The biggest fine yet—nearly €600,000—in a Paris crackdown on illegal vacation rentals has been levied against a landlord who bought a building and turned it into 11 Airbnb units without getting permission to change uses or register them.
It’s one of a number of such operations carried out behind the guise of an SCI, or société civile immobilière, an entity similar to an LLC in the U.S., allowing the actual owners of the company to operate under the company name rather than their own.
Under current law, Paris residents can rent out their own apartments on short-term platforms for up to 90 days a year, but must register them. Owners of second homes in the city are not allowed to rent them for short terms, but can rent to permanent tenants.
In the city’s crackdown on an estimated 25,000 illegal rentals, fines of five and six figures are happening more and more often.
