Weekly insights about property in France!

Subscribe and don't miss an issue!

Paris Parking at a Premium

May 8, 2014

Volume XII, Issue 19

ITrees and wider sidewalks in Paris – photo by Transit Miami haven’t owned a car in almost 20 years now, and it’s a freedom I never suspected I’d enjoy so much. Of course, living in Paris affords that freedom with such great public transportation at our doorsteps. This works well for someone like me living in central Paris with a job that can be done from anywhere, but what if I had to commute to an office outside of the city or had a job that required transporting things from place to place?

Mayor Bertrand Delanoë made it his policy to make Paris more pedestrian-friendly, and did exactly that the moment he landed in office. Hes widened the sidewalks, added trees and lighting, narrowed the streets, pedestrianized many and removed the parking for cars along the city streets. This was a smart move. Ive seen the benefits first hand as I watched rue de Bretagne go from a scruffy little shopping street to the heart of the 3rd arrondissement with a seriously active
life at all the cafés and markets, improving the value of our property and our lives.

The challenge of Parking in ParisOne of the primary luxuries of not owning a car is that there is never a problem of parking. First, there is the problem of finding a place to park when traveling away from home with such limited possibilities and expensive public and private lots, but what about where you’ll park the car near to home when it’s not in use? If you own a car, then living in an apartment with parking in the building, or even nearby is ideal. Apartments that come with parking sell at a premium as a result and therefore owning a parking space in Paris is pure gold.

On the basis of past deeds of sale the notaries of Paris and the Ile-de-France have recently published the statistics, having extracted the monthly figures showing the price of existing parking spaces (more than five years) in the Ile-de-France. According to their study, the median price in 2013 for a parking space or garage in Paris and Ile-de-France is the following:

Paris Avg:    24,500
Paris 1st:    insufficient data
Paris 2nd:    insufficient data
Paris 3rd:    39,000
Paris 4th:    38,470
Paris 5th:    30,000
Paris 6th:    37,000
Paris 7th:    51,000
Paris 8th:    40,000
Paris 9th:    29,600
Paris 10th:   21,000
Paris 11th:   21,000
Paris 12th:   20,000
Paris 13th: 15,000
Paris 14th:   22,500
Paris 15th:   22,000
Paris 16th: 42,000
Paris 17th:   33,086
Paris 18th:   20,000
Paris 19th: 15,000
Paris 20th:   15,000

Inner Suburbs: 14,500
Outer Suburbs: 10,000

Average parking garage in ParisAccording to the French standard Norme NF P 91-100, the minimum width of parking spaces ranges from 2.20 to 2.30 meters (7.27.5 feet) with the length about double that. This means that a space averages about 12.5 square meters, therefore the average cost per square meter is about 1,960! With the average per square meter cost of an apartment in Paris of 8,140 (as of February 2013), this makes parking about one-fourth as expensive as residential property.

Meanwhile, parking spaces can be rented - lucrative for the owner and practical for the operator of the vehicle. In Particulier à Particulier, a great source of for rent by owner ads, there isnt a single space advertised in the 1st, or 2nd arrondissements of the 89 in the list! The least expensive is 60 per month in the 13th, and the most expensive is 230 in the 6th:

Rental parking Paris 3rd, 1 listing
Rental parking Paris 4th, 2 listings
Rental parking Paris 5th, 4 listings
Rental parking Paris 6th, 2 listings
Rental parking Paris 7th, 1 listing
Rental parking Paris 8th, 1 listing
Rental parking Paris 9th, 1 listing
Rental parking Paris 10th, 3 listings
Rental parking Paris 11th, 14 listings
Rental parking Paris 12th, 6 listings
Rental parking Paris 13th, 10 listings
Rental parking Paris 14th, 5 listings
Rental parking Paris 15th, 16 listings
Rental parking Paris 16th, 2 listings
Rental parking Paris 17th, 2 listings
Rental parking Paris 18th, 10 listings
Rental parking Paris 19th, 2 listings
Rental parking Paris 20th, 7 listings

Paris trafficThe fractional ownership property Le Palace des Vosges rents one garage from the investors that houses storage units for each of the owners, but another one of the garages available to them remains empty. The costs to own and operate the two spaces (valued at 76,940 if using the citys averages) is about 1,500 annually when considering the homeowners association fees, annual property taxes and high cost of maintaining a bank account. Fees to an accountant to file annual tax returns are added to this cost. The rents of about 200 per space generate 4,800, therefore the rents can easily cover the carrying costs, but the real investment value is in the resale of the unit.

This is true for an apartment that comes with a parking space its a real asset should you be so lucky as to find one to purchase or have one to sell!

Happy Parking.

A bientôt,

Adrian Leeds

Editor, French Property Insider & Director of The Adrian Leeds Group, LLC

Email: [email protected]

P.S. Advertise in the Parler Paris Nouvellettre®, Parler Nice Nouvellettre® or French Property Insider e-zine. You can reach up to 15,000 Francophile readers on Monday and Wednesday, and up to 4,000 investors interested in purchasing property in Paris or France on Thursdays. For more information and to book your ad, visit our Advertise page.