Perhaps the worst thing about Parisian estate agents, though, especially for a buyer who is not au fait with the complexities of the Parisian market, is that if an apartment has any kind of major flaw—and they often do—the agent is there to hide the fact. Of course, we all know that that is an estate agent’s basic function in any city in the world, but in Paris they can actually get away with it. If a British estate agent tells you that a house is leaning at a 45-degree angle ‘to let more light into the ground-floor windows’ or that ‘Yes, the back garden has got 10 yards shorter since that storm but the council is going to stop the cliff erosion next week,’ the lies will be revealed as soon as you get the surveyor’s report. In France, though, there is no surveyor’s report. As long as the subsidence isn’t caused by termites, asbestos or lead paint, the buyer will remain in the dark about any inherent problems with the building.
I once visited a building that had a green-black stain running down half the façade, from about the third floor to street level, on either side of the gutter downpipe. When I expressed concern about this, the agent said that the syndic (the building’s management company) was going to repair it—it was just a leaky gutter. Inside the building, there were deep cracks in the walls of the stairwell, but again I was assured that the syndic was on the case.
I visited the apartment, which was fine in itself, and asked to see the latest compte rendu de réunion des copropriétaires (the report written by the syndic after every annual owners’ meeting, which has to be made available to potential buyers). The agent said he would send it, but ‘quite honestly there was nothing interesting in it’, and in any case, I really ought to make an offer straight away—he had several other clients interested, including one who was coming up specially from Marseille to re-visit the apartment that very afternoon, and was probably going to buy it.
This was, of course, a tactic straight out of Chapter One of Selling to Gullible Idiots, so I trusted my instincts and said merci but non merci. But, just out of interest, I hunted around and found the building’s syndic. I called them, saying I was a potential buyer, and the person on the other end of the phone actually laughed. The syndic was, she said, in the process of tearing up that building’s management contract. The owners could never agree amongst themselves to do any repairs, the façade was about to collapse on to passers-by, City Hall had already threatened legal action, and anyone buying an apartment there right now might as well throw their money in the Seine, which was where half the building would end up if things didn’t get better very quickly.
Which was not exactly what the agent had told me.
Neighbourhoods can have their own surprise drawbacks, too, of course. A street lined with cafés can seem picturesque in the daytime, but be transformed into a yelling, music-thudding, bottle-smashing battlefield at night. It is no longer true that the French know how to hold their alcohol. They’ve discovered binge drinking and are suffering all the consequences, as are the people who live where they have their binges.
On the other hand, the office building next door to the apartment you’re visiting can be as silent as newly fallen snow in the evening but shudder and hum like a battleship’s engines on a summer’s day when you want to sit on your balcony reading Proust. The agent will know this and make sure you visit when the apartment, and the neighbourhood, is très calme.
Now I am not saying that all Parisian agents are dishonest, of course. No doubt, there are as many helpful, truthful agents as there are in any other city. It’s just that, like all people paid on commission, they can be tempted to bend the truth slightly to make a sale. All the more so because even with green sludge covering half a building’s facade, there will be someone willing to buy an apartment there.
Doing it direct
The way to avoid the clutches of an agent is to buy direct from the owner. The most common way of doing this is to answer one of the ads in the property magazine De Particulier à Particulier (from non-professional to non-professional). The ads also appear on their website, www.pap.fr. If you’re looking to buy, you want the annonces de vente, and if you just want to rent, the locations (as I said earlier, location means rental rather than geographical position).
In theory, buying direct from the owner is cheaper because of the lack of commission, but some owners are greedy and clearly base their asking prices on ads they have seen in agencies. And there is no reason why an owner should be more honest than an estate agent—after all, the owners are on 100 per cent commission.
I have heard various sellers’ tales about the scams they pulled to get a buyer. One man lived across the landing from a terribly noisy family. The daughter would stay at home all weekend listening to her radio at full volume, and bad French pop at the decibel level of a 747 taking off can scare away even Parisians. The owner therefore offered the girl a month’s supply of M&Ms if she would agree to turn the music off whenever he was arranging viewings. Sure enough, the following silent Saturday, the place was sold.
In short, since it is illegal in France to view apartments
