15 years of property hunting in Paris: what I have learned

I founded Home Select in 2011. Fifteen years, more than 1,200 acquisitions, 16 property hunters on the team today. When I look back, I see a profession that has been transformed, a market that has weathered crises and euphoria, and clients who have taught me at least as much as I have brought to them.

This article is not a company report. It is a personal account of experience: the lessons these fifteen years have taught me, sometimes brutally, about the Parisian property market, the property hunting profession, and human nature when facing the most important purchase of a lifetime.

Lesson 1: can anyone predict the Paris property market?

No: nobody predicts the Parisian property market reliably. Macro trends are identifiable, interest rates, demographics and public policies steer the market, but timing is unpredictable.

In 2011, when I launched Home Select, the Parisian market was accelerating. Prices were climbing 8 to 10% per year. Buyers were fighting over ordinary properties. Everyone said Paris would never go down. Then 2012 arrived, with a slight softening. Then 2013, with a real stagnation. The same experts who announced eternal growth were now predicting collapse.

I have seen this cycle repeat several times. The continuous rise until 2019-2020. The Covid shock. The correction of 2023-2024 when interest rates spiked. Then the gradual stabilisation as rates normalised. At each stage, authoritative voices announced either the end of the world or the return of the golden age. They were wrong every time, or rather, they were right too early or too late.

What I have learned, then: the client who waits for the “right moment” to buy waits indefinitely. The client who buys a property that suits them, at a price consistent with comparable transactions of the moment, makes a good purchase in any market context.

This is a message I deliver regularly, and one that some clients find hard to hear. They would like me to tell them whether it is the right time. My answer is always the same: the right time is when you find the right property at the right price. The market will do what it wants.

Lesson 2: do buyers really know what they are looking for?

Not yet at the first meeting: in the majority of cases, the property a client ends up buying does not exactly match their initial list of criteria. In fifteen years, I have conducted hundreds of scoping meetings, and the client always arrives with that list, often detailed, often well thought out.

This is not a failure of the brief. It is a natural phenomenon. The client expresses criteria that are the translation of their needs as they perceive them before confronting the market. They say “Haussmannian” because they picture the light from tall windows and the high ceilings. They say “6th arrondissement” because they hold a mental image of a certain art de vivre. They say “80 square metres” because they measured their current apartment and added a bedroom.

The role of the property hunter is to trace back to the needs behind the criteria. Not to contradict the client, whose preferences are legitimate, but to broaden the field of possibilities. The client who was looking for Haussmannian sometimes buys a 1930s building with beautiful proportions and more light. The one who wanted the 6th discovers the upper 7th or the 5th. The one who asked for 80 square metres comes to see that a well-laid-out 72 square metres offers more living space than a poorly arranged 85.

This evolution is not a compromise: it is a clarification. The client has not given up what they wanted. They have discovered what they truly wanted.

Lesson 3: does the co-ownership matter more than the apartment?

Yes: you buy an apartment, but you live in a co-ownership, and its management, its financial health, the condition of common areas and the dynamic among co-owners determine your daily experience far more than the parquet flooring in your living room. This may be the most counterintuitive lesson of all, and the one it took me longest to take fully on board.

A magnificent apartment in a dysfunctional co-ownership is a trap. Charges skyrocket, repairs do not happen or are botched, conflicts between neighbours poison the atmosphere. I have seen clients who loved their apartment and hated their life in the building. The opposite also exists: a decent apartment in a well-managed co-ownership, with reasonable neighbours and a sufficient maintenance fund, provides a peace of mind that the buyer did not anticipate at the time of purchase.

At Home Select, this conviction has translated into a method: general assembly minutes are requested and read before the pre-visit, not after. If the co-ownership is in trouble, the property is eliminated before the property hunter even visits. This filter eliminates between 15 and 20% of analysed properties: properties that could have seduced the client during a viewing but would have been a source of problems in the medium term.

Lesson 4: when does property negotiation really begin?

Well before the offer: it begins with the property hunter’s first call to the agent, when they learn the seller’s context, the time on market and the offers already rejected. In 2011, I thought property negotiation was the moment of the offer: the buyer proposes a price, the seller counter-proposes, they meet in the middle. Fifteen years later, I know it plays out on multiple fronts.

The quality of that first conversation with the agent determines the subsequent negotiation strategy.

It continues when the property hunter builds the offer file. A documented offer, with DVF comparables, a financing certificate and a financing plan, carries more weight than a bare offer. The agent who receives this file knows they are dealing with a serious buyer, and communicates this to the seller.

It also plays out in timing. Making an offer on a Friday evening when the seller has another purchase in progress and needs to sign quickly means using context as leverage. Waiting three days after a first visit to show you are not desperate is negotiation. Proposing an accelerated signing schedule in exchange for a discount is negotiation.

Price negotiation is the visible part of the iceberg. Everything else, the information, the credibility, the timing, the trade-offs, is below the surface. And it is below the surface that the real savings are made.

Lesson 5: how many properties should a good hunter show?

Few: three properties in 45 days, each having survived rigorous filtering, serve a client better than ten shown in a month. The value of a property hunter is not measured by the number of properties they show, it is measured by the number of properties they do not show.

I understood this fairly early, but it took time to turn it into a company culture.

A property hunter who presents ten properties to a client in a month gives the impression of working hard. In reality, they are transferring to the client the sorting work they should have done themselves. The client visits ten properties, gets lost in comparisons, hesitates, wastes time. This is not support, it is information overload.

A property hunter who presents three properties in 45 days, each having survived rigorous filtering, provides an infinitely superior service. The client visits less but decides better. Every viewing is a viewing that counts.

This “less but better” philosophy is not always easy to defend. Some clients grow impatient when weeks go by without a viewing. Some compare with competitors who “show more properties.” It is in these moments that weekly reporting makes all the difference: the client sees the elimination work and understands that the absence of a viewing is not the absence of a search.

15 years of experience serving your purchase. At Home Select, every lesson learned makes us more effective for the next search. Entrust us with yours

Lesson 6: why are expatriates the most demanding clients?

Because they buy remotely, in a legal system they do not always master, with specific financing constraints and an often tight timeline: every viewing has to be the right one. They are right to be demanding, and their demands have pulled our whole service upwards.

Home Select helps many international clients: expatriates settling in Paris, foreign investors, families returning to France after years abroad. These clients represent a significant proportion of our mandates, and they have taught me something essential about service.

The expatriate buying in Paris is buying remotely, in a legal system they do not always master, with specific financing constraints and an often tight timeline. They cannot visit fifteen properties in person: they need every viewing to be the right one. They do not know the neighbourhoods intuitively: they need someone to explain the difference between the south 9th and the north 9th, between Batignolles and Épinettes, between what the portals show and what the ground reveals.

The demanding standards of these clients, in terms of information quality, responsiveness, transparency, has pulled our entire service upward. Systematic reporting, detailed elimination sheets, coordination with notaries and non-resident specialist brokers: all of this was developed to meet the needs of the most demanding clients, then rolled out across all our mandates.

When a Parisian client tells me “your service is very structured,” I always think of the expatriates who pushed us to structure it.

Lesson 7: does the energy rating affect apartment prices in Paris?

Yes, strongly: a property rated F or G suffers a 10 to 20% discount compared to a comparable property rated C or D, and a property rated A or B commands a premium. In 2011, the DPE was a formality nobody looked at; in 2026, it is a price factor.

If I had to identify the single factor that has most transformed the Parisian market since I have been in this profession, it would not be Covid, nor the rise in interest rates, nor the influx of foreign investors. It would be the energy performance rating. The progressive ban on renting thermal sieves has transformed the DPE from ancillary information into an eliminatory criterion.

This transformation has caught the Parisian market off guard. The Parisian housing stock is old, Haussmannian, 1930s, 1960s-1970s, and mostly poorly insulated. Co-ownerships have been slow to vote on energy renovation work. Result: a significant proportion of the Parisian stock is rated D, E or F, with consequences on valuation that are only beginning.

For a property hunter, the DPE has become an analytical tool and a negotiation lever. Knowing how to read a DPE in detail, distinguishing wall-related heat loss from window-related loss, estimating the real cost of bringing a property up to standard, evaluating the feasibility of renovation within a co-ownership, is a skill that has been added to the profession. In 2011, it did not exist. In 2026, it is indispensable.

Lesson 8: why still hire a property hunter in 2026?

No longer for the information, which buyers now find on their own since DVF transaction data went public, but for the time saved, the access to off-market, the expertise during viewings, the negotiation and the security of the transaction. The profession has grown more professional, and that is a good thing.

When I started, the property hunting profession in Paris was still artisanal. No public transaction data, no transparent price reference, no standardized method. Each property hunter did things their own way, with varying degrees of rigour.

The publication of DVF data changed the game. Everyone, property hunters, agents, buyers, now has access to real transaction prices. This transparency eliminated the informational advantage that some professionals exploited, and forced everyone to justify their valuations with verifiable data.

Clients have also changed. The 2026 buyer arrives at the scoping meeting with Seloger alerts configured, DVF comparables consulted, and a fairly precise idea of the market in their target area. They are not looking for a property hunter for access to information: they can find that on their own. They are looking for a property hunter for time savings, access to off-market properties, viewing expertise, negotiation, and transaction security.

This evolution is healthy. It pushes mediocre property hunters towards the exit and good ones towards excellence. It forces the profession to prove its added value beyond information: through service, method, and results. It is a permanent challenge, and it is precisely what makes this profession fascinating.

Lesson 9: what makes a buyer satisfied five years on?

Not the best financial deal: the most satisfied clients five years after their purchase are those who live in an apartment that corresponds to who they are, in a neighbourhood that matches their life, with a co-ownership that causes them no trouble. You do not buy an apartment, you buy a life.

This is the simplest and most profound lesson. The one I repeat most often to my property hunters, and the one clients most easily forget under the pressure of numbers and negotiations.

The apartment is a container. What matters is the content: the life you will lead there. The morning commute to the children’s school. Sunday coffee at the corner bar. The February light coming through the kitchen window at 8 in the morning. The noise, or the silence, of the neighbourhood on a weeknight.

I know this because some come back to us for a second purchase. What they describe is the apartment where they feel at home, not the one on which they struck the best deal.

Price matters, of course. The energy rating matters. The charges matter. But all of this serves a more fundamental question: will I be happy here? The property hunter who forgets this question in favour of technical indicators alone misses the essential point.

What the next fifteen years might bring

I will refrain from predicting the market’s future: lesson 1 has cured me of that temptation. But a few trends seem solid enough to shape the profession.

AI and data will continue to transform property searching. Sourcing will be increasingly assisted by algorithms. Price analysis will be increasingly automated. The property hunter who does not master these tools will fall behind.

But AI will not visit apartments. It will not sense the moisture behind a partition wall. It will not read the body language of an agent hiding something. It will not reassure a panicked client on the evening of a rejected offer. The core of the profession, the field, the human element, the advice, will remain irreducibly human.

Energy ratings and the energy transition will continue to reshape the market. Poorly rated properties will face increasing pressure. Co-ownerships that invest in thermal renovation will appreciate in value. The property hunter will need to be increasingly competent in energy matters.

And clients will continue to want what they have always wanted: a place to live well, at a fair price, without unpleasant surprises. The property hunting profession exists because this simple aspiration is extraordinarily difficult to fulfil alone in a market like Paris. Nothing will change that.

Fifteen years. More than 1,200 buyers settled. Thousands of properties analysed, hundreds of negotiations, dozens of lessons learned. And every new mandate still brings something I did not know.

That is the last lesson, and perhaps the most important: in this profession, you never finish learning.

15 years of experience, 1,200+ acquisitions, one mission: finding your apartment. At Home Select, every search benefits from everything we have learned. Fees 100% on success. Start your project