income from letting furnished property, short-term or long-term, is taxable and must be declared as bénéfices industriels et commerciaux, business profits, and the mechanics vary with your annual receipts. For long-term furnished letting the ministry has its own article, and for tourist lets the tax administration has a page on the new regime. Here are the numbers behind both, as they stand for 2026 income under article 50-0 of the tax code.
A long-term furnished let and a classified meublé de tourisme both stay in the simplified micro-BIC regime up to €83,600 of receipts, with a flat 50 per cent deduction for costs. An unclassified meublé de tourisme, which is the ordinary Airbnb flat, drops out of micro-BIC at €15,000 and gets only a 30 per cent deduction. Above the ceiling, or by choice below it, you are on the régime réel, deducting real costs and depreciation, with proper accounts and a form 2031 to file. That is the LMNP arrangement explained in our LMNP guide, which our calculator lets you test with your own figures, and which may not survive the 2027 budget in its current form.
Four footnotes from the ministry’s pages bite a foreign owner in particular. You stay a non-professional landlord, LMNP, while furnished receipts are under €23,000 a year or below your household’s other earned income, and from 2026 income a non-resident’s test counts the income taxed in the country of residence too, a reform we explained in a note of its own. Social levies on furnished profit rise from 17.2 to 18.6 per cent for 2026 income, which we covered in the CSG piece, and above €23,000 of tourist receipts you register with URSSAF for social contributions proper.
A property held en indivision, which is how many unmarried foreign couples buy, cannot use micro-BIC at all and must file under the réel.
Furnished letting is also liable to the cotisation foncière des entreprises, and to VAT at 10 per cent if you provide three of the four hotel-style services: breakfast, cleaning during the stay, linen, and a personal welcome or key handover.
If you let unfurnished, which in practice means long-term, you declare the rent as revenus fonciers, property income, and there are two regimes depending on your receipts. Below €15,000 a year you may choose between the régime réel and the micro-foncier, which gives you a flat 30 per cent deduction on the rent. From €15,000 of rental income you are on the régime réel, which lets you deduct from your property income the costs you actually incurred in the tax year. The tax administration’s page on unfurnished letting gives the detail, including the point that the €15,000 is measured across the whole household and before charges.
Whether you invest in old or new property, you may under certain conditions benefit from various tax advantages, and the ministry keeps a panorama of the tax reductions available. Updated in June 2026, it lists four live schemes and one dead one. Pinel closed to new investments at the end of 2024. Denormandie gives a tax reduction for buying an old home to renovate in certain zones until 31 December 2027, on a price capped at €300,000.
The déficit foncier lets an unfurnished landlord on the réel set a loss, excluding loan interest, against general income up to €10,700 a year, or €15,300 for some homes, if the property stays let for three years. The two that matter most are the ones we have already covered. The Jeanbrun depreciation applies to flats in collective buildings bought between 21 February 2026 and 31 December 2028. Loc’Avantages gives a reduction of 15 to 65 per cent for letting below market rent under an Anah agreement, and is open until 31 December 2027. None of them is available to a tourist let.
| Short-term (meublé de tourisme) | Long-term furnished | Long-term unfurnished | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who lives there | Passing guests, not their home | A tenant’s principal residence | A tenant’s principal residence |
| Contract | Written offer or contract with price and description of the premises | Written lease on the statutory model | Written lease on the statutory model |
| Minimum length | None, but at most 90 consecutive days per guest | 1 year, 9 months for a student, 1 to 10 months on a bail mobilité | 3 years, 6 if the landlord is a company |
| Rent | Set freely | Capped in the zones tendues | Capped in the zones tendues |
| Your own use | Whenever it is empty | Only at the end of the lease, with 3 months’ notice and a lawful reason | Only at the end of the lease, with 6 months’ notice and a lawful reason |
| Declarations | National registration number in every listing, SIRET, mairie permissions where required | SIRET within 15 days of the first let, because furnished letting counts as a business activity | None: unfurnished letting is a civil activity, declared on your income-tax return only |
| Tax category | BIC: micro-BIC to €15,000 with 30% off if unclassified, €83,600 with 50% off if classified | BIC: micro-BIC to €83,600 with 50% off, or réel | Revenus fonciers: micro-foncier to €15,000 with 30% off, or réel |
| Main risk | Empty nights, and a commune that changes the rules | Unpaid rent | Unpaid rent, and a tenant you cannot move |
The decision rule
If you want the property for yourself part of the year and it is somewhere people visit, it is a short-term let, and you run it as a registered business from day one: règlement checked, national registration number, SIRET, DPE, taxe de séjour, and the 30 per cent deduction unless you get it classified. If you want income with the least administration, let it long-term, furnished for the LMNP deductions and the one-year lease, unfurnished for the simplest tax return and the longest tenant. Decide on use first and tax second, and read the règlement before either.
Our view: two kinds of ownership, and 2026 has made the choice starker
The choice is not between two ways of earning rent but between two kinds of ownership. Short-term letting keeps the property yours, at the cost of running a small hospitality business under a regime that has tightened every year since 2024 and now carries fines of up to €10,000 for failing to register and €15,000 for exceeding the day count. Long-term letting hands the property to someone else for three years, or one, in exchange for a quieter life and a tax treatment that, for furnished lets, remains generous for now.
For an owner living abroad, the quiet option is usually the right one, and the furnished long-term lease is where most of our readers end up: one tenant, a one-year lease, 50 per cent off under micro-BIC or depreciation under the réel. The exception is the owner who bought a place by the sea or in the mountains to use it, for whom the tourist let is the only way to keep it. That owner should read the règlement, register, and get the property classified, because an unclassified tourist flat taxed on 70 per cent of its receipts above a €15,000 ceiling is the one arrangement in this article that the law is actively trying to discourage.
FAQ: short or long-term letting in France
Can I let my French flat short-term and still use it myself?
Yes, that is the main advantage of a meublé de tourisme: you take the property back whenever it is not booked. A long-term tenant has a right to stay until the end of the lease.
What is the difference between a short-term let and a bail mobilité?
A short-term let is for passing guests who do not make the property their home, for at most 90 consecutive days. A bail mobilité is a furnished residential lease of one to ten months for a tenant in training, study, an internship, a service civique or a temporary posting, and it cannot be renewed.
Do I need to register a short-term let?
Yes. A second home always had to be declared at the mairie, and the larger communes already issued registration numbers. Since 20 May 2026 every meublé de tourisme, primary residences included, must be declared through the national registration service before it is offered, and the number must appear in the listing. A second home may also need a change-of-use permission from the mairie, with a DPE rated A to E.
How long is a long-term lease in France?
Three years unfurnished, six if the landlord is a company, and at least one year furnished, or nine months for a student. The lease renews unless the landlord gives valid notice, six months ahead for an unfurnished let and three months for a furnished one.
How is each option taxed?
Furnished income, short or long, is BIC: micro-BIC up to €83,600 with 50 per cent off for long-term and classified lets, up to €15,000 with 30 per cent off for unclassified tourist lets, otherwise the réel. Unfurnished income is revenus fonciers: micro-foncier with 30 per cent off below €15,000, the réel above it or by choice.
