Seasonal rental in Nice: the rules for main and second homes

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Updated on 11 August 2026, following the French law of 19 November 2024 known as the loi Le Meur, the Nice city council resolution of 23 May 2025 lowering the cap to 90 nights, and the metropolitan regulation of 5 December 2025 introducing quotas.

Letting a property as a short-term holiday rental in Nice no longer follows the rules that applied two years ago. The cap on a main residence has dropped from 120 to 90 nights a year, a quota system now governs change-of-use authorisations, and an energy performance threshold conditions any new approval.

Whether you let your own home for a few weeks or run a second property year round, here is where the rules stand, and where the situation is still moving.

Letting your main residence in Nice, the 90-night rule

Your main residence is the home you occupy for at least eight months a year. French tax law defines it as your place of residence on 31 December of the year in which the income is received.

Since the city council resolution of 23 May 2025, adopted under the loi Le Meur, Nice limits short-term holiday letting of a main residence to 90 nights a year, down from 120. The city used the power French tourism law now gives municipalities to lower the national cap.

In practice, an owner still working on the basis of 120 nights exceeds the legal limit by a full month. Platforms automatically block listings once the declared quota is reached.

Registration and the declaration number

Registration remains free and compulsory. It gives you a registration number that must appear on every listing, whatever the platform. Under the European DAC7 directive, platforms are required to collect this information and pass it to the French tax authorities.

This is about to change. The loi Le Meur creates a national online register that will replace the declaration made at town hall, with a thirteen-character number valid across the country. The legal deadline was set at 20 May 2026, but rollout has been pushed back to the final quarter of 2026. Until then, the Nice procedure is the one that applies. Numbers issued by the city will remain valid through a transition period before being replaced.

Penalties have been raised. Failure to register carries a fine of up to 10,000 euros, and a false declaration or the use of an invalid number up to 20,000 euros.

Check the co-ownership rules, now a decisive step

The co-ownership regulations of your building may prohibit short-term letting. Since the loi Le Meur, any owner who registers a holiday rental must inform the building's managing agent, and newly drafted regulations must state explicitly whether the activity is allowed.

A prohibition cannot result from a simple vote at a general meeting. It requires an amendment to the co-ownership regulations, adopted unanimously.

Letting a second home, change of use and quotas

A dwelling is by default in residential use. Running it as a holiday rental all year amounts to giving it commercial use, which requires a change-of-use authorisation from the metropolitan authority.

A quota of 671 authorisations a year

The metropolitan regulation of 5 December 2025, in force since 1 January 2026, caps the number of temporary authorisations issued each year and splits them by district.

• Old Nice, 38 authorisations a year
• Riquier, Port and Mont Boron, 227 authorisations
• City centre, 298 authorisations
• West Nice, 108 authorisations

That is 671 authorisations in total, against the number of applications filed each year. Files must be submitted within a strict calendar window, outside of which they are rejected.

A scheme partly suspended by the courts

The regulation is being challenged. In an order dated 29 January 2026, the interim relief judge of the Nice administrative court partly suspended it, over the method used to calculate the quota base, which counted main residences only. The rest of the scheme was not suspended.

Pending the decision of the Conseil d'État, applications in quota districts are suspended until 31 August 2026. If you are planning a change of use, that is the point to watch before anything else.

What commercial use actually involves

A change-of-use authorisation lifts the night cap and allows year-round letting. In exchange, the property moves into a more demanding framework than residential use.

Depending on the layout of the property and the building, fire safety requirements become stricter, with smoke detectors, extinguishers and, in some cases, an automatic suppression system. Accessibility obligations for people with reduced mobility may apply, which can mean substantial work on common areas. The premises are subject to compliance and hygiene inspections.

These adaptations cost money, on top of the administrative fees involved. On an older Nice property they often weigh more heavily than expected, and are worth costing before an application is filed.

Compensation

In the districts concerned, authorisation may be conditional on compensation. The owner must then convert premises that were not previously residential into housing, or acquire a compensation title. The mechanism exists to stop the residential stock shrinking as homes shift towards tourist letting.

Energy performance, a new condition of entry

The loi Le Meur introduced a requirement that did not previously exist for holiday rentals. Any new change-of-use authorisation requires a property rated E or above on the French energy performance certificate, which rules out F and G. From 2034 the threshold rises to class D for all rentals subject to authorisation.

The mayor may request the certificate. A property whose rating does not permit the activity faces a fine of up to 5,000 euros, with a daily penalty if the document is not produced.

On an older, unrenovated Nice property, this condition alone can close off the holiday letting route. It is worth checking before any yield calculation.

How is a holiday rental taxed in 2026?

Income from a holiday rental falls under the French BIC regime for industrial and commercial profits. The simplified micro-BIC regime has been sharply tightened for unclassified properties.

• Unclassified rental, income ceiling cut to 15,000 euros with the flat allowance reduced to 30 %
• Classified rental, ceiling of 77,700 euros on 2025 income, rising to 83,600 euros on 2026 income, with the allowance held at 50 %

The gap between classified and unclassified has become considerable. Obtaining the official tourist rating, long treated as optional, is now a tax decision in its own right.

Above those ceilings, or by choice, the actual-expenses regime allows charges to be deducted and the property to be depreciated. We set out that mechanism in our article on choosing between the LMNP and LMP statuses.

Tourist tax, who pays it and who passes it on

The tourist tax is owed by the guest, not by the owner, who acts as collector unless the platform withholds it directly, which it has done for non-professional hosts since 2019.

For an unclassified holiday rental in Nice, the rate applicable since 1 January 2026 is 6.70 % of the pre-tax price per person per night, capped at 6.43 euros. Classified rentals pay a flat rate per star, from 1.07 euros for one star to 6.43 euros for palace-rated properties.

The online declaration to the metropolitan authority remains compulsory, whether or not the property is classified, and separately from the registration number.

What non-resident owners should know

If you are not a French tax resident, income from a French property is still taxed in France. Double taxation treaties give the taxing right to the country where the property is located.

Two practical consequences follow. You will need a French tax number and an annual return, even if you have never lived in France. And social levies apply at the full rate for non-residents outside the European Union, where EU and Swiss residents pay a reduced rate.

This is also why the night cap matters more than it appears for an overseas owner. Ninety nights of holiday letting rarely covers a year of ownership costs on its own, which is what makes the mixed lease below worth a close look.

Combining student and holiday letting, the Nice mixed lease

A holiday rental earns its money over three to four months. For the rest of the year it turns over less while wear and management costs carry on. The metropolitan authority built a scheme that answers exactly that imbalance.

The principle is to let the property to a student from September to June, then offer it as a holiday rental over the summer, without having to apply for a change of use. The owner keeps non-professional status and avoids the constraints of commercial use.

In exchange, the student rent is capped. Since the resolution of 16 May 2025, the monthly figures excluding charges are as follows.

• Studio, 525 euros
• One bedroom, 680 euros
• Two bedrooms, 890 euros
• Three bedrooms and above, 1,260 euros

The demand is there. Nice now hosts a little over 50,000 students, a figure that has doubled since 2008, spread across the Université Côte d'Azur, six faculties and several dozen specialist, engineering and business schools. 60 % of them are looking for housing, close to 30,000 potential tenants over a very short window. With the academic year starting between September and October, the pressure concentrates on the three months before.

That tension has a flip side owners should know. Prices are pushed upwards, and a student without income must provide a guarantor earning at least four times the rent. The furnished student lease also allows a deposit of two months' rent excluding charges, and it is one of the rare cases where combining a guarantor with unpaid-rent insurance remains possible.

The scheme requires an agreement with the metropolitan authority and strict compliance with the rent cap. Full conditions are set out on the Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur portal.

Letting Winter Immobilier manage your property

Between the 90-night cap, the application window for change of use, the pending litigation, the energy threshold and the two tax regimes, letting in Nice demands a level of monitoring few owners have time for, and less still from abroad.

Our property management service in Nice handles finding tenants, drawing up leases, filing declarations and dealing with maintenance. We currently manage more than 550 units in Nice and the surrounding area, including difficult cases.

Founded in 1958, our estate agency in Nice is a family business where three generations have succeeded one another. To review your property and the regime that suits it, get in touch or come and see us on boulevard Gambetta.