Page 2 - Navigating Paris Real Estate Can Feel Like an Olympic Sport 7.22.24

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children
and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French
stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favorite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started
from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000.
A centerpiece of the home now is the onetime salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area
where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s
best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s
premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her
children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighborhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides
Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided
“I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming
Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realized it was too small for his extended stays, not to
mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in
early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th
Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which
dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighborhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement,
centered on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the
Notre-Dame neighborhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-
bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous
floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to
$435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well
as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighborhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot,
four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent
Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes
typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine
The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line
in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on
their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders,
upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned
Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.