Beaulieu-sur-Mer and the holiday rental market: how to maximize your investment

We still remember the first time we drove down from Nice to Beaulieu-sur-Mer on a whim, years before we ever thought about renting out our own studio. We parked near the bay, looked at that little cove ringed by palm trees, and Michel turned to me and said something like «why is nobody talking about this place?». Turns out plenty of people were already talking about it, quietly, and buying here.

Beaulieu-sur-Mer is one of the smallest and, in our opinion, most underrated pockets of the French Riviera for a holiday rental investment. It sits between Nice and Monaco, it draws a steady flow of visitors looking for something calmer than the big resorts, and its rental market has stayed remarkably solid over the years we have been following it as passionate (but very much amateur) property owners ourselves.

What you need to know before going further:

• Beaulieu-sur-Mer apartments sell for roughly 8,400 to 9,900 €/m² on average, houses considerably more, based on recent SeLoger and Meilleurs Agents estimates (2026).
• Any furnished holiday rental now needs a national registration number under the 2024 «loi Le Meur», with the new centralised portal becoming mandatory across France from 20 May 2026.
• Secondary residences remain liable for taxe foncière and taxe d'habitation sur les résidences secondaires, sometimes with a local surcharge in tight rental markets.
• We are not real estate professionals, so treat everything below as a couple of enthusiasts sharing what we have learned, not as financial or legal advice.

Why we keep coming back to Beaulieu-sur-Mer

Beaulieu-sur-Mer manages something we find quite rare on this coast: it feels authentically French while sitting a few minutes from Monaco's glitter and Nice's buzz. The village wraps around a small bay, the promenade is lined with palm trees, and the pace of life is closer to a fishing village than a resort town.

Villa Kérylos, that extraordinary reconstruction of an ancient Greek house right on the water, is the landmark most visitors come for. But what keeps holidaymakers coming back, from what we have seen and heard from friends who rent out here, is the combination of a walkable village centre, a genuinely calm bay for swimming, and easy access to both Nice airport and the Monaco train line.

What holidaymakers actually book here

If you are buying with rental income in mind, the property itself matters more than the address alone. From what we have observed on the local listings over the years, three types of properties tend to fill their calendars fastest:

• A sea-view apartment or villa, even a modest one, almost always outperforms an equivalent property without a view.
• Anything with outdoor space, a terrace, a garden, or better still a pool, appeals strongly to families and groups who now prefer a rental over a hotel room.
• A walkable location close to the bay and the shops beats a larger property stuck on the hillside without a car.

We have also noticed a real shift toward longer stays. Remote workers and retired couples booking a month or two at a time are becoming a bigger share of the market than the classic one-week summer booking, which changes what «a good rental» looks like: reliable Wi-Fi and a proper desk now matter almost as much as the view.

Buying in France: the paperwork nobody warns you about

Buying property in France, wherever you are from, always goes through a notaire. This is not optional and it is not the same as an estate agent: the notaire is the legal officer who verifies the title, drafts the deed, and collects the transfer taxes on behalf of the state. Budget roughly 7 to 8.5% of the purchase price in notaire fees and registration duties for an existing property, most of that being transfer taxes passed on to the state and the department rather than the notaire's own fee, according to figures compiled by Notaires de France for 2026.

Once you own the property, two recurring taxes apply if it is a second home rather than your main residence: the taxe foncière (paid by every owner) and the taxe d'habitation sur les résidences secondaires, which was scrapped for main homes years ago but stays firmly in place for second homes. In communes classified as «zone tendue», meaning the rental market is under real pressure, councils can vote a surcharge of anywhere between 5% and 60% on top of the base amount. Several Alpes-Maritimes coastal towns fall into this category, so it is worth checking the exact rate with the mairie of Beaulieu-sur-Mer before you commit to a budget, since these figures are decided locally and change from one year to the next.

This is exactly the kind of moment where we always say: talk to someone who does this for a living. A local agency such as Haussmann International, which knows the Côte d'Azur market in detail, can walk you through the buying process and flag pitfalls that two enthusiastic amateurs like us would never have spotted on our own first purchase.

The registration rule that changes everything in 2026

If renting out the property to holidaymakers is part of the plan, one change matters more than any other right now. The loi Le Meur, adopted in November 2024 to rein in short-term rentals, generalises a mandatory registration number for every furnished tourist rental in France. According to Service-Public.fr, the deadline for communes to have this system fully operational through the new national «Declaloc» portal is 20 May 2026. From that date, a listing without a valid number simply cannot legally be published, whatever the size of the commune.

If you already declared a rental at the Beaulieu-sur-Mer town hall under the old system, expect to re-register through the national portal once it goes live locally. We would treat this as a box to tick before your first booking, not an afterthought: renting out an unregistered furnished tourist flat exposes the owner to real penalties.

What the numbers actually look like

Prices in Beaulieu-sur-Mer sit well above the regional average, which is exactly what you would expect from a village squeezed between Nice and Monaco. Based on figures compiled by SeLoger and Meilleurs Agents in 2026, here is roughly where the market stands:

Property type	Typical price range	What it tells us
Apartments	∼8,400 € to 9,900 €/m²	The realistic entry point for most buyers looking at a rental studio or two-bedroom flat.
Houses and villas	∼15,000 €/m² and up	Reflects scarcity of land and the pull of sea-view plots.
Year-on-year change	Roughly +3 to 8% depending on the source	Growth has slowed compared to the sharpest years, but prices are not falling.

These figures are indicative averages gathered from property portals in 2026 and vary a great deal by street, floor and sea view. They are not a substitute for a proper local estimate.

A few things that genuinely move the needle on rental income

Beyond location and the view, a handful of details make a real difference to how often a property gets booked, at least from what we have picked up over the years:

• Air conditioning and good insulation. Summer bookings are the bulk of the income here, and reviews turn negative fast when a flat gets stuffy.
• Energy performance. A tourist furnished rental is not banned today for a poor DPE rating the way a main residence would be, but the rule is tightening: new furnished tourist rentals will need at least an F rating from 2028 and E from 2034 under the loi Le Meur, so buying a well-insulated property now avoids a costly retrofit later.
• Flexibility on stay length. Keeping a calendar open to both one-week holidays and month-long remote-work stays smooths out the gaps between peak season bookings.

We learned this one the hard way with our own studio: a single bad summer of half-empty weeks taught us more about pricing flexibility than any guide ever could.

Frequently asked questions

Is Beaulieu-sur-Mer a good investment compared to Nice or Monaco? It is generally cheaper per square metre than central Nice seafront or Monaco, while still benefiting from their proximity, which is exactly why we think it deserves more attention than it gets.

Do I need a French bank account to buy here as a foreigner? Not strictly to sign the deed, but a local account makes paying the notaire, managing charges and eventually collecting rental income far simpler in practice.

Can I rent out a second home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer without registering it? No. Once the national portal is live in 2026, any furnished tourist rental advertised without a valid registration number is not compliant with French law.

Is a swimming pool worth the extra cost for a rental property? In our experience following the local market, yes for a villa aimed at families, less so for a small apartment where a terrace or proximity to the beach matters more.

None of this replaces a conversation with a notaire, a local tax adviser or a real estate professional who knows the exact commune rules: we are two retirees who fell in love with this coastline, not chartered experts, and every figure above should be checked against your own situation before you commit.

If buying a place here is your first step into owning a second home in France, our piece on buying a second home covers the broader decision before you narrow it down to one village. And if the numbers above raised more questions than answers, we go deeper into what makes a rental genuinely pay off in what makes a real estate investment profitable.

Published in August 2023, updated in July 2026 to reflect current registration rules and market prices.

Sources: Service-Public.fr (loi Le Meur, registration obligations), SeLoger and Meilleurs Agents (2026 price data), Notaires de France (notaire fees).