In 1983, the Eiffel Tower underwent a significant structural renovation that included the removal of an original helical staircase used to bring visitors up the tower. New elevators were installed in its place, and the specific section connecting the second and third floors was dismantled and cut into 24 sections.
Four of these sections were saved for French public heritage, and the remaining 20 sections were auctioned off to the public. Since then, these stair sections have traded for staggering numbers, with the record being Section No. 13 selling for €523,800 in 2016.
But now, for the first time since the original 1983 auction, Stair Section No. 1 is about to hit the market through Artcurial. The pre-sale estimate is €120,000-€150,000, but as is customary with auction houses (and auction dynamics in general), I'm sure this is a deliberately low number.
If any of you are in the market for an original Eiffel Tower staircase from 1889, you can register for the auction here, which is scheduled to take place on May 21 at 2pm Paris time. I'll be checking in from afar with curiosity. Because somebody is really going to want this.
Photos from Artcurial
I recently watched a few episodes of L'Agence on Netflix. I don't watch much TV, but it is somewhat shocking that I haven't gotten more into this show before. It's about beautiful real estate and all things French, which are unapologetically two of my favourite things.
Another great feature of the show is that everyone seems to be in their late 30s and shopping for a €6,000,000 apartment with a rooftop terrace and views of the Eiffel Tower. It's a great way to start questioning all of your life decisions.
In fairness, the buyers are varied, but I do find it interesting that there are some recurring purchase criteria. Many of them want something "central." Many of them have kids and have no hesitation about raising them in an apartment. And many of them have a non-negotiable desire to be able to walk out their door to amenities without having to drive.
All of this really resonates with me, but it obviously isn't true for everyone or for all geographies. "Luxury," which is the focus of this show, means different things to different people. What are your criteria?
Cover photo by Alexander Kagan on Unsplash
It is very common for jurisdictions to mandate the use of a licensed architect when building homes and buildings above a certain size. This is true in Ontario, and it's true in places like France, though the thresholds can vary widely and change over time. Currently, the threshold is 150 m2 in France. Okay, so what? Well, it turns out this simple rule has second-order consequences, as they often do.
Here's a fascinating research paper by Antoine Levy titled Regulating Housing Quality: Evidence from France. One of the things he looks at is the distribution of floor area in new housing units over time, from before there was an architect requirement threshold (ART), to the moments where this threshold was gradually lowered:
Prior to there being a threshold (1976), the chart shows a positive skew, but with a clustering of homes somewhere around 100 m2. Importantly, the distribution shows a smooth progression. But once an ART is implemented, the distribution then starts to show a clear spike right before the threshold, followed by a cliff and a "missing mass."
This, of course, makes sense. The market is pushing up against the glass to avoid having to use and pay for an architect. And the "missing mass" is the market shifting supply to below the threshold, or sufficiently beyond it. I mean, if you're going to surpass the threshold, you may as well do it confidently.
Now here's where things start to get more interesting. Levy finds that this threshold acts as a focal point that segments the market. Households above the threshold tend to have higher incomes, and homes just past the limit were on average 8-10% more expensive to build. This additional cost cannot be justified by the addition of the architect's fee alone.
On the other side of the threshold, the concentration of demand "up against the glass" was shown to create economies of scale through more standardized home design and production. In other words, the threshold incentivizes the market to get really good at designing and building a certain scale of home.
It was also shown to unintentionally promote greater housing density, because what the threshold does is create a soft cap on housing consumption for a large segment of the market. As you can see in the bottom right chart above, it effectively pulls supply back and under the threshold, away from larger homes and larger lots.
It may seem fairly innocuous to mandate that people use an architect above a certain scale, and I will forever be a proponent of great design, but as Thomas Sowell once said, "there are no solutions, only trade-offs."
Cover photo by Alex Tyson on Unsplash