Subletting during the Olympics, “it puts truffle butter in the spinach”

Bruno's (first name has been changed) project is clear. With his roommate, they will sublet their 40m³ apartment in the 10th arrondissement during the Olympics (July 26-August 11), without notifying their landlord.

The promise to repay their rent of 1.360 euros "in less than a week" won all the arguments.

And like them, many young Ile-de-France residents have been convinced by the prospect of pocketing tidy sums of money.

But when it comes to subletting, warns Alexis Alban, president of Lodgis, a group of real estate agencies specializing in furnished rentals, “we cannot do everything and anything”.

It can be legal if the owner agrees and if the lease and the co-ownership regulations allow it, but "the tenant cannot theoretically make a profit", he explains.

If the tenant "agrees with his landlord to rent by the night, that in three days he has made his rent profitable and that he wants to rent one more night, he can inform his landlord" and share the earnings , he continues.

Percentage

An option, legal, that Antoine chose. For "a 50 m³ loft with mezzanine in the 2nd arrondissement", he hopes to pocket 2.000 euros per week for a month and a half. A sum that he then intends to share with his roommate and his landlady.

The cumulative sum represents “more than our two salaries combined”, underlines the young man. “I told myself that if that was true, maybe there wouldn’t even be any point in me working this summer.”

He assured his owner, who was initially reluctant, "that (we) would take care of everything and that we would give her a percentage. She started to listen to me," says the young man, for whom the under -location is not a necessity but “truffled butter in spinach”.

The Airbnb site currently lists, according to the city's Observatory of furnished tourist accommodation, nearly 60.000 active advertisements in the capital, a third more than a year ago, with an average increase of 85% in prices in Ile-de-France.

But for Alexis Alban, the market during the Games is based on “a logic of bubble and escalation of rents”.

“On nightly rentals, we can rent a little more expensive than usual,” he concedes, without however exceeding rents multiplied by two.

His company tries to dissuade sub-renters by informing them of the risks involved - reimbursement of the sums collected, even eviction and payment of damages to the owner.

Easy money

To justify the possible comings and goings of her tenants, Charlotte, whose guardian monitors illegal subletting in the building, has found a solution.

“My apartment is on HomeExchange (an apartment exchange site, Editor’s note), so I told my babysitter that I will do that this summer, since it is legal,” explains the 25-year-old young woman, promising not to inflate prices.

“One month's rent is already that much saved,” she maintains, estimating that she already pays a very high rent every month: 1.100 euros for 27 m³ in the Marais. “I don’t want to do the same thing to people who come as tourists for the Olympics, and who have already paid very expensive tickets.”

Hervé will rent one of the two rooms in his apartment in the 12th arrondissement “for 150 or 200 euros per night”.

“We are going to rent the room for 3 or 4 days. If we see that it works, we will charge more for the rest of the period,” explains the 26-year-old young man. “It’s going to be too easy to make money.”

If the lure of profit was the main argument, Hervé also sees the possibility of sharing more than just accommodation: "as everything is going to be overpriced, it will be interesting to take visitors somewhere other than tourist traps ".

Nearly 15,3 million visitors are expected in Ile-de-France during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, according to the Paris Tourist Office.