The French cities cracking down on Airbnb with key box bans

Local France

25-02-2025

The picturesque and popular southern French city of Avignon became the latest to officially ban key boxes from the streets, in an attempt to clamp down on short term property rentals.
'The Wild West of Airbnb is over!' declared the city's deputy mayor for urban development, Paul-Roger Gontard, at the launch of a campaign to remove boxes that have been placed on public property earlier this month.
The policy employed by Avignon is far from unique. It's a variation on a theme repeated numerous times in a number of other French cities, including Paris, Lille, Annecy, Saint-Malo, Biarritz, Marseille, Besançon, Nice, and Wimereux, Pas-de-Calais.
All of them insist that their firm stance will make it harder for rogue short-term property rentals.
Key boxes, according to the website of the Mairie de Paris, 'are used in particular in the context of renting furnished tourist apartments, a phenomenon that has grown disproportionately in recent years', before posting pictures of one of their agents using a cordless angle grinder to cut off illegal key boxes.
Pour permettre à tous les Parisiens et toutes les Parisiennes, d'accéder à un logement au prix abordable, la Ville de Paris lutte contre les abus de la location de meublés touristiques et propose une série de mesures concrètes, dont la destruction de boîtes à clés dans l'espace public.
— Ville de Paris (@paris.fr) February 18, 2025 at 3:54 PM
But the laws themselves, despite the hyperbole of those behind them at each and every campaign launch, are actually pretty limited.
What is a key box?
A key box is – as the name suggests – a secure, sealed cabinet designed to hold one or more keys that can be fixed to an interior or exterior wall, and some can be installed on a gate or fence.
It is, to all intents and purposes, a small combination safe - most of them have a four-digit code to access, and the usual practice is for the landlord to message the tenant a few hours in advance with the code, allowing them to open the box and then let themselves in to the property.
More modern ones still may be secured, activated or deactivated by smartphone.
But cities are banning key boxes. Why tell us about them?
Because the bans are quite limited in their scope. You have every right to install a key box on property that you own outright. Next to the back door of your house? No problem. At the side of a garage on your land? That's fine.
In a public place, or in a shared area of a copropriété (such as an apartment building) however, things start to get complicated. Legally, copropriétés are divided into common and private areas. Common areas include entrance hall, doorways, exterior walls – and you cannot, without the express permission of the building management, install a key box in a common area … even if the co-ownership regulations allow for tourist rentals.
But you could put one inside your apartment in a copropriété, if you want.
Okay, what about in a public place?
Street furniture is managed by a public authority for the benefit of the inhabitants of a territory, municipality or department.
As these are public facilities, attaching any kind of device to them – such as a key box – is strictly forbidden.
Additionally – and this is where the city bans kick in – some municipalities have issued decrees formally banning key boxes in the street, a public space, on street furniture such as lampposts, bike racks, electricity cabinets, poles and lamp posts.
Key boxes attached to the outside of a building are a dead giveaway that the place is being rented out on a platform such as Airbnb. It's perfectly legal to do this, provided you declare your earnings to the French taxman and apply by any local bylaws on tourist rentals.
People who, for whatever reason, don't want to advertise that they are renting out their property often attach key boxes to a nearby piece of street furniture such as a bike rack or railing - and this is why city authorities say that this will help with illegal rentals.
One more thing . . .
Insurance. Your insurer may take a dim view of key boxes for home security reasons.
In the event of a burglary committed after thieves have got hold of your house keys by breaking into a key box, insurers may invoke a warranty exclusion clause (article L113-1 of the Insurance Code) to refuse to pay out on claims.