Can I sublet my accommodation during the holidays?

Vacations are great, but they are also expensive! Could you supplement your income by subletting your home during your vacation?

Are you a tenant? With the Olympic Games this year in Paris and other cities in France, many people have thought about subletting their accommodation in their absence. But, generally speaking, this requires following strict rules.

You remain the tenant

What is a sublet, legally speaking? When you are a tenant, you rent out all or part of your accommodation when you are not there, whether it is a room or the whole place. For hard cash, of course. If this allows you to contribute to paying at least part of your rent when you are not there, on vacation or traveling, it does not change the fact that you are the tenant: your tenant sublets, and you retain all your obligations towards your owner, your lessor.

This is also the key point to respect: since you are a tenant, your lease must not only prohibit any subletting, regardless of the duration. Above all, you must have requested written authorization from your landlord. Otherwise, this subletting would be considered illegal.

A written request by registered mail

In any case, your landlord does what he wants with his property: he is absolutely free to accept or refuse that the tenant that you are sublets his accommodation. It is up to you, therefore, to send him your request for authorization by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt.

The easiest thing would probably be to submit a general request, not for a specific period. But in fact, legally speaking, you should make a request for each sublet, specifying the name of the subtenant, the period of time, and even the amount of rent requested.

A case of termination of your lease

Once your landlord has given your consent, it will be up to you as the lessor, this time, to pass on the written authorization that you have obtained to your subtenant, as well as a copy of the original lease in progress. This is the only way that the rules will be respected, but also that things will be clear and established in the event of a future dispute. It remains to be seen whether your municipality has not issued restrictive rules regarding short-term rentals, such as those taken by certain cities in order to limit the rise in rents and the lack of housing caused by online rental platforms such as AirBnB.

If you sublet without your landlord’s agreement, be aware that this could result in the definitive termination, the cancellation, of your lease. What’s more, you could be ordered not only to pay the sums received from subletting to your landlord, but also damages for the harm suffered by your landlord. A risk that, a priori, is not worth taking.

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