House-hunting in Paris - still a pricey affair

Everyone knows that the City of Lights can be an expensive place to live, and as in most capitals there always seems to be a shortage of reasonably-priced accommodation for rent and finding a deal when buying a property has never been easy.

For a while of course it was pretty much a "sellers market", and indeed last year was especially buoyant (again) with a reported increase in prices asked (and obtained) from November 2007 to November 2008 of around 12 per cent.

The average cost per square metre across the capital - and there were of course differences depending on the popularity and desirability of the area - was a handsome €8,500.

Or for those of you counting in $US - over 12,000!

With the credit crunch though has come a drop in demand and a corresponding fall in prices, around as much as 10 per cent according to some estate agents.

Still that hasn't stopped silly prices appearing in estate agents' windows (or on the Net) for accommodation that is sometimes no bigger than the proverbial broom cupboard.

Such is the case of one "apartment" currently for sale in the capital's ultra-trendy IV arrondissement or le Marais.

Should you get a chance to take a wander along the rue Rambuteau and stop to press your nose against the window of one particular agence immobilier to see what's on offer, you'll discover the following "charming" LITTLE (to be read in the biggest capital letters possible) flat advertised.



The description: one room, first floor, good location - price tag €47,000 ($US 66,700).

Seems reasonable? Well it certainly isn't a great deal of money, except the "one room" apartment also has in brackets "cabine" or cubicle/booth, which given the 6.6 square metres of "space" would seem more than appropriate although it might well refer to the presence of a shower.

Oh yes, a mighty 6.6m2...so that works out at...let's see €7,100 ($US 10,000) per square metre. Ha ha. A mere snip.

But according to the "details" it doesn't have its own toilet and the new proprietor would have to share one on the landing...presumably with owners of other similarly over-priced but all-importantly well-located "booths".

The trouble is of course that estate agents will probably tell you that any asking price is a "realistic" one so long as the market can maintain it and someone out there is willing to cough up the readies or find the required credit.

And indeed the booth from le Marais, while undoubtedly small, actually falls within the "accepted" range of prices being asked for what (admittedly) might turn out to be more habitable property.

For example there's a two-roomed 40m2 apartment for sale in the same arrondissement for €350,000 or €8,750 per square metre (around $US 497,000 or $US 12,400), and another one with just one room at an asking price of €200,000 ($284,000) for 21m2.

Do the maths and you come out with a rate of €9,500 ($13,500) per square metre, which could lead you to thinking that the "booth" isn't such bad value after all!

Maybe not though.

Just for the record, all prices of course include agency fees. Well aren't you pleased about that.

Sub-letting at sub-zero

As we all go about our last minute Christmas shopping, let’s spare a thought for a certain Jean-Paul Bolufer.

In the space of two days he has had his fine reputation picked to pieces by the national newspapers and now finds himself not only out of a job but also homeless – of sorts.

But hold back on the sympathy front a moment for Bolufer has got what many would consider his just rewards.

The 61-year-old (now former) high-ranking civil servant was until today the right hand man of none other than the French housing minister, Christine Boutin, and as such has been instrumental in drawing up government proposals for an overhaul of the country’s stock of HLMs (Habitation à Loyer Modéré or low-rent council housing).

A noble task indeed at a time when there is a dire national housing shortage with an estimated 1.5 million people on the waiting list and more than 400,000 families with incomes above the official entitlement threshold reckoned to be occupying HLMs.

Except it now transpires that since 1981 Bolufer and his family have in fact themselves been renting a subsidised apartment in Paris and are currently paying €1,200 per month for accommodation with a rentable value four times that amount. Furthermore, when the highly paid career civil servant’s job took him to other parts of the country, he sub-let the property – for 17 years in total.

When challenged, Bolufer initially maintained that he couldn’t recall the exact amount he paid but believed it to be somewhere near the market norm, and besides he had done nothing to break the terms of his rental agreement. He was, he claimed, being made the fall guy. Others in similar circumstances to his own, he said, were and still are living in accommodation subsidised by the City of Paris authorities.

Sadly only too true, and it’s not the first time high officialdom’s abuse of complex housing regulations have hit the headlines. In 1996, the then prime minister Alain Juppé was forced to hand over the keys of luxury apartments he and members of his family were renting from the City of Paris authorities at reduced rates. And in 2005 the finance minister Hervé Gaymard was forced to resign over a similar scandal.

To an extent though Bolufer has been hoist by his own petard. Just last month he appeared on national radio to express his outrage at the number of families living in HLMs whose monthly income was above the threshold entitlement.

Clearly the man was speaking from personal experience.

With Bolufer now demanding that a list be published of all those currently benefiting from long-term rental agreements with the City of Paris, the timing of the revelations could not have been worse for his former boss.

Boutin is battling with organisations representing the capital’s homeless, who maintain the government has created only half of the 27,000 places in sheltered accommodation promised by the end of the year.

Bolufer was her special advisor in negotiations with those organisations.

Presumably with the money he has made from sub-letting his apartment over the years and the not insubstantial salary and pension he will have accrued, Bolufer will somehow be able to struggle through the holiday period without too much difficulty.

The same, sadly cannot be said for the homeless man found dead in this morning after another night on the capital’s streets in subzero temperatures.

Building for a better future

In a week when the visit of Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, made most of the headlines for many of the wrong reasons here, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has still found time for a spot of domestic politicking.

His campaign promise to review from top to bottom the country’s stock of HLMs (Habitation à Loyer Modéré or low-rent council housing) hit the news on Tuesday when he outlined his plans for reform.

An estimated 10 million people in France live in HLMs, so any change in the way they’re managed or allocated could potentially hit a sizeable chunk of the population.

At the heart of the issue is a waiting list of more than 1.5 million households who, according to government figures, qualify for subsidised housing but there’s just not the accommodation available for them.

To reduce that waiting list, Sarkozy wants to take a two-pronged approach: make sure that those who most need subsidised housing actually get it, and encourage local authorities to build.

If the government figures are to be believed then the way council housing has been allocated certainly needs to be changed.

More than 400,000 families who are currently living in HLMs have an income above the official entitlement threshold. Basically this has been allowed to happen because when families are allocated housing their income might well be below that limit but there has been no way of checking whether there has been a change in earnings.

Sarkozy wants to reintroduce “transparency” into the whole process by means-testing entitlement every three years. Such a review would not just look at income but also a change in family circumstances (where the children leave home for example) a factor that means that an additional 800,000 HLMs are apparently currently “under-occupied”.

But Sarkozy admits that the size of the waiting list is not just down to occupancy being gridlocked. Local authorities, he maintains, are often reluctant to build new subsidised housing.

His solution is to have the state lead by example by selling off land owned by different ministries – most notably by the defence ministry around Paris – to build new HLMs. Sarkozy’s goal is 60,000 new homes by 2012.

In other parts of the country, where local authorities may well lack resources, he wants the State to chip in to boost funds and simplify the process of granting building permits.

Of course all these proposed changes will require a mass of paperwork at exactly the same time as the president is looking to rationalise the French preoccupation with administrative red tape.

And where’s the money going to come from to help local authorities? After all as Sarkozy himself admitted recently in a television interview, the State coffers are pretty empty at the moment.

Ah well that’s where a dollop of 80s-inspired Thatcherism might well help out. Fulfilling yet another campaign promise, Sarkozy wants to allow tenants the right to buy.

The target is an eventual 40,000 council houses to be sold a year. But tenants will have no automatic right to buy their house or apartment – that will be determined by the independent organisation running HLMs. And local authorities can only sell if they agree to build two new HLMs for every one sold.

Yep sounds like a classic case of bureaucracy a la française.