A new city launches the hunt for Airbnbs. Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) announces that it wants to eliminate key boxes from its public space to limit the proliferation of tourist rentals, it announced in a statement cited by Provence et France Blue Provence this Wednesday.
These boxes, often locked with a multi-digit code, are used to store the keys to apartments or houses rented to tourists and allow for easier delivery to the owners of these tourist rentals.
“Faced with the massive development of seasonal rentals, the City’s desire is clear: to regulate the sector so that properties placed on the short-term rental market do not prevent Marseille residents from finding accommodation,” the municipality indicates in a press release. According to her, in 2023 there were 13,000 furnished tourist accommodations on the rental market. In one year the growth was 45%.
Warning stickers
To carry out this hunt for key boxes, municipal agents will apply stickers directly to the boxes hanging from street furniture. These stickers will tell landlords they have two weeks to comply with holiday rental regulations.
After two weeks the municipal services will have the task of removing the boxes placed in the public space to “free” it. These boxes will then be “delivered to the city’s lost and found where the owners can recover them.” According to La Provence, the first stickers would have already been posted on October 4th. For some owners the deadline for compliance has therefore already expired.
At the same time, the city of Marseille says it has other means to regulate seasonal rentals, such as those through Airbnb. A regulation that came into force in 2021 makes it mandatory “the request for change of use for the possible rental of furnished tourist accommodation other than the main residence”. The measure was strengthened «in 2023 with the creation of a control brigade which guarantees the correct follow-up of requests for deletion of non-compliant adverts from the platforms and identifies fraudulent adverts or those which have not complied with the legislation in force», explains the city of Marseille in its press release.
The municipality of the city of Marseille is not the first to attack the key boxes of tourist rentals. The use of these small boxes is also strictly regulated in Paris, Versailles, Lille and even Nice.
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