Brexit fuel on Paris property price fire

Prices for real estate in Paris are set to reach new records this summer, as buyers-many of them Britons-scramble to get their hands on flats in the French capital’s most well-heeled districts, a survey of notaries showed yesterday.

“The number of buyers is rising unstoppably,” said Paris notary Thierry Delesalle. Demand was outstripping supply, particularly for the most select properties, “and perhaps because of Brexit,” Delesalle said. While Italians were the biggest group of foreign homebuyers in Paris, snapping up 17 percent of properties sold to non-French buyers, Britons came second, accounting for 10 percent of such transactions.

Already in the first three months of this year, prices for existing apartments in Paris rose by 5.5 percent to 8,450 euros ($9,410) per square metre, a survey by the Chamber of Notaries of Paris and Ile-de-France region estimated. And they could rise even further to 8,800 euros per square metre in July, the survey suggested, based on preliminary contracts prepared for signing.

The previous record of 8,460 euros per square metre was reached in the summer of 2012. Real estate prices in Paris had seen “a slow erosion in the past three or four years,” slipping to 7,880 euros per square metre. But apartment prices in the capital have been rising again since the summer of 2015. In the city’s most well-heeled districts or “arrondissements”, prices have risen to more than 11,000 euros per square metre, the notaries estimated. — AFP