I’m A Young Singaporean Buying A Property In France: Here’s My Experience Viewing 3 Apartments And What I’ve Learned

10 min read

Most Singaporeans would be quite put off by small spaces; it is not surprising to hear negative sentiments and complaints about our tightened spaces in newer developments, both public and private.

So to the surprise of many Singaporean friends who are with me in France, my decision to even consider purchasing properties below 50m2 was frowned upon.

“It’s too small already lah, don’t even bother going to view. It’s a waste of time.”

I’ll admit, I thought so too at the start. Most properties under 30m2 are basically studios designed for students or money mules for AirBnBs, but does that really have to be the case?

I have been quite into the tiny homes movement for a while, as I have pretty much accepted my fate of not being able to afford a big space unless I move into rural areas. But I am also a designer, so knowing the craft of space optimisation has led me to be much more open-minded to tiny floor areas than my non-creative peers.

So off I went to view these tiny properties, and here’s what I found out:

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Before we start

France actually has a very special way to calculate the liveable area of a property. Unlike Singapore that just considers the entire unit size, including aircon vents (I know this is changing) and balconies. 

In France, only the enclosed floor area inside of a building will be considered; additional exterior spaces such as terraces and balconies will not be added to the total floor area. France also only permits an area to be counted if it meets a minimum 1.8m ceiling height requirement.

So what this means is that many studio properties can be bigger than their reported size, especially if mezzanines can be added or if the property has a terrace.

It was hours of obsessive digging and refreshing property websites before I found ‘Eureka!’ moments. Before I dive into the most interesting properties itself, let’s take a look at some important takeaways from my property window shopping journey.

Ceiling height matters a lot, but you only get it on the top floors.

This is kind of a “No duh” takeaway, as many smaller condos in Singapore make up for the lack of square footage with higher ceilings to enable more storage or loft living. Penthouse owners generally have higher ceilings and an additional floor.

In France, high ceilings are usually reserved for attic apartments, castles, or luxury developments. I can’t afford castles or luxury developments, so I had to look for attics.

Many older properties in France aren’t tall as well, as most residential buildings back then followed an age-old architectural rule of not being taller than the local church or cathedral. So apartments are built to have a normal-height ceiling or even the bare minimum short ceiling height so building owners can stuff as many units as they can to minimise cost and maximise profit.

For attic apartments, this is a different story.

Remember how I mentioned a few rules for calculating the area of properties in France? Yeah, there’s actually a bunch, but one important one to note for this point is that attic apartments have more recessed space due to the slope of the roofs, and that means that a smaller floor space is counted for the overall area.

So if you have a 50m2 floor space in an attic apartment, it would likely only count as 40m2 or so in terms of livable space, depending on how inclined the roof slope is.

In order to register a humane number of square footage to make it livable by commune standards, builders had to give attic apartments more ceiling height if they wanted to convert or sell it as a unit. If not, it is doomed to become a storage area, which they cannot charge for and profit from.

Optimised cut-outs of houses might be better than box units

This would be specific to one of the units I was viewing, but I noticed rectangular units are usually a lot more work to plan spaces for, and they’ll end up more expensive because area optimisation is more difficult for box units with the number of walls you need to tear down or build.

This is perhaps my bias as an industrial designer, but I am not a fan of box units of any sort as the space is pretty much designated by different boxed areas. Your unit is essentially made of smaller units that make up your living room, kitchen, toilet, and bedrooms. I’m not a doll, so I don’t like having a dollhouse-living type of situation.

It’s also a lot more expensive to heat if you go for an open-space concept, because we have winter in Europe. Claustrophobic when walled, costly when designed. You can’t win.

So I started preferring layouts that allow for more flow; an interior that has an odd shape that basically designates your movements upon entering the space. Think of all the nice exhibitions you went to before and how you went from room to alley and how they made you transition from space to space, a good layout in Europe would capture those principles.

This is an abstract point to make, so I’ll just show you a visualised example later on.

Plan your space before you decide to buy

While this seems obvious for any property, knowing how you’re using the exact space that you’re getting for smaller units becomes a make-or-break. When buying property, I think one would already have a vision for the space they’re purchasing. To ensure that vision can be carried out, you need to be super sure of the measurements and I like to do so by checking it on a floor plan app.

My process before viewing the property is to look at the pictures closely and try to determine the layout based on the imagery and floor area provided. I sketch a quick layout on paper and bring that with me to the viewing. After the viewing, I go home and mock up the floor plan with online tools and start putting furniture in to see what fits.

Small spaces are not forgiving, and if you’re purchasing one with the intent to save money by cost per floor area but made mistakes with space allocation and planning, you’ll end up spending your savings on expensive custom furniture to fit your space.

Take this from an industrial designer who used to make furniture for spaces, you really don’t want to get the space planning wrong because it’s how contractors make money off you with custom carpentry. It’ll cost ya, trust me.

My 30m2 apartment discovery

I try not to look at box units because as mentioned earlier, I don’t like living in a dollhouse. I adore open spaces and I love a challenging upper-fixer that landlords don’t usually want to take on.

That said, it’s not that easy to source for apartments that aren’t boxed units because, well, it’s the best way to build a house or an entire complex. I loved the challenge, so I decided to make my life difficult by only looking at properties with unique features.

Apartment #1: 25m2 Studio with a whooping 22m2 terrace

This apartment caught my eye because at first glance, you can see that the terrace space is hilariously larger than the living space overall. The living/sleeping area was actually only 12m2, so the bathroom and kitchen share 5m2 each.

I was betting a lot on creating a veranda on the terrace so I could extend the living space, making it effectively 47m2. Unfortunately for me, it would have been an uphill battle to get the permissions and permits to do so as this apartment is located in a building with 40 other co-owners.

Since terraces are part of the external building facade, any work done has to be signed off by all other homeowners of the building. So it’s effectively your private space, but you don’t get full ownership of it, which reflects in the floor area you pay for.

It would have been an interesting project, but ultimately I just really disliked the building, location, and the neighbours. You can do almost anything you want in France for smaller properties (loose statement, don’t quote me) as long as you follow the rules and don’t piss off your neighbours. But I really wasn’t feeling it, so even though a rooftop veranda conservatory was extremely tempting, I gave this apartment a pass.

You can see below how I tried designing the space and what I meant about box units being very difficult to plan for. It doesn’t make sense to add walls to divide a 12m2 living space further but it was equally challenging to make it an open-concept space. Despite it having a rooftop terrace, this apartment was not on the top floor as the attic was converted into another unit, so the low ceilings of the apartment also made it impossible to build up.

My heart ached with disappointment with this apartment because it had so much potential and was one of the 3 apartments in the city to have a large terrace (above 15m2 in area size).

Maybe in a different city, it would have worked out a bit better. Where I live, winters get kind of cold, and last I checked, my bank account can’t afford pricey heating or double-glazed glass walls to maintain the conservatory either.

Apartment #2: A 28m2 cut-out apartment in a Tudor home

This wasn’t my favourite when I saw the pictures; it also didn’t make a great first impression either because the layout was not optimised at all. The real estate agent even said so himself, and it is the reason why this place has been a challenge to sell despite its great location in the city centre and its fair price.

Most of the co-owners of this historic heritage Tudor were just looking to flip it into an AirBnB. But I was looking for a livable home, so I took the space planning seriously.

The apartment windows face the inner courtyard of the Tudor home, which would give its occupants privacy and a lovely view into a mossy little garden out back. It has a decent ceiling height, but it’s not high enough to make a mezzanine. You technically can, but there’s no point because you can’t even squat on it if you were to build it.

But that just means it’s great for full-height storage.

It took me a few days, but I figured out what was wrong with it: The kitchen location sucked. So I moved it.

So the biggest issues with the space are the lack of storage areas and also the kitchen being located right next to the toilet. Gross is an understatement. 

What I basically did was to move the kitchen into the living space and converted the corridor to the bathrooms into a wardrobe area. I’ve seen some condo studios in Singapore with this concept and I’ve always thought it was very smart to design the space this way. Too bad condos and HDBs alike today can’t really do that layout.

I also moved the shower to the toilet area and converted the shower area into the laundry room. This is the best-optimisation of space of all the studios I’ve seen so far. I really saw myself living here.

For those wondering why I didn’t put the kitchen along the longer wall in the living room, it’s because plumbing doesn’t exist in that area. It is a possibility though, albeit an expensive one.

Anyway, I passed on this apartment as it’s a little out of my budget. It’s also in a 200-year-old half-timbered building in an area that had termite issues less than a century ago. The floor is also not levelled because the building is literally sinking on one side.

The maintenance down the line would be crazy. So I took a step back on this one.

Apartment #3: Tiny 27m2 attic loft apartment in a bourgeoise building

If I bought this place, I would be able to give myself a pat on the back because I would feel like I made it in life. For the record, bourgeoise buildings in France are located in wealthier middle-class districts. The English term is ‘Bourgeoisie’ if you’re interested in looking it up.

Anything in a fancy building is expensive, but it’s important to note that it’s always usually superficial. 

The problem with old luxury buildings in France is that the upkeep of the exterior takes more priority than the interior. So you can have ultra beautiful facades, but terribly optimised interiors where property developers just gut it out to rebuild or split the interior with profitability in mind.

The biggest benefit of getting this apartment would be its luxurious finishings that would be hard to come by today. Stone walls and marble staircases?! Yes, please.

The catch? I wasn’t loving the layout.

This studio is currently owned by an architect and he used it as his secondary residence. So it was just a living room with a sleeping area and bathroom on the loft floor. The layout was already pretty optimised, but the task of adding a fully functioning kitchen was a headache.

This apartment is tiny and the smallest of the three, coming in at 18m2 of floor space and half of that number upstairs.

I tried a few layouts here but it was a very challenging space. This was yet another box unit and was originally part of one bigger unit combined with the apartment next door. Unfortunately, it was closed off into this tiny apartment.

Ventilation was also a huge issue when it came to the kitchen addition. As the sleeping loft is right above where the kitchen would be intended, I would have likely have to close off the loft area to contain the smells, which would darken the apartment and add to the stuffiness of an already bad air circulation situation.

Again, with a box layout that has a small area, there is very little I can do.

Pity. It would have been poetic for an architect to “pass the baton” and sell his apartment to a designer, but this creative needs more space.

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The most surprising conclusion from this journey is how first impressions don’t matter when it comes to deciding which property you want to get. I would never expect apartment #2 to be the best fit in terms of layout from just pictures alone.

The methods that I used to assess whether a property is suited for me can be applied when looking at resale flats or condos in Singapore as well. Although the layouts of buildings back home would be quite standard, it never hurts to envision your lifestyle in a space first before making an offer.

With this article, my search for the perfect studio continues.