Aix-en-Provence has activated the 90-night cap for primary residences and stepped up enforcement since 2024. Registration requirements, penalties, and the mobility lease strategy, the complete guide for Aix property owners.
Aix-en-Provence is one of the French cities that has implemented the provisions of the Loi Le Meur of November 2024 with particular rigour, capping short-term rentals of primary residences at 90 nights per year. A major university city, an internationally recognised cultural destination thanks to its opera festival, and a classified historic city of art, Aix has been under intense rental pressure in its historic centre for several years. The city has responded with an unprecedented enforcement effort since 2024. Here is everything property owners need to know to rent legally, and profitably, in Aix-en-Provence.
Why Aix strengthened enforcement
The historic centre of Aix-en-Provence, listed as one of France's Remarkable Sites, has seen a disproportionately high concentration of tourist rental listings relative to its total housing stock. Between 2018 and 2024, the number of active listings in the Cours Mirabeau-Mazarin sector alone tripled, mechanically reducing the supply of housing available to students and workers. In an already tight market. Aix is among the towns under 200,000 inhabitants where rents have risen most sharply in France over the decade. This created a genuine housing shortage in the city's most attractive districts.
The city's response was to deploy, from the first half of 2024, a dedicated administrative team to inspect short-term rental listings. These officers cross-reference online listings with tax declarations and can carry out on-site inspections. The Cours Mirabeau, Mazarin and Cardeurs districts are prioritised.
The 90-night rule: obligations and nuances
As in all municipalities that have activated the Loi Le Meur provision, the 90-night rule in Aix applies to the primary residence only. It covers all booking platforms. Airbnb, Booking.com, Abritel, Leboncoin or any direct channel, and all property types, from studios to townhouses. The 90 nights are counted across the calendar year (1 January to 31 December) and include all nights actually rented, regardless of the length of each individual stay.
Full administrative obligations before listing in Aix-en-Provence:
- File a declaration at the town hall (CERFA form N°14004*03) : to be submitted to Aix-en-Provence Urban Planning Department
- Obtain a local registration number, mandatory display on all online listings
- Maintain an annual log of nights rented, to be kept for 3 years
- Tourist tax collected by platforms and automatically remitted to the Pays d'Aix community
- Inform fellow co-owners if your building's co-ownership rules require authorisation for tourist lettings
Penalties in Aix: among the highest in France
Fines applicable in Aix-en-Provence are among the steepest in the country: €10,000 for failure to register or for missing registration number on a listing, and up to €50,000 for an unauthorised change of use of a secondary residence. These amounts, significantly higher than those in most other French cities, reflect Aix's firm political intention to enforce the rules without compromise.
Secondary residences: a demanding procedure
A secondary residence is not subject to the 90-night cap, it can theoretically be rented as tourist accommodation year-round. But this flexibility carries a cost: a change-of-use authorisation is mandatory, and the process is particularly demanding in Aix. The town hall may require compensation, converting equivalent floor space in the same geographic zone into residential accommodation, making pure investor short-term letting economically unattractive in the historic centre.
Change-of-use applications are examined case by case by the planning services, with heightened attention to properties within the historic heritage protection perimeter. Processing times are long, often four to six months, and the outcome is uncertain for properties in the most densely touristic sectors.
The Festival d'Art Lyrique: the event that redefines July
The Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence, founded in 1948 by Gabriel Dussurget, is one of the world's three great opera festivals. Each July, it attracts between 70,000 and 86,000 spectators, with a strong international contingent from the United States, Japan and Germany, for weeks of opera and chamber music performances in extraordinary venues across the city.
For Airbnb owners in Aix, the Festival is the most commercially significant event of the year. Hotels fill weeks in advance, and demand for short-term rentals surges across the city: nightly rates during the Festival can be two to three times higher than the annual average. Dates are published each January, planning your rental calendar around them and setting dynamic pricing accordingly is one of the highest-impact revenue decisions an Aix property owner can make.
Legal strategies to rent year-round
The 90-night cap does not close the door on year-round rental income. The bail mobilité remains the most suitable solution given the realities of the Aix market. This 1-to-10-month furnished lease, reserved for tenants in a qualifying mobility situation (student, employee on assignment, trainee, person in vocational training) : does not count towards the 90-night quota, and allows legal off-season letting at an intermediate rent between tourist rates and a standard long-term lease.
The optimal strategy for an Aix primary residence owner:
- July (Festival d'Art Lyrique): tourist letting at peak rates, 20 to 30 nights, maximum revenue
- June and August–September (summer season): tourist letting targeting 60 to 70 cumulative nights across the year
- October to May (8 months): mobility lease for an AMU student, Sciences Po Aix, KEDGE, or an employee on assignment, stable, regular income
- Result: rental income 12 months a year, within a fully legal framework, never exceeding 90 tourist nights
Aix-en-Provence hosts Aix-Marseille University (AMU), with over 80,000 students, a significant proportion enrolled in Aix-based programmes in law, humanities and social sciences, Sciences Po Aix and the IUT. Add to this KEDGE Business School, the Aix School of Art and several engineering institutes. This concentration of higher education generates sustained structural demand for 4-to-10-month furnished leases, particularly for students on master's programmes, double degrees and end-of-study internships. The pool of qualifying mobility tenants in Aix is exceptionally deep, a concrete advantage for owners adopting the seasonal strategy.
On the tax side, the same rules apply as in Marseille since the Loi Le Meur: the micro-BIC threshold for unclassified furnished tourist accommodation is reduced to €15,000, with a 30% deduction. An official tourism classification (a simple and inexpensive process with an accredited body) restores the €77,700 threshold and 50% deduction, a significant annual tax saving for owners whose gross rental income exceeds €15,000.
The turnkey solution
A professional concierge service can manage your entire rental cycle: optimised tourist lettings during the Festival and peak season, administrative transition to a mobility lease, then seamless return to tourist mode the following spring. It is the safest way to maximise income in Aix-en-Provence without exposing yourself to the legal risks of mismanaging your quota or signing poorly drafted mobility leases.
Elyos
