Rated the most popular city in the world among the ultra rich in 2019, Paris dropped down to 7th place in the 2020 ranking, outranked by top 10-newcomers such as Zurich, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
Published by the real estate consulting firm BARNES International in its Global Property Handbook, the ranking reflected big changes in the global property market provoked by the Covid-19 health crisis.
Bordeaux, in south west France, made it on the top 50 list for the first time ever. This was partly due to the pandemic, which - by imposing remote working as the rule - had prompted many Parisians to move elsewhere, a Barnes representative in Bordeaux told French daily Le Parisien
Covid and 'yellow vests'
In addition to the pandemic, a string of episodes of social turmoil had marked the capital's image internationally the past couple of years.
"I'm thinking about the 2019 transport strikes, the 'yellow vest' crisis, and then the more recent Covid crisis and its repeated lockdowns, which made shops and hotels close," Olivier Privincialle, deputy president of FNAIM Grand Paris, a union of real estate agencies in the greater Paris region.
"But Paris is a world city and should remain at the top of the ranking of the most attractive cities with some of the highest real estate prices thanks to its buildings and its monuments," he told Le Parisien.
#Immobilier :#Paris n’est plus la ville la plus attractive au monde >> https://t.co/p0QxtzPDSG pic.twitter.com/i02dNGgY4F
— Le Parisien Infog (@LeParisienInfog) January 22, 2021
An example is a Paris apartment near the Eiffel Tower measuring 407 square metre sold for the dazzling amount of €10.5 million last year - more than €25,700 per square metre (more than double the already sky-rocketing average price of €10,800).
Some 265,000 people in the world are considered high net worth individuals or ultra high net worth individuals, according to Barnes, which means they possess a wealth above $1 million dollars, or $30 million dollars (€25 million) for ultra high net worth individuals.
'Paris still rhymes with luxury'
However, Paris' drop was relatively modest compared to those of other cities. New York, which came 2nd in 2019 fell down to 11th place in 2020 and Los Angeles plunged from 4th to 14th place.
"Even if the French capital has lost the head of the ranking, it remains in the top 10," said Thibault de Saint Vincent, the real-estate president at Barnes.
That, he told Le Parisien was "a sign that Paris still makes people dream and rhymes with the words luxury and art of living."
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