In the 7th, Paris Is Earning

by J.S. MARCUS - Jan. 29, 2015
In the 7th, Paris Is Earning
The city’s business elite call it home, drawn to riverfront apartments and urban mansions
Paris’s 7th arrondissement, a wedge along the Left Bank, has some of the city’s leading tourist attractions, like the Eiffel Tower. Over the
past few years, the 7th has replaced the 16th arrondissement as the district of choice for top executives.
Paris’s 7th arrondissement, a wedge along the Left Bank, has some of the city’s leading tourist attractions, including the
Eiffel Tower and the Musée d’Orsay. But when the tourists depart for the evening, the CEOs head there for home.
“The whole CAC 40 now lives in the 7th,” says Louis Benech, a Parisian landscape architect, invoking the French key
stock index and the people who run the listed companies.
Mr. Benech’s clients in the 7th arrondissement include François Pinault, the entrepreneur and honorary chairman of
Kering, the Paris-based conglomerate that controls brands such as Gucci and Saint Laurent. Bernard Arnault , chairman
of LVMH and its stable of brands like Dior and Louis Vuitton, also has a home there. Representatives of Messrs. Pinault
and Arnault didn’t respond to requests for comment.
by J.S. MARCUS - Jan. 29, 2015
Managers and business executives have been lured to the 7th from
the Right Bank’s 16th arrondissement, which was the stomping
ground of the wealthy for more than a century. The 7th is the
arrondissement with the highest per-capita income in Paris.
“It’s not just half-a-dozen rich guys,” says Jules Caris, managing
director of La Galerie de l’Immobilier, a Left Bank real-estate
agency, “but 300 to 400 high earners” who wouldn’t live anywhere
else.
Long associated with French nobility, the area is dominated by
embassies and government ministries in historic buildings. It
retains its cachet despite declining real-estate prices in Paris
overall, amid stagnant growth and high taxes that have sent some
high earners to other European countries.
In the 7th, the median price of an apartment was $1,141 a square
foot in the third quarter of 2014, down 9% from 2012, compared
with a drop of 4% in Paris overall in the period.
This 2,174 square-foot home is for sale for $3.9 million in
a 1930s building in the Gros-Caillou neighborhood. It has
a flowing floor plan and direct views on the Eiffel Tower.
Belles Demeures de France
Those prices lag behind the neighboring 6th arrondissement, Paris’s
most expensive, and the 4th, which includes the heart of the
gentrified Marais district and the exclusive Île-Saint-Louis island.
This mansion-size duplex, down the street from France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has a prime riverfront location. The 8,230 square-foot home
has 1,345 square feet of terraces. The asking price is $47.7 million. Belles Demeures de France
by J.S. MARCUS - Jan. 29, 2015
But prices in the most exclusive corners of the 7th are sharply higher. The biggest change in the arrondissement, agents
say, is the rise in demand—and in prices—for Gros-Caillou, a neighborhood on the outer edge of the district, close to the
Eiffel Tower. Jérôme Le Breton, a Parisian notary based in the 7th, says prices in Gros-Caillou have surged 28.6% over
the past five years, compared with a 34.6% jump for Saint-Thomas-d’Acquin, the 7th’s most expensive address. The key
selling point for buyers of high-end homes is that the district has nearly cornered the market on Paris’s two most
prestigious types of residences: the riverfront apartment and the hôtel particulier, or urban mansion.
The most desirable mansions were built by aristocratic families in the decades before the French Revolution. A prime
18th-century hôtel particulier could command $90 million or more, says Marie-Hélène Lundgreen, director of Belles
demeures de France, the Paris-based agency affiliated with Christie’s International Real Estate. Such properties come up
for sale a few times a decade.
This two-bedroom, two-bathroom upper-floor apartment on the Quai Anatole France has an asking price of $7 million. Featuring a recent
refurbishment by Parisian interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch, the 2,098-square-foot home has salvaged wooden floors. Belles Demeures de France
To meet the need for mansion-style homes in the 7th, a new luxury development, 140 rue de Grenelle, was converted out
of the sprawling stables of a hôtel particulier once belonging to Marshall Ferdinand Foch, the WWI military leader. It
contains 16 units clustered around a gated lane.
Ten of the 16 have sold, says Ms. Lundgreen, who is handling the development. A four-bedroom, 3,520-square-foot unit
is on the market for $11.3 million. Another four-bedroom unit—5,165 square feet, with a rooftop terrace and dramatic
views of the Eiffel Tower and the dome of the 17th-century Hôtel des Invalides complex—is listed for $26.1 million.
Positioned at a wide bend of the Seine, the 7th also has a huge share of Paris’s prime riverfront properties. Views can
take in the whole of central Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and adjoining Tuileries garden across the river.
Prices for these properties, even in today’s depressed market, can easily exceed $2,108 a square foot.