A Resilient Stronghold

The Gallic capital’s luxury residential market flexes its muscle and optimism.

- Olha Romaniuk

Paris’ prime residential market offers a safe haven as a long-term store of wealth in the time of global uncertainty.

“To international buyers, Parisian values are attractive by international standards,” says Paul Tostevin, director of Savills World Research about prime property in Paris. The city, indeed, has been enjoying unwavering interest in recent years from the global investors, particularly from China, that reaped sizable rewards with residential prices appreciating faster than in most cities in Europe. In 2019, prices climbed 6.4 per cent as compared to 2018 according to the Savills’ World Cities Prime Residential Index, with overseas investors accounting for 16 per cent of property transactions that year.

While French developers have recently been catering toward buyers from China, the response is likely to change in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic is triggering lockdowns across the world and affecting global financial markets. Nevertheless, Paris is positioned more advantageously than many other cities to weather the storm, based on the fact that the prime and ultra-prime markets are very narrow and, thus, highly desirable and opportunities for new development are limited due to land scarcity.

BUILDING FOR LASTING LEGACY