Renovating a Paris apartment from abroad: the non-resident owner's guide
The non-resident owner's guide to buying and renovating in Paris: read the property before signing, understand the roles, hold the budget, follow the site remotely.
Paris, read for you.
This journal is the public counterpart of the site journal my clients receive every week: a way of reading Paris carefully, for an owner following a project from abroad. Notes to understand, before you sign and during the works. Start with the guide, then pick according to your questions.
The non-resident owner's guide to buying and renovating in Paris: read the property before signing, understand the roles, hold the budget, follow the site remotely.
No residency requirement, no permit. The sequence from offer to keys, the ten-day cooling-off, what the notaire is and is not, the real costs, and what a viewing will not tell you.
Paris renovation costs in 2026 euros, per square metre: €1,000–1,800 for a rental refit, €1,800–2,500 mid-range, €2,500–3,500 for a Haussmannian restoration — and the six costs the ranges leave out.
Owner, design authority, architect, AMOA: who designs, who directs, who signs, who represents you on a Paris renovation. The roles, made clear.
The promesse de vente in Paris: the five documents to demand and the clauses to reread before signing, when buying as a non-resident owner.
Before renovating in a Paris co-ownership: what the rules allow, which works go before the general assembly, and how to vote when you live abroad.
The per-m² ranges of a Paris renovation in 2026, and the four places a quote inflates — how to check it line by line from abroad.
How an owner's representative's fees are set in Paris: a fixed fee per phase, a 90 m² base then a per-m² rate, never a percentage on the works or a commission.
What a good weekly site report looks like when renovating in Paris from abroad: six fixed rubrics, with a concrete example.
Trusted networks, “preferred partners”, quiet commissions: why your representative's financial independence changes the value of every alert.