You own a flat in Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux, you live in London, Dublin or New York, and the apartment next door has quietly turned into a full-time holiday rental. Suitcases roll across the landing at 2 a.m., strangers hold the entry code for a weekend, cigarette ends pile up in the courtyard, and the managing agent answers that there is nothing to be done. In France, that answer is wrong. French law gives neighbours and co-owners a complete set of tools against short-term rental nuisance: a strict-liability civil action that can shut the rentals down in weeks, the power of the co-ownership itself to sue one of its own members, a town-hall enforcement route carrying fines of up to 100,000 euros per unit, and, since a landmark constitutional ruling of 19 March 2026, a simplified majority vote to ban tourist rentals in residential buildings. This guide explains each weapon, the evidence French judges actually expect, and the practical sequence a foreign owner should follow, including the specific practice of Paris and the Île-de-France.

One preliminary point sets the frame. This guide is written for the neighbour, not the operator: the co-owner or occupier who suffers the nuisance. French courts treat the tourist operator as the person answerable for the disturbance, even when that person lives hundreds of kilometres away and never meets a guest. The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed exactly that in a 7 May 2024 ruling against an owner living in Corsica whose two studios were let through a platform, and that decision runs through this guide as a practical thread. The legal vocabulary below keeps the French term first, in italics, with its English meaning: copropriété (co-ownership), syndic (managing agent), meublé de tourisme (furnished tourist accommodation), trouble anormal de voisinage (abnormal neighbourhood disturbance).

I. The Civil Remedies: Stopping the Nuisance and Being Compensated

Two civil-law actions do the heavy lifting for neighbours. The first targets the disturbance itself, whoever causes it. The second targets the breach of the building’s own rules. Both can be brought quickly, and both were tested successfully in the Paris case that illustrates this guide.

A. Abnormal Neighbourhood Disturbance: Strict Liability for the Operator

French law on neighbourhood disturbance is now codified. Since April 2024, Article 1253 of the Civil Code provides: « Le propriétaire, le locataire, l’occupant sans titre, le bénéficiaire d’un titre ayant pour objet principal de l’autoriser à occuper ou à exploiter un fonds, le maître d’ouvrage ou celui qui en exerce les pouvoirs qui est à l’origine d’un trouble excédant les inconvénients normaux de voisinage est responsable de plein droit du dommage qui en résulte. » No fault needs to be proved, and no intent either. Once the disturbance exceeds what neighbours must normally tolerate, the person behind it is automatically liable for the resulting harm. The general fault rule backs it up: Article 1240 of the Civil Code states that « Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer. » In practice, neighbours plead both texts together: strict liability for the disturbance, fault-based liability for the careless way the rentals are run.

What counts as abnormal is a question of fact, and short-term rentals produce a recognisable pattern that judges know well. The Paris ruling of 7 May 2024 (RG 23/14210) is the reference illustration. An owner had split her unit into two furnished studios let to passing guests from November 2021. The co-ownership produced a bailiff’s report recording the division, the still-active platform listings and at least fifty-four guest reviews, plus written statements from six residents describing rolling suitcases on paving stones at night, arrivals and departures in the early hours, drunken guests in the courtyard, cigarette ends and rubbish in the common areas, cleaning staff coming on Sundays, and a feeling of insecurity from unknown people holding the building codes. The court held: « Ces témoignages établissent que la présence fréquente des locataires du n°44, pour de courtes durées, génère des nuisances qui excèdent les troubles normaux du voisinage. » Frequent short-stay occupation by strangers, night noise and misuse of the common areas exceed normal neighbourhood inconvenience. The owner’s defence, that she lived far away in Corsica, changed nothing: the person who puts the property on the tourist market answers for what follows.

That ruling also shows the evidence file that wins. First, a formal report by a commissaire de justice (court officer, formerly known as huissier de justice), who records the layout of the unit, photographs the listings and certifies the guest turnover. Second, dated and signed witness statements from residents describing precisely what each person personally saw or heard, with dates, times and frequency, rather than general complaints. Third, the platform evidence itself: screenshots of the active advertisements, the calendar, the number of reviews. Fourth, any paper trail with the operator and the managing agent: complaint letters, minutes recording the nuisance, municipal reports. Judges reason from concrete, repeated facts, and the Paris court expressly relied on statements it called precise and detailed. A foreign owner who visits rarely should therefore ask a neighbour, the caretaker or a property manager to keep a dated log from the first incident, because the file is built month by month, not the week before the hearing.

The fastest court route is the emergency application, the référé, before the president of the tribunal judiciaire (general civil court). Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure allows the judge to act, and I quote the operative words, « même en présence d’une contestation sérieuse, prescrire en référé les mesures conservatoires ou de remise en état qui s’imposent, soit pour prévenir un dommage imminent, soit pour faire cesser un trouble manifestement illicite. » Even where the operator disputes everything, the judge can order the rentals to stop. In the Paris case, the first judge ordered cessation from the fifteenth day after service of the order, backed by a provisional daily penalty payment, an astreinte, of 200 euros per day, and the Court of Appeal confirmed the whole order, holding that a temporary shutdown pending a full trial was neither excessive nor disproportionate given the gravity of the disturbance. For a neighbour, the référé is therefore the emergency brake: weeks, not years, between the application and silence restored.

Stopping the rentals is only half the remedy. On the merits, the court awards damages for the harm suffered: loss of quiet enjoyment of your own home, the depression in rental value if you let your flat, confirmed health effects such as chronic sleep loss evidenced medically, and moral harm from insecurity. Keep every proof of loss: medical certificates, correspondence with your own tenants, comparable rent levels, hotel bills if you had to leave. The losing operator also pays costs. In the Paris case the owner was ordered to pay 3,000 euros under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure at first instance and another 3,000 euros on appeal, plus the full court costs. These amounts never cover everything, but they change the economics of defending an indefensible letting.

B. The Building’s Own Rules: Destination of the Property and the Co-ownership’s Right to Sue

The second civil weapon sits inside the building. Every French co-ownership is governed by its règlement de copropriété (co-ownership rules), which fix what each unit may be used for, and by a statute that protects that agreed use. Article 9 of the Law of 10 July 1965 on co-ownership states the principle: « Chaque copropriétaire dispose des parties privatives comprises dans son lot ; il use et jouit librement des parties privatives et des parties communes sous la condition de ne porter atteinte ni aux droits des autres copropriétaires ni à la destination de l’immeuble. » Freedom to use your flat ends where the agreed character of the building and your neighbours’ rights begin. Many Paris and inner-suburb buildings add an express residential clause, the clause d’habitation bourgeoise, requiring units to be kept for respectable residential occupation. In the Paris case, the rules required flats to be kept for residential use and occupied by persons of respectable conduct and morals. The court treated the incessant turnover of passing guests, with its noise and misuse of the courtyard, as a breach of the tranquillity the rules promised, alongside the statutory disturbance. Notably, the judges found it unnecessary to decide the abstract debate about whether short-term letting is a commercial activity or a change of use: the proven nuisance alone justified shutting the rentals down. For neighbours, the lesson is practical rather than theoretical. Read your building’s rules before anything else, and plead the breach of those rules together with the disturbance, so the judge has two independent reasons to order cessation.

The co-ownership itself can bring the case. Article 15 of the 1965 Law gives the syndicat des copropriétaires (the legal entity formed by all co-owners) standing to sue: « Le syndicat a qualité pour agir en justice, tant en demandant qu’en défendant, même contre certains des copropriétaires ; il peut notamment agir, conjointement ou non avec un ou plusieurs de ces derniers, en vue de la sauvegarde des droits afférents à l’immeuble. » In the Paris case it was the syndicat, authorised by the general meeting, that sued the operator, and the operator’s objection that only the immediate neighbours suffered was rejected, because the disturbances spilled into the courtyard and the entrance, affecting the common areas and therefore the collective interest. A foreign co-owner who suffers alone does not have to sue alone: write to the syndic with your evidence, ask for the next general meeting to authorise proceedings, and let the co-ownership carry the costs and the standing. Individual neighbours can still join the action alongside the syndicat to claim their personal losses.

Since 2026, the collective route has grown a powerful new branch. The so-called loi Le Meur of 19 November 2024 allows a general meeting to write an outright ban on tourist rentals into the building’s rules by a qualified majority instead of unanimity. Article 26 of the 1965 Law now opens with this rule: « Sont prises à la majorité des membres du syndicat représentant au moins les deux tiers des voix les décisions concernant : » and its paragraph (d) covers amendments banning the letting, as tourist accommodation, of residential units that are not the operator’s main home. Three limits frame the vote: it is available only in buildings whose rules already forbid commercial activity in non-commercial units, it can never touch an owner’s main residence, and it applies to every co-owner equally. Crucially, any ban adopted this way must still be justified, under judicial review, by the character and destination of the building, and it can be lifted by the same two-thirds vote.

That mechanism survived the highest test. An owner challenged a 2025 meeting resolution banning tourist rentals, arguing that a majority vote rewriting private use rights violated property rights and freedom of enterprise, and the Court of Cassation sent the constitutional question to the Constitutional Council as a serious one (Cass., 3rd Civil Chamber, 18 December 2025, No. 25-40.030). On 19 March 2026, the Council upheld the statute in Decision No. 2025-1186 QPC, holding in its operative article that the fifth and sixth paragraphs of Article 26 of the 1965 Law, in the wording introduced by the November 2024 statute reinforcing local regulation of tourist accommodation, comply with the Constitution. The Council reasoned that Parliament pursued two general-interest goals, fighting rental-related nuisance inside co-ownerships and fighting the shortage of long-term homes, and that the safeguards, main homes excluded, other letting modes still permitted, equal treatment, reversibility, made the interference proportionate. For neighbours, the message is direct: pushing a ban resolution at the general meeting is now a constitutionally validated strategy, and foreign co-owners should vote, by proxy if absent, whenever such a resolution is tabled. Operators, symmetrically, should note the strict deadline for fighting a ban: Article 42 of the 1965 Law requires that « Les actions en contestation des décisions des assemblées générales doivent, à peine de déchéance, être introduites par les copropriétaires opposants ou défaillants dans un délai de deux mois à compter de la notification du procès-verbal d’assemblée, sans ses annexes. » Miss the two months and the ban stands, however arguable it seemed.

II. The Practical Path: Evidence, Town Hall and Court, Step by Step

Winning requires sequencing. French judges reward neighbours who warned, documented and escalated in order, and town halls act only on files they can use. The path below follows that order, with the Paris and Île-de-France specifics a foreign owner needs at each stage.

A. Building a File the Judge and the Mairie Can Use

Start with the advertisements, because they prove the business. Save dated screenshots of every listing for the neighbouring unit on each platform, including the calendar, the nightly rate, the capacity and the review count, and note whether the ad displays a registration number. Since the recent reform, Article L. 324-1-1 of the Tourism Code defines the target precisely: « les meublés de tourisme sont des villas, appartements ou studios meublés, à l’usage exclusif du locataire, offerts à la location à une clientèle de passage qui n’y élit pas domicile et qui y effectue un séjour caractérisé par une location à la journée, à la semaine ou au mois. » The same article now requires every operator to register beforehand on a national online service, which issues an electronic receipt with a declaration number, and to state whether the unit is the operator’s main home, with proof. An ad with no number, or a number that does not check out, is the first anomaly to report. The Court of Cassation had already tightened this net before the reform, holding on 27 June 2024 that the registration duty applies to every tourist letting regardless of the unit’s planning status, in the court’s words, « l’article L. 324-1-1, III, du code du tourisme impose une obligation de déclaration préalable soumise à enregistrement de toute location d’un meublé de tourisme, quel que soit son usage au sens de l’article L. 631-7 du code de la construction et de l’habitation » (Cass., 3rd Civil Chamber, 27 June 2024, No. 23-13.567).

Next, commission the court officer’s report and collect the statements. The commissaire de justice attends at noisy hours, records sound levels where useful, photographs the common areas and certifies the listings, producing the neutral backbone of the file. Witness statements from residents must describe personally observed facts, dates, duration and frequency, and the Paris judges gave weight to exactly that kind of detail: suitcases dragged on paving stones at 3 a.m., groups talking in the courtyard on summer nights, cleaners arriving on Sundays, a neighbour insulted for asking for quiet. Add municipal or police reports if patrols attended, any correspondence with the operator, and your own quantified losses. Then send the operator a formal demand, a mise en demeure, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, listing the disturbances, demanding immediate cessation and setting a short deadline. Copy the syndic and ask in writing that the matter be placed on the agenda of the next general meeting. This letter is not a formality: judges read it as proof that the neighbour sought peace before seeking orders, and its acknowledgment slip starts the clock for damages.

With that file, alert the town hall in parallel. Tourist letting in a private home without authorisation is a planning offence where the municipality has made change of use subject to prior approval. Article L. 631-7 of the Construction and Housing Code now frames the rule as follows: « le changement d’usage des locaux à usage d’habitation peut être soumis, sur décision de l’organe délibérant, à autorisation préalable dans les conditions fixées à l’article L. 631-7-1. » Repeated short-term letting to passing guests who do not live there counts as such a change of use. The sanction is severe: Article L. 651-2 of the same Code provides that « Toute personne qui enfreint les dispositions des articles L. 631-7 ou L. 631-7-1 A ou qui ne se conforme pas aux conditions ou obligations imposées en application des mêmes articles L. 631-7 et L. 631-7-1 A est condamnée à une amende civile dont le montant ne peut excéder 100 000 € par local irrégulièrement transformé. » Only the municipality and the other listed public bodies can bring that fine action before the civil court, which is precisely why a neighbour’s documented report matters: it hands the town hall a ready-made case. Send the mairie the listings, the officer’s report and a short chronology, and ask for confirmation of receipt. One common operator defence is already dead: on the same day in June 2024, the Court of Cassation held that holding an official tourist-accommodation star rating changes nothing, because « une décision de classement en meublé de tourisme ne peut se substituer à l’autorisation de changement d’usage prévue à l’article L. 631-7 du code de la construction et de l’habitation » (Cass., 3rd Civil Chamber, 27 June 2024, No. 23-13.131). A rating certificate is not a planning permission, and the town hall knows it.

B. Suing, Voting and Enforcing: The Paris and Île-de-France Practice

When warnings fail, file the emergency application before the tribunal judiciaire of the property’s location: the Paris court for a Paris flat, otherwise the court of the department. Ask the judge to order immediate cessation of short-term letting to passing guests, backed by a daily penalty payment running from a short deadline after service, and to reserve damages for later assessment. Attach the officer’s report, the statements, the listings and the unanswered demand letter, and frame the claim expressly as a manifestly unlawful disturbance within Article 835, so the judge can rule without waiting for a full trial or an expert report. In the Paris case the operator asked for a court-appointed expert to debate whether the disturbance was abnormal; both courts refused, because the file already proved it. Expect the operator’s standard defences and prepare the answers: the building allegedly tolerates noise anyway, the guests are no louder than long-term tenants would be, the shutdown would be disproportionate. The Paris court rejected each in turn, noting that hypothetical noise from a permanent occupant proves nothing against documented nightly turnover, and that a temporary order pending trial respects proportionality. Damages can follow in the same proceedings or in a later action on the merits, where the same evidence supports compensation for loss of enjoyment and any proven financial loss.

Run the collective track at the same time. Give the syndic your file and press for two agenda items at the next general meeting: authorisation for the syndicat to sue the operator, and, where the building qualifies, the two-thirds ban resolution under Article 26. A foreign owner who cannot attend must organise representation: French co-ownership meetings allow voting by proxy, and a neighbour, the property manager or a lawyer can carry your votes, including, in many buildings, for the election of the council. If a ban is adopted, check its conditions immediately, because operators attack them on exactly four points: the pre-existing commercial-activity prohibition in the rules, the residential and non-main-home scope, the equal application to all owners, and the two-thirds arithmetic. The Constitutional Council’s validation removed the constitutional objection, but a sloppy majority count or a missing agenda mention can still kill a resolution in court, and the two-month challenge period of Article 42 runs from notification of the minutes. Conversely, a neighbour who receives minutes adopting a ban should calendar that deadline even when the ban suits them, because only a final, unchallenged resolution gives full security.

Paris and the inner suburbs deserve their specific notes, since most foreign-owned rental stock sits there. The City of Paris operates dedicated enforcement teams that act on documented neighbour reports and pursue unauthorised tourist lets systematically, which makes the town-hall report described above particularly effective inside the capital. Change-of-use authorisation in Paris follows its own strict municipal scheme on top of the statute, so an operator who claims a general right to let should be asked to produce the Paris-specific permission, not merely a registration number or a star rating. Before the courts, the Paris tribunal judiciaire hears these emergency applications constantly, and its orders follow the pattern of the 2024 case: short compliance deadline, daily penalty, costs against the operator. Proceedings are conducted in French, exhibits in English should be translated, and a non-resident claimant acts through a lawyer, who can also receive service and monitor deadlines, including the two-month meeting-challenge period, while the owner is abroad. Practical organisation matters as much as law: keep a single chronological bundle, number every exhibit, and make sure someone in Paris can instruct the court officer at short notice when a noisy weekend is expected.

Costs and timing should be weighed honestly. An emergency application typically reaches a hearing within weeks and an order within a few more, while a full trial on damages can take a year or more in Paris. Budget the officer’s reports, translations and counsel fees against the realistic recovery: cessation itself, damages proportionate to documented loss, and a costs order that contributes without covering everything. What the neighbour buys is primarily the return of quiet and the building’s compliance, and secondarily money. Operators who settle after the demand letter or after the first order often agree to stop the listings, pay a fixed sum and bear the costs, which is usually a better outcome than a second year of litigation. Readers facing the operator’s side of this dispute, or a different property conflict such as a boundary, construction or co-ownership charge matter, will find the firm’s broader real estate litigation practice in Paris described on the expertise page, which sets out how these files are handled from the first report to enforcement.

Conclusion

A neighbour’s holiday rental is not a fact of life a foreign owner must accept. French law offers three converging moves: prove the abnormal disturbance with an officer’s report and precise witness statements, and have the judge stop it within weeks under penalty payment; mobilise the co-ownership, which can sue its own member and, since the constitutional validation of March 2026, can ban tourist lets by a two-thirds vote in qualifying buildings; and hand the town hall a documented planning file that can draw fines of up to 100,000 euros per unit. Each lever reinforces the others, and the file you start this month, listing by listing, letter by letter, is the case you win next season. Begin with the advertisements and the registered demand, and treat every deadline, especially the two months for challenging meeting resolutions, as the strict time limit it is.