# Paris has a hell of a lot of vacation rentals and second homes By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2025-03-20 paris, grand-paris, greater-paris, short-term-rentals, vacation-rentals, tourist-rentals, airbnb, vacant-homes, unoccupied-homes, new-york, apur --- Last week, we spoke about [affordable housing in Paris](https://brandondonnelly.com/the-biggest-developer-in-paris-today-is-the-mayor). Today, let's talk about tourist rentals in the city. The city of Paris and Greater Paris (i.e. la Ville de Paris and la Métropole du Grand Paris) recently commissioned [Apur](https://www.apur.org/fr/nos-travaux/locations-meublees-metropole-grand-paris-et-paris-2024) (which is a non-profit that I regularly follow) to do two studies on this topic. The first was for Paris proper and the second was for Greater Paris. What they found is super interesting: * In August 2024, Greater Paris had 149,936 tourist rentals, of which 124,988 were available for immediate booking. This represents an 84% increase compared to August 2023, which is a massive number, but maybe not entirely surprising given that Paris hosted the Olympics last summer. * Paris proper had 97,975 listings in August 2024 and 90,299 in December 2024. Overall, the city sees fairly muted seasonality. It's also worth noting that 31% of these listings belong to hosts that own multiple properties (that is, at least two). But let's put these figures into context. Here's a map showing the density of Airbnb listings: ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/cd8786ac3a6ce01ae81cb86fc01b63f1.png) Here's a map showing the number of Airbnb listings compared to the number of principal residences: ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/9073e04392acca61e5733a40e0947df4.png) And here's a map showing the percentage of unoccupied homes in the city, which totalled 268,500 as of 2021: ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5bf7ad1097822ae928967ba4467aa7fc.png) The report defines an "unoccupied home" to be any home that is not used as a household's primary residence. So in addition to flat out empty homes, it includes homes that are used sporadically throughout the year for pleasure and/or for work. And as you can see, there are large sections of the center of the city where "unoccupied" and second homes make up over 28% of the total housing stock. These areas also closely mirror the areas where tourist rentals are most popular, and where Airbnb listings make up over 20% of the housing stock. (See the second chart above.) And as far as I can tell, these are mutually exclusive classifications, meaning there are sections of the city where a large percentage of the housing stock (perhaps up to half?) is either a short-term rental or a second home. This tells you a lot about the housing market in Paris, especially when you compare it to other global cities: ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/089e3f0b38818ed164c20de218b5903e.png) NYC, for example, is shown here as having 8.8 million people, compared to 7.1 million people in Greater Paris. And yet Greater Paris has about 4x the total number of short-term rental listings. The number of available listings (where the property was available for at least one day of the year) also increased by 84% from August 2023 to August 2024 in Greater Paris; whereas it dropped by 16% in NYC, likely because the city [basically banned short-term rentals](https://brandondonnelly.com/new-york-city-enacts-strict-short-term-rental-law). The two reports can be found [here](https://www.apur.org/sites/default/files/note272_locations_meublees_touristiques_paris.pdf?token=zqKr8jNL&utm_campaign=_Publication__Locations_meubl_es_touristiques_en_2024&utm_content=lien&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Cakemail) and [here](https://www.apur.org/sites/default/files/note273_locations_meublees_touristiques_metropole_grand_paris.pdf?token=RggtlgUU&utm_campaign=_Publication__Locations_meubl_es_touristiques_en_2024&utm_content=lien&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Cakemail) (note they're in French). And they're rich in data if you'd like to learn more about some of the dynamics impacting Paris' housing market. _Cover photo by_ [_Kris Atomic_](https://unsplash.com/@krisatomic?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash) _on_ [_Unsplash_](https://unsplash.com/photos/concrete-buildings-near-green-trees-6xJ9GUbbFEo?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash) --- *Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/paris-has-a-lot-of-vacation-rentals-and-second-homes)*