Tres formidable: a place to call home in Paris

Prices for apartments at 140 Rue de Grenelle, a private estate of 16 newly built homes, start at Dh13.6 million for a one-bed apartment.

Prices of homes at 140 Rue de Grenelle start at €2.73 million. Illustration courtesy Knight Frank

You've read Dangerous Liaisons, The Lady of the Camellias and Madame Bovary. You've walked dreamily along the banks of the Seine and been shopping at the Galeries Lafayette, Printemps and Le Bon Marché.

And with estate agents placing prime Paris house prices at up to 30 per cent less than those in central London, it might be time to invest in “une petite residence Parisienne”.

Located in the seventh arrondissement, one of Paris’s most luxury suburbs, and surrounded by the gardens of the Swiss embassy on one side and the residence of the Prefet de Paris on the other, 140 Rue de Grenelle, a private estate of 16 newly built homes, is one of the most chi-chi — and expensive — properties going.

Hidden away from the street through a gated entrance and built on the former grounds of the National Geographic Institute, the residences, designed by Jean Jacques Ory Architects with help from the designer Thierry W Despont, are built behind the historic facade of the 18th-century Hôtel de Noirmoutier.

Prices start at €2.73 million (Dh13.6m) for a one-bedroom apartment and go up to €22.5m for three and four-bedroom flats. Local agents say with apartment sizes ranging between 109 square metres and 500 sq metres, prices equate to between €20,500 and €33,000 per square metre — making them among the most expensive currently on the market in the French capital.

However, for that sort of money buyers get some pretty fancy fittings, including white calcatta marble bathrooms, oak floors, swimming pools and private gardens.

A concierge-cum-security guard is also thrown in, providing around the clock assistance.

According to Knight Frank, the real estate company marketing the properties, since the French government has clarified its tax changes for overseas investors, the scheme is attracting strong interest from Middle Eastern buyers as well as domestic and Russian investors.

“We have had strong interest in Rue de Grenelle from Middle Eastern purchasers and we only see interest in the prime Parisian property market increasing as we close out the year,” says Sarah May-Brown, associate director and head of international residential at Knight Frank.

“Over the last year we have definitely seen an increase of Middle Eastern investment into Paris, they see it increasingly as a safe haven for their money as well as profiting from the lifestyle benefits attached to Paris.”