Left Bank real estate is now the priciest in Paris

Wealthy Americans are driving the price hike in Sixth Arrondissement

Paris’ Sixth Arrondissement
Paris’ Sixth Arrondissement

WEEKENDEDITION Once home to the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris’ Sixth Arrondissement has become the most expensive neighborhood in the city.

Elite American and European buyers have helped push the average price for an apartment in the Left Bank neighborhood to $1,589 per square foot, according to Chambre des Notaires de Paris figures cited by the Wall Street Journal.

That is more than $93 per square foot above prices in the next priciest district — the Seventh Arrondissement, which has long associated with France’s elite families.

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“Foreign buyers have made the new benchmark in prices,” Jules Caris, managing director of La Galerie de l’Immobilier, a Left Bank real-estate agency, told the Wall Street Journal.

And Marie-Hélène Lundgreen, director of Belles demeures de France, the Paris-based agency affiliated with Christie’s International Real Estate, added that “when you go over $5 million, 80 percent aren’t French residents.” [WSJ]Christopher Cameron