Meanwhile the new rent-hiking policy sent speculators knocking at the doors of Paris’s richer arrondissements. Did the family by any chance have an apartment building that it wanted to get rid of? If the answer was yes, a couple of months later, men in suits would be tramping up and down staircases, bribing tenants to leave or forcing them out by doing renovation work—one of the few escape clauses in the 1948 law was that tenants could be removed during travaux and their rent increased because the apartment had gained significantly in confort.
As planned, the number of 1948-type rentals began to fall, but even this legal eviction policy didn’t always prove efficient because of the high number of old (and therefore unmovable) tenants, and the sheer doggedness of Parisians whose whole lifestyle was based on a rent that had barely increased since their mum and dad moved into the apartment forty years earlier.
Abandoning the plan to rent out whole buildings at extortionate rates, many of the speculators began to cut their losses and sell individual apartments. At last, private ownership entered the Parisian consciousness and, with renting less secure and banks offering fixed-rate mortgages, it suddenly became very fashionable to buy. In short, Paris went from no market at all to a boom in only a few years. And unlike an internet bubble or mobile-phone bonanza, it was a small, finite market—Paris is only so big, and there are only so many apartments that can be bought. Until France decides to move its capital elsewhere, or foreigners lose interest in the city’s sex appeal, property is going to be highly sought-after.
There is good news, however, and it is twofold. First, there is a fairly high turnover in apartment sales. And secondly, not all of Paris has so far revealed its potential charme and been gentrified out of reach.
The question is, how to cash in on these good tidings?
Location, location, location*
The first consideration is, of course, can I afford to buy a pied-à-terre? And if you look in the estate agents’ windows in the parts of town that attract the most visitors, the answer would probably be no. But that, quite frankly, is not a problem, because those areas have a major disadvantage—do you really want to come to Paris only to sit in the local café with your morning croissant and listen to people at the other tables saying things like, ‘Avez-vous du normal tea?’ and ‘Vous n’avez pas de cappuccinos?’ Even if your lack of linguistic skills means that you might want to say something similar yourself, it’d be nice to be the only one doing so. Some cafés in the central arrondissements—especially the 6th—have more customers reading the International Herald Tribune than Le Monde, and waiters who will immediately address you in English. You might as well be in your local fake French café.
In any case, unless you’re very rich, the only affordable apartments in these arrondissements will be the top-floor chambres de bonne, the old servants’ quarters, most of which have now been converted into studios. These can seem remarkably cheap, until you realize that they’re up six flights of stairs and that your neighbours are all students, who are so relieved to have escaped from chez Maman et Papa that they live as wildly, noisily and nocturnally as possible. Combine these factors with the statistic about top-floor apartments being the easiest to burgle (the thieves creep across the rooftops) and the fact that many chambres de bonne share a toilet on the landing (even if you don’t have to share, your landing is still going to smell like a public convenience) and you might decide that a posh arrondissement is not for you after all. Besides, there are some fairly central neighbourhoods (and let’s face it, Paris is so small that most of it could be described as ‘fairly central’) that are safe, attractive, affordable and very Parisian …
Double agents
When looking to buy a Parisian apartment, the easiest solution is probably to go into one of the estate agencies, sit down and tell your life story. Well, that’s what it will feel like, because what the agents usually do is spend ten minutes or so taking your name (which, if you’re foreign, you will have to spell several times before they get it right), your mobile number, home number, work number, email address and the shoe size of your uncle’s donkey. Once this ritual is over, the agent might well inform you that the apartment you saw in their shop window is now sold (it was probably sold months ago, but looks good so they leave it in there as bait), but they have several ‘similar’ properties, which all turn out to be totally dissimilar.
The agent will then promise to call you on all your phone numbers, email you and send a singing telegram as soon as something comes in.
Which, to be fair, they probably will, about a year later, when you have already moved into your new Parisian apartment. This happened to me once, and I told the agent he was too late. But he kept ringing for about another two years, at one point even saying, ‘Oh well, maybe you’ll be thinking of moving again soon.’
There are, of course, agents in Paris
