Observations from Paris

I just got back from a couple weeks in Europe and got to spend some time in one of my favourite cities: Paris. When travelling I always like to try to learn something of the state of the local real estate market. As you can imagine, Paris is a very expensive city, and has ‘world-class’ written all over it (that illusive descriptor we are always striving for here in Toronto).

The photo for this post is the view from the terrace of an apartment I had the pleasure to visit while in Paris. The apartment had completely unobstructed south, west and north views from an expansive terrace. The buildings in the photo comprise the “La Défense” neighbourhood (the modern business district of Paris). The apartment was approximately 1300 sq ft with a terrace of about 300 sq ft. It was in an older building from around 1920 in a prestigious but not downtown neighbourhood. It was completely rebuilt by an architect-designer and was recently sold for about €1.8M (CAD$2.2M, works out to about $1600 per square foot).

A few things I learned about the market in general in Paris:

• Commissions are typically 5% selling property in Paris using a real estate agent
• Other transactional costs when buying a property in Paris can be up to 10% of the property’s value! (And I thought the Toronto land transfer tax was a burden)
• Property taxes are quite similar to Toronto. example: One apartment I visited was worth about €1M
  and the yearly property taxes were about €6000
• A sort of ‘community tax’ (Taxe d’habitation) must be paid for by whoever lives in the apartment – either the owner or the tenant (if leased out). Hard to figure out how much this will be, but something like 10-15% of market rental rate.

On another note, cheese, wine, and bread are all incredibly delicious and incredibly cheap in Paris. On balance, Toronto is still an amazing city to live in and invest in real estate. Glad to be home and excited for what promises to be another busy fall market! If you have any more insights on the real estate market in Paris that you’d like to share, leave a comment below or feel free to contact me.