When Anne-Sophie Denieul moved from Brittany to Paris two months ago, the 29-year-old dentist brought only her CD player, a clothes-rack and two cardboard boxes to serve as a dresser.
Anne-Sophie moved in with her boyfriend, Pascal Ferrari (33) a data-processing engineer from Marseille. The 27-square-metre, one-bedroom apartment Pascal rented in May 1997 doesn't have room for more of Anne-Sophie's belongings. Pascal had a double bed and pine book shelf. 'When I got, here, we ate on the floor,' Anne-Sophie recalls.
They are proud of their clean little flat, with the sunflower-patterned throw rug on the sofa and the white duvet cover with blue sea-shells on the bed. It is a sunny, fourth-floor flat overlooking the Montmartre cemetery; if you crane your head to the left, you can just see the tip of the Eiffel Tower. Anne-Sophie and Pascal's housing arrangements are typical of young French professionals: only 54 per cent of French families own their homes, and this figure falls to 28 per cent in Paris. Three-quarters of all home owners are over the age of 39.
Although their monthly rent of 3,500 French francs, about £416, represents only a small percentage of their combined income, Anne-Sophie and Pascal have no intention of looking for a larger place to rent. Both are saving in hopes of buying property back in the provinces in five or 10 years from now.
The cost of property in Paris has plummeted since its peak in 19871991 - from £6,010-£7,200 a square metre to £2,400-£3,600 at present - but it is still unusual for young couples to buy rather than rent. Should they seek a loan, they have a choice of fixed or variable interest rates; currently 6 per cent and between 5 and 5.5 per cent respectively. Property loans range anywhere from three to 20 years, but most French home-buyers pay off their loans in about 10 years. To encourage young property investors, most banks offer interest rates 1 per cent lower than the norm to clients under the age of 30.
For Pascal Ferrari, just finding a flat to rent was an ordeal. When he arrived in Paris two years ago, he carried a suit for job-hunting and a duvet in his rucksack. For two months he slept on the floor in his brother Didier's studio apartment. 'When I got a job, I bought myself a convertible armchair I slept on for 13 months.' It took him two months to find the flat he now shares with Anne-Sophie.
'There's such a housing shortage that the estate agents choose who they rent to,' Pascal says. A dozen times, he made appointments to visit apartments, only to find they were rented by the time he arrived. When he finally found his flat, he had to pay a £1,548 deposit and show three months' pay slips, along with a guarantor's signature.
Pascal credits Anne-Sophie with their apartment's sparse decoration. She borrowed a blue folding table from friends, and last month the couple made their first big purchase, a yellow sofa-bed that takes up most of the shoebox-size living room.
'When we unfold the sofa-bed, we have to stack the table and chairs behind the kitchen door,' Anne-Sophie says. Dreams of buying their own home are for the distant future; their next big investment will be curtains.
