The City of Paris lists its real estate and discloses its receipts from property sales

The City of Paris owns a substantial slice of the City of Light. Taking its lead from the French government, in 2013 City Hall listed and disclosed the extent of its real estate. It holds five million square meters of property – equivalent to around 17.4% of Paris’s total built real estate.

Its holdings cover a wide range of buildings, including social housing, libraries, museums, schools, offices, cultural centers, and sports centers. Among other prestigious sites, the city boasts the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais museum and exhibition center, and the Roland-Garros tennis complex.

An investigation of the city’s real estate, commissioned in October 2012, was charged with making an inventory of its property, its value, and the cost of administering it compared to earnings from rents and other income.

City Hall’s report also lists properties sold, both within and outside central Paris. Between the 1990s and 2011, the city sold off 211 surplus buildings for a total price tag of 1.27 billion €. Set against that, it spent around 1.66 billion €, mostly on acquiring real estate for social housing and on property maintenance.