Paris: Peculiar Paradox of Property Procurement

For a long time, Rita and I have dreamed of finding a small, affordable pied-a-terre in Paris. This September I am finally in town to chase that dream.

The city is full of estate agencies. Their windows are plastered with images of quaint apartments, and one might think that in a city teeming with agents immobiliers, securing a modest little place would be as simple as ordering a pain au chocolat.

One would be wrong.

At my first agency, the door was marked Ouvert but remained stubbornly locked. At the second, a bored receptionist informed me that all agents were en réunion. At the next several, the apartments in the windows had already been sold. How long they had been sold was not mentioned.

By the umptieth agency, I had developed a theory. Parisian estate agents with actual apartments for sale exist in a condition much like certain particles in physics; present and absent at the same time, collapsing into definite existence only when observed by each other, but never by potential buyers.

It is also, I should mention, almost impossible to reach these people by phone or email.

As I sat this afternoon with my espresso outside yet another closed agency, watching the crowds go by, I tried to find a useful thought in all of this.

Perhaps, I considered, we are not really looking for an apartment. Perhaps we are chasing something more like the idea of permanence; a foothold in a city that has always felt more like home than most places we have actually lived.

Or perhaps the agencies were just closed.

If you are thinking of buying property in Paris, bring patience. Bring also a good book for the café, as you will spend considerable time in one.

We have not found the apartment yet. But we have just found a new, very nice café just next to the Canal Saint Martin, and at this point that feels almost like progress.