As falling housing transactions hurt government tax receipts, Hollande on Sept. 1 introduced a break on the property capital-gain tax to revive sales.
“Since September, the market for this normal luxury property is beginning to revive a little bit,” Kraft said.
‘More Interesting’
Residents who’ve remained in France are enticed by near- record-low borrowing costs and price drops affecting apartments that need fixing-up the most, Jottras and Saint Vincent said.
A 260 square-meter apartment in the Trocadero area with a view of the Eiffel tower needing to be fully renovated took seven months to sell at 8,450 euros a square meter, while it may have fetched 11,000 euros 18 months earlier, Saint Vincent said.
“What we’ve seen in the past three to four months is that when we are able to close a transaction, the difference between the asking price and the closing price will at least be in the order of 15, sometimes 20 percent,” Kraft said. “Really it’s a buyers’ market.”
And many of them are coming from outside France. Foreigners accounted for 7.7 percent of housing purchases in Paris in the first half, inching toward the record 8 percent in 2003 and 2008 and up from 7.3 percent last year, according to Paris notaires.
That might slowly start to stabilize prices in the French capital, said Jottras.
“The price drop is probably poised to be halted,” he said. “Still, the market isn’t turning bullish.”