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Foreigners snap up Paris homes as French exit

The Local France
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Foreigners snap up Paris homes as French exit
Foreigners are buying more real estate in Paris as the French buy less. Photo: AFP

Foreigners are buying up almost one in ten properties for sale in the Paris region, a rate last seen 15 years ago, new figures show. This comes as there a big change in behaviour among would-be French buyers.

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Italian, Chinese, Algerian and Portuguese buyers make up the bulk of the foreign contingent buying properties in the Ile-de-France region around Paris, real estate group BIEN said.

Foreigners are mainly getting a bigger slice of the real-estate pie because fewer French nationals are shelling out for homes in the capital.

“In fact, the volume of [foreigners’] transactions has remained stable; it’s the French who are buying less,” Paris notary Thierry Delasalle told reporters at a news conference on the capital's sales figures on Thursday.

Across the three districts that make up Ile-de-France, 9.2 percent of property buyers were foreign.

In Paris, 8.3 percent of buyers this year have been foreign nationals, with the figure rising to 11.2 percent in the Inner Ring; 7.5 percent of buyers in the Outer Ring were non-French.

Four years ago, foreigners made up just 6.3 percent of the total in the region.

Italians accounted for the largest foreign group in Paris, with 17 percent of the transactions by non-French buyers. Chinese buyers dominated the foreign market in the Inner Ring (22.2 percent), while Portuguese purchasers came out tops in the Outer Ring (29 percent).

Some 90 percent of these buyers were already resident in the Paris region, said Delasalle.

SEE ALSO: Italians squirrel most cash into London homes
 

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