The part of my work I value most has little to do with negotiation. It is closer to teaching.
After every viewing, my clients and I do not head straight back to the car. We walk. We explore the streets surrounding the building, the micro-neighborhood in which they would actually live. It takes time, and clients are sometimes amused by how far I take them. It is nonetheless the most useful hour of any search.
An apartment is only half of what a buyer acquires. The other half begins at the front door.
Turn left, said the agent
We were leaving an apartment some 200 meters from Place de la République. On the way down, the listing agent leaned toward me and advised, quietly, that we should turn left on leaving the building, toward the more fashionable side.
The first thing I did was turn right.
I walked my clients to Place de la République and explained that it is one of the city’s regular gathering points for demonstrations, often at weekends. The intention was not to discourage them, simply to inform them. A buyer considering an apartment two minutes from one of the city’s main rallying points should learn it during the viewing, not on the first Saturday morning after moving in.
Contact me and let’s discuss what you’re looking for.
The café on one side, the reality on the other
Some years ago, I worked with an Australian couple who wished to invest in an up-and-coming neighborhood, as a long-term investment rather than simply a pied-à-terre, although they intended to use it themselves. They found a lovely apartment on a small street in the 10th arrondissement.
I believed in the investment. Toward Porte Saint-Martin, the area was already lively and fashionable. The busier avenue nearby, however, remained rough around the edges, and the street itself still had a number of tired shops.
I therefore insisted that we walk every corner: past the bins, past people sleeping rough, past the shopfronts no one would photograph. My clients found this amusing, but they were clearly falling for the place, and I wanted them to see all of it.
Their response has stayed with me. That was exactly what they wanted, they said. They could now see the trend for themselves: the fashionable café on one side, the reality on the other.
They bought. Since then, a well-known boutique hotel has opened on that same small street, along with a very elegant restaurant. The investment has proved sound, and it was made with full knowledge of the neighborhood, which is precisely the point.
“When you buy an apartment in Paris, you also buy the street you walk out onto every morning.”
"ARE YOU HAPPY ?
The third story is my favorite.
A client had fallen in love with a handsome Haussmannian apartment in the 9th, just off rue La Fayette. He was a professor of statistics, and his argument was ready: the apartment was only seven minutes on foot from rue des Martyrs.
My view was that this was not his neighborhood.
To make the point, I asked him to cross rue La Fayette with me. There was no particular reason to, except that the metro entrance was on the other side, as were the nearest café and the shop where he would buy his newspaper. Halfway across, with traffic passing on both sides, I asked him: “Are you happy?”
That is the real question. No one walks to rue des Martyrs every ten minutes. Daily life takes place at the foot of one’s building.
He did not buy that apartment. Instead, I took him to rue des Abbesses and suggested he sit at a café terrace and simply watch the street. He loved it. By sheer good fortune, I then found a superb apartment directly next door to that café. He bought it, and later joked that he intended to open a private door straight through to his table.
What to examine within 200 meters of any apartment
Every viewing deserves the same walk. These are the points I review with clients:
- The daily route. Where are the metro, the bakery, the café? What must be crossed to reach them?
- Both directions. Turn left and turn right. The direction the agent recommends is never the whole picture.
- Different times of day. A quiet street at 11am on a Tuesday can feel very different at midnight on a Friday, or on a Sunday afternoon.
- What is opening, and what is closing. A new café or a renovated storefront says more about a street’s direction than any price chart.
- The seven-minute trap. Living near a neighborhood one loves is not the same as living in it.
The right apartment
Paris is not a single city. It is a collection of small villages, which can change from one street to the next. Most buyers arrive knowing two or three of them. Finding the one in which they will genuinely be happy is the real work.
The best apartment is not always the one with the finest photographs. It is the one you will be glad to walk out of every morning.
If you would like to walk a few of those streets together, I would be delighted to.
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