apartments in Paris

We have used Airbnb three times in Paris. Enter your criteria on their site and check corresponding listings. Also, before booking, please confirm their legality to operate in Paris.

You could start your search by checking Booking.com and plugging in your requirements using their filters. The apartments listed there are vouched as legal rentals.

The booking.com listings all have registration numbers which suggests legal rentals. To be fully legal the apartment must not be rented for more than 120 days a year and be the owners primary residence.

Paris Perfect has a few legal, full time apartments which may be of interest. They run about the same price as a 4 star hotel.

www.parisperfect.com

We always use these guys and have ALWAYS had a good experience. Used them three times. You can pay extra if you only want three days instead of a week, but it is still quite reasonable. Love it.
https://www.vacationinparis.com/index

Another vote for Vacation in Paris.

What is the budget, preferably I euros? Sorry but middle to upper middle does not give me a good idea of your price point. By the way, what do you mean by looking French — old fashioned French or modern French? One more (compound) question, when you ask for four beds, are you willing to have different sized beds so some have twins but others have a king and are sofa beds okay?
Edit: Here is a suggestion. https://www.parisperfect.com/apartments-for-rent-in-paris/maubert.php. I have not stayed there. A friend of mine considered it but went with a rental from Paris Perfect that was in a location she preferred and had decor she preferred even though that one did not have a registration number.

We found a place: 3 bedrooms, in the 6th. On Air B&B. Hope it turns out to be as good as it seems. Thanks, everyone, for your input.
Monty

I love this stuff.

I just used Booking.com to look for apartments.
Below is the path I recommend to get you started.

Opening screen:

Paris City Center.
Your arrival and departure dates.
4 adults.
Ignore the number of rooms.

Results page filters:

Apartments.
1+ bathrooms.
5th and 6th arrondissement.
8+ Review Score.

After that you can do more filtering and sorting. Using stars (*) may make your results smaller because the star system is not typically used for apartments.

I tested this using 8 May - 22 May for the dates and ended up with 26 listings. That isn't very many. That's probably due to the large number of people and the fact that May is not that far in the future as these things go. Your real dates are likely to produce a different number of results.

After that, it's a matter of looking at each apartment one at a time to see if it will work for your group. With a potential of so few options, I would not filter any further.

The test results included both what I think you meant by French, French, French and more modern styles. Personally, I consider anything in France to be French.

When you look at your results you will probably see many listings that have older architecture with modern renovations.

I was surprised at how many listings were in apart'hotels that have some features the other listings don't. I was also surprised to see that some places had airport shuttle service, usually for a fee. That could be very useful for your group.

Although all slept 4 or more, not all were exactly what you described. The prices for 14 nights ranged from € 2,800 (+€224 for taxes and charges) to € 19,436 (including taxes and charges). About half were below € 4,000 (before taxes and charges) and about half were above.

Price didn't always coordinate with the number of baths or beds, but the 2-3 bedroom and 2 bath places were in the € 4,000 - € 9,000 range. There was even one with 4 bedrooms. The higher the price, the more likely the taxes and charges were included.

Having stayed in apartments all over Europe where the cost for me alone was about € 1,000 per week, the prices I saw seem pretty reasonable to me, especially when you want to have all of you in the same apartment.

Some features cannot be accurately found by filtering. You have to look at the complete list of facilities, read the reviews and look closely at the pictures. Is there a clothes washer? Is the fridge an under counter one or a tall one with a freezer. Is there a microwave? An oven? A dishwasher? How do I get rid of the garbage? Recycling? What's the square footage?

My personal deal breakers:
Having to clean the place before I leave. (I'll happily pay for the cleaning.)
A tub without a shower head on the wall, hand held or stationary.
Rain showers with no way to get away from them in the shower space.

Have fun searching and browsing. And have a great time on your trip.

hey hey monty
happy you were able to find a place, thru trials and tribulations of researching. takes time and patience. does this apartment have a 13 digit license as a legal apartment? lots of forum posts here about crack down on short term rentals in paris. if no license number you may not have an apartment when you get there and what is cancellation/refund policy. click on "read more about this space" of apartment listing.
you may not want to hear this but want you to be careful. have a great trip without hassle and stress.
check your arrival/departure times, too early to checkin, luggage hold without lugging bags around till check-in, how to get keys and how many, hopefully 2, have check in person to show you how everything works (if washer/dryer, stove/oven, thermostat, if you need to clean, disposing of garbage, do's/dont's, shower/bath faucet.
aloha

What the Princess said.

There have been comments here on the Forum about how Airbnb charges more for the same apartment than other platforms and about the requirement to clean the place yourself before you leave.

I can't verify those comments with personal experience because my first Airbnb rental was my last. I can verify that apartments are often listed in more than one place and that sometimes the pictures and prices are the same, but not always.

The registration concern in Paris is a real one. There have been examples reported where people were informed at the last minute that the apartment they rented was not available. That sometimes has been because the owner hadn't registered it and was caught.

I hope it all works out for y'all. To me, verifying that the place is registered and getting its number is the most important thing. The second most important thing is verifying that you don't have to clean the apartment yourselves.

You're getting good advice from those who have already posted. We commonly stay in Paris for about a month and have used paris perfect, airbnb and vrbo and have had great experiences. The key to having a positive experience is to ensure that there are plenty of reviews so there are no surprises. This way you can choose what you're prepared to live with or not. For instance, last summer we spent a month in an apartment that we learned (mentioned in reviews) would have noise below from the restaurant at street level of the building on the weekends. Everything else about the apartment was ideal---in Le Marais--- so we opted to rent it and were prepared for the noise which to us (we grew up in nyc and SF so accustomed to noise) was no big deal.

There are hefty fees to rent which can amount to 10% just for using the airbnb and vrbo (forget if its the same with paris perfect) sites. We generally email the owner/manager and ask if a discount is available for long term renters. We even do this for rentals which may just be for a week and most of the time we are offered a discount of 10-20% depending on location. We're a retired couple on a fixed income that love to travel.

Have fun.