Faced with the increase in tourist accommodation in hypercentres and a tight real estate market, the City of Lyon has decided to tighten the noose, through a deliberation voted on April 11, after a first turn of the screw carried out by the former mandate in 2018.
“The issue behind this measure is that of housing“, says Raphaël Michaud, town planning assistant for the City of Lyon. “The primary objective is to produce, but also to fight against vacancy and avoid the immobilization of housing“, adds Renaud Payre, vice-president of the Metropolis for housing.
Lyon has just over 9,000 furnished tourist accommodation “approximately 7,800 active furnished (more than one night) on AirBnB, 1.100 on Booking and 300 on other platforms.”
Since 2018, if a person wishes to rent out their accommodation for more than 120 nights per year, they will have to declare a change of use, the accommodation becoming de facto furnished accommodation.
In recent months, the services of the City have thus noted “a considerable increase (+50%) authorization requests“. According to the services of the City, “more than 2,200 requests for change of use of accommodation in furnished tourist accommodation have been submitted to the city of Lyon since 2014″.
An increase attributable to several factors: on the one hand, an eeffect rebound after the Covid, but also a phenomenon attributable to the recovery of tourism and the supervision of rents put in place since the end of 2021.
The additional turn of the screw: “housing” compensation
The additional turn of the screw is played on the ground of compensation: “Anyone who wants to make a change of use for a permanent tourist accommodation will have to compensate by providing accommodation in the same area, from the first square meter”. says Renaud Payre.
A provision that closely resembles the measure already voted in Paris (and confirmed in February 2018 by the Court of Cassation)where the shortage of rental housing was already mentioned to impose on owners, subject to a change of use authorization, compensation for the square meters of housing “lost” by the creation, in the same district, of the same number of square meters , sometimes even doubled in certain “reinforced” sectors.
“If person X rents their studio for the Festival of Lights, there will of course be no change to be made. But if person Z owns a 40 square meter tourist accommodation in Croix-Rousse, rented to more than 120 days per year, it will have to rent an equivalent property”summarizes the vice-president.
Compensate with new accommodation
This compensation measure therefore applies mainly in the hypercentre [ 1er, 2e , 4e arrondissements complets, 5e (Vieux-Lyon), 7e (des voies ferrées aux quais), 3e (des voies ferrées aux quais) et 6e (sauf Bellecombe)]which concentrates nearly 72% permissions have been issued since 2018.
Before the April 11 deliberation, the compensation only concerned dwellings of a surface greater than 60 m2. “The compensation consists of the transformation into housing of premises having a destination other than housing on January 1, 1970 (or on its date of construction if later) and not having already been used as compensation.“, specifies the Metropolis.
Concretely, an owner should offer, to compensate for the transformation of use, a room which was not already a dwelling (commercial or offices, not located on the ground floor) “and request a change of destination so that it (they) become(s) a dwelling and for residential use. The idea is that we do not lose square meters of housing when there is a new furnished tourist accommodation“, continues the Metropolis.
Another novelty: the 8th and 9th arrondissements are now concerned, with a less drastic compensation measure. It is asked “compensation for accommodation with a surface area greater than 35 m2” and “a distinction is made between natural persons and legal persons”.
For this measure to be effective, it will require control. Four people will be assigned to it. To note that 3,900 checks have been made since 2019 and that in 2021, an arbitration was favorable to the City. In 2022, twelve addresses are already in litigation.
Multi-ownership in the line of sight
If the compensation conditions are tighter, it is because they directly target multi-owners, especially in the inner city where the City estimates that 8% of accommodation is furnished tourist accommodation. “Rental tension translates into significant growth in multi-ownership. Owners who buy accommodation to offer them as furnished tourist accommodation“, comments Raphaël Michaud.
According to a study published by INSEE in 2021, “households with 5 or more dwellings own 57% of rental accommodation located in Lyon, compared to 16% of owner-occupied accommodation.”
A phenomenon all the more concentrated in the hypercentres of large cities. “The share of housing owned by households with 5 or more housing units within the Lyon conurbation is up to 60% in these neighborhoods”indicates INSEE.
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In Lyon, furnished tourist accommodation and Airbnb will have to offset their impact by creating a second accommodation