The prices in Paris are fairly high, 1000€ for a 30m² flat. But that's the relatively small heart of "Paris intra muros", excluding the "banlieues" (suburbs) which are cheaper and 30 minutes to an hour with the Métro (or the RER). That doesn't sound more unaffordable than London, not on a tech salary and colleagues have told me co-habitation is not a thing here (whereas most of my friends and colleagues in London lived in shared flats, for example).

What makes Paris impossible to rent in, is the absolutely insane demand for housing that frees real estate agents to do whatever the fuck they please. I spent three weeks calling every day, multiple agencies, only to be told by each and every one of them that they wouldn't let to me because I am a salaried worker in a trial period ("salarié en periode d' essaie", a three-month trial period mandated by French law). Even with my company offering to be my guarantor (which means they would shoulder all the risk of rent arrears) they would not let to me. Not one. My contacts list is still full of numbers of "immobiliers" (real estate agencies), I know 80% of the agencies and I have masochistic fun pointing them out when I pass outside them with friends. Not one of them would let to me. Not. One!

That's without all the absolutely insane amount of documentation they require (three months of recent rent receipts, proof of having paid taxes in France in the last year, etc) which you won't have if you haven't already lived and worked in France for a while, and the complete bollocks demand of earning three times the rent in salary, and being able to afford two times the rent in advance (as a guarantee; we'll see if I get mine back). But I think that's all par for the course in big cities.

In the end I was only able to find an apartment because an estate agent who's friends with my boss did me a favor. And even he wouldn't talk to me until I barged into his office. So I got 15 m² with a 3m² bathroom with no sink (there's a 5lt washing machine in its place) and a "kitchen corner" that's barely enough to make breakfast cereals, all for the price of 720€.

For the record, I'm an EU citizen and I have a doctorate in a tech subject. My French colleagues have shared similar rental horror stories. I have no idea how people manage who are worse off financially, or come from outside the EU.

tl;dr: no, you don't want the housing situation in your city to be like that in Paris.

Having read all of this, I have no doubt that the experience you're relating is true, nonetheless, it makes me wonder how Paris's immigration boom is happening. When I was last there, most of the people I spoke to didn't have Parisian accents, and were mostly recent immigrants. There is no way all of these people outrank someone with a doctorate in a tech field, statistically speaking. I'm curious what other factors are at play here.

Because a lot of immigrants who come to Paris (and any other big metro areas like London, Berlin, New York, etc.) have no standards regarding housing and don't care about these issues. They're just happy to be in a big rich city with economic opportunities (legal and otherwise) so they can make some money and send to their families back home, regardless if they live in slum like conditions.

Btw, if you're thinking of "other factors" like something dodgy about my personality, there aren't any. If there was something about me so dodgy that nobody wanted to rent to me, it would affect my ability to be employed, first. And yet I got an offer from the first startup to which I applied in Paris, so it can't be that.

Perhaps the recent immigrants you spoke with were comfortable with less ... formal? ways of renting? For example, searching for "why so hard to rent in Paris foreigner" on duckduckgo, I find this account of similar difficulties as mine:

https://howtobecomeparisian.com/2020/04/13/the-struggle-of-f...

<< I arrived in Paris thinking it would be easy to find a place to live, and the end result ended up being years of dodgy landlords, questionable agencies, and a string of short-term leases which made me feel like I always had to be ready to pack up at a moment’s notice. >>

I'm guessing there are many people living in similar precarious accommodation. I didn't want that, so I guess I played on hard mode to begin with. But the point is that the hard mode is hard, and I'm not playing some game, I'm just trying to rent a place to stay and work in a European capital. It shouldn't be hard.

Basically, laws now mandate every flat to have good thermal isolation, otherwise you can't rent them. Which means approx 30% of the housing in Paris will be banned from the renting market in the next 3 years. It started this very year.

PS: and because we're french, the diagnostic for "energy performance" of a housing is full of boggus formula which overestimate the consumption of your flat by a factor of 3 ( at least).

Sorry, but what stopped the landlords/building managers from insulating the apartments in due time? I'm assuming there was a notice period given and the insulation mandate didn't spontaneously come out of nowhere.

Could it be that most landlords are just greedy rentseekers who want to have their cake and eat it too?

- in 2019 a law was passed, scheduled for being in effect starting 2023

- in 2020 they changed the way the evaluation was performed. Instead or relying on energy bills, they decided to create a formula with a tons of parameters.

- in 2021 they realized the shity formula was overestimating consumption waayyy too much, making a lot more housing improper for renting than expected (people saw their mark going from « C » to « F » or even « G »). They adjusted it.

- in 2022, the new formula is still bogus, but nothing changed

As an example, i live in the best insulated appartment i’ve ever lived in Paris (lived there for 40 years). It’s rated G (the worst), simply because it’s on the top floor.

And here we are, in 2023, with the first batch of housing being unauthorized for rental.

We now even have a word for the country they’re turning france into : Absurdistan.

I like the French. It's true there's mad amounts of process and bureaucracy everywhere and as usual, none of it works. I don't think it's really worse than in other places, c'est seulement que les Français aiment grogner plus que les autres. C'est Français ca, grogner :)

Btw, je parle bien Français alors je me demande si sa serait pas encore pire si je cherchais un appart en Anglais. Aie.

That's the big downside of heavy tenant protections - it goes so far, landlords take protective measures like torturing you with requirements.

Sure, there is a 'shortage' of housing - but all desirable, popular international tier 1 cities have this, so the word shortage is a bit of a misnomer. Although, Tokyo has something interesting to say about that, seeing that they are dealing with it better. That said my point above about purchase prices remains: you want to buy in Paris, you pay Manhattan prices with France wages. Good luck if you're not already a foreigner (partial topic of the news we're responding to) or very rich.

International rich like to buy and warehouse apartments in Paris for occasional use.

I was given that explanation by at least one letting agent, but I don't believe it because I was turned down repeatedly even though I told all the agents that my employer offered to be my guarantor. That means they would have to pay rent if I didn't.

In fact, my employer is currently my guarantor, for the apartment I finally rented. My boss had to sign a contract that in the event that I stay in the house without paying rent the company will pay the rent for one year. I'm pretty sure that also includes any costs for repairs if required. That should pretty much take care of all the risk there could possibly be in renting to me. And yet, nobody would rent to me.

So the risk is not the problem. The letting agent who gave me the apartment I'm renting commented that it's just too much hassle letting to someone like me, who doesn't have all their documentation in their "dossier de locateur". It really looks like the only reason nobody wanted to let to me was that they don't give a shit whether I find a house or not and they have plenty of takers. As the French say, ils ce foutent de ma geule.

Berlin would like to step up as a challenger for that title.

Unless all you care about is tech start-ups and wild parties with drugs and cheap beer, the housing market there and general poor state makes it a bad place to live if you're used to high quality of life cities, like Vienna for example.

I'd like to live in a place where finding housing that isn't overpriced and poorly maintained, isn't a full time job in of itself where you spend dozens of hours and compete with hundreds of people hunger games style. Since I'm not a student anymore, the party scene doesn't make up for that huge hassle.

I hear this a lot, and this may still have been the case 4 years ago or so, but I feel this is mostly coming from people who found housing in Berlin before Covid and aren't experiencing the current market.

If it doesn’t it’ll quickly get overwhelmed by people trying to get around in cars.