Abstract
At the first International Congress of Built Property, held in Paris in 1900, lawyer André Jacquemont decried the uncertainty of information in French urban property markets. In the current state of affairs, he insisted, “I don’t see how capitalists—either individuals or companies—who want to build in order to manage a property would know whether tenants would respond to their product.” Property, he complained, was the only product in France that did not enjoy effective marketplace transparency, a condition necessary for the simplicity and rapidity of transactions as well as the informed behavior of investors, builders, tenants, and buyers. Repeated speculative building booms, as well as the proliferation of joint-stock real estate companies that mobilized seemingly immovable assets in the form of company shares and exchangeable mortgage titles, testified to an obvious commoditization of property and revealed the limits of conventional approaches to its ownership and distribution.1 No doubt reflecting on the 253 property development companies that were formed in Paris between 1870 and 1900, Jacquemont echoed the concerns of many legal experts and industry observers when he questioned the utility of the continued categorization of property transactions under civil rather than commercial law: “speculation on buildings has taken on such proportions that one could ask whether the word ‘merchandise’ from article 632 of our Commercial Code could not also apply to buildings.”2
This chapter stems from research for my thesis, “Selling Paris: The Real Estate Market and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-siècle Capital” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2010). I would like to acknowledge the suggestions and critical feedback of Michael Pettit, Elizabeth Everton, Desmond Fitz-Gibbon, Heather Welland, and the participants of the Hagley Museum and Library Conference, “Understanding Markets.” Research and writing support was generously provided by the Bourse Chateaubriand and the Quinn Foundation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Georges Rondel, La mobilisation du sol en France: Ses origines, son avenir, son application actuelle (Paris, 1888).
On real estate development in this period, see Gérard Jacquemet, “Spéculation et spéculateurs dans l’immobilier parisien à la fin du XIXe siècle,” Cahiers d’histoire 21, no. 3 (1976): 273–306.
André Jacquemont, “La spéculation sur les immeubles et ses mécomptes,” in Premier Congrès International de la propriété bâtie: Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1900, à Paris (Paris, 1901), 201–7, quotation 201.
On the legal debate surrounding the commercial nature of real estate transactions, see Georges Dreyfus, De l’exclusion des opérations immobilières du domaine du droit commercial (Paris, 1905).
See, for example, the contributions to Dominique Margairaz and Philippe Minard, eds., L’information économique XVIe—XIXe siècle (Paris, 2008);
and Alex Preda, Information, Knowledge, and Economic Life: An Introduction to the Sociology of Markets (Oxford, 2009).
The notion of embeddedness stems from Karl Polanyi’s now famous analysis of market society in The Great Transformation (New York, 1944). For its many afterlives, see Jens Beckert, “The Great Transformation of Embeddedness: Karl Polanyi and the New Economic Sociology,” in Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today, ed. Chris Hann and Keith Hart (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 38–55.
C. M. Hann, “Introduction: The Embeddedness of Property,” in Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition, ed. C. M. Hann (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 1–47.
Koray Çaliskan and Michel Callon, “Economization, Part 1: Shifting Attention from the Economy towards the Processes of Economization,” Economy and Society 38, no. 3 (2009): 369–98; and “Economization, Part 2: A Research Programme for the Study of Markets,” Economy and Society 39, no. 1 (2010): 1–32.
Real estate, in particular, lives a sophisticated parallel life as both a material entity providing use value and as capital capable of producing value through exchange. For a discussion of the parallel lives of assets, see Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York, 2000), chap. 3. This chapter is concerned chiefly with the immovable aspects of the real estate market—land, buildings, and apartments—rather than its movable elements.
Arthur D. Austin, “Real Estate Boards and Multiple Listing Systems as Restraints of Trade,” Columbia Law Review 70, no. 8 (December 1970): 1325–64.
Edouard Charton, Guide pour le choix d’un état, ou Dictionnaire des professions (Paris, 1842), 4.
Michael S. Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in France, 1800–1930 (Cambridge, MA, 2006); see especially pt. I, chap. 3.
Maxime Petibon, Manuel officiel des affaires immobilières et foncières de la ville de paris (Paris, 1899–1903). Figures from the Annuaire Didot-Bottin were compiled by sampling the commercial listings at five-year intervals from 1870 to 1930, with the additional inclusion of volumes from 1855, 1862, and 1866.
Ernest Vallier, Les avoués au XXe siècle (Paris, 1908), 21.
Jean-Paul Poisson, “Un lieu de mémoire, l’étude du notaire,” in Etudes notariales, ed. Jean-Paul Poisson (Paris, 1996), 5–30.
See, for example, Mark Potter and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, “The Burgundian Estates’ Bond Market: Clienteles and Intermediaries, 1660–1790,” in Des personnes aux institutions: Réseaux et culture du crédit du XVIe au XXe siècle en Europe, ed. Laurence Fontaine et al. (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997), 173–95.
Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870 (Chicago, 2001).
J.-Joseph Pagès, Le Monopole des notaires et les avantages de la vénalité des études (Toulouse, 1907), 99.
On the legal experience and orientation of the agent d’affaires, see John Savage, “The Problems of Wealth and Virtue: The Paris Bar and the Generation of the fin-de-siècle,” in Lawyers and Vampires: Cultural Histories of Legal Professions, ed. W. Wesley Pure and David Sugarman (Oxford, UK, 2003), 171–210;
and Anne Boigeol and Yves Dezalay, “De l’agent d’affaires au barreau: les conseils juridiques et la construction d’un espace professionnel,” Genèses 27, no. 1 (1997): 49–68.
Chambre des avoués de première instance de la Seine, Ventes judiciaires de biens immeubles: loi du 22 juin 1841, mai 1894 (Paris, 1894), 35–40. While similar regulations on publicity did not apply to voluntary sales, the same practices were usually followed.
M. Rivière, ed., Pandectes françaises: Nouveau répertoire de doctrine, de législation et de jurisprudence (Paris, 1888), 3: 154–55.
A. de Coston, De l’office du juge en matière de ventes judiciaires d’immeubles (Paris, 1891), 131–32.
On the rights of private individuals to hold public auctions of real estate, see Dictionnaire du notariat par les notaires et jurisconsultes (Paris, 1854), 1:526–28; and Albert André, Traité pratique des ventes d’immeubles amiables, judiciaires, et administratives (Paris, 1894), 270.
Enquête pour contribuer à l’étude du projet de réglementation de la profession d’agent d’affaires, 3–4. For an enlightening discussion of the positive connotations of “emulation” with regard to self-fashioning in nineteenth-century France, see Carol E. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and the Uses of Emulation (Oxford, 1999).
Hubert Bonin, L’argent en France depuis 1880—Banquiers, financiers, épargnants dans la vie économique et politique (Paris, 1989), chap. 9; Pierre-Cyrille Hautecoeur ed., Le marché financier français au XIXe siècle, vol. 1, Récit (Paris, 2007), 14.
Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail [hereafter: ANMT], 65 AQ I 263: Dargent, La Rente Foncière Parisienne—Ses avantages, sa hausse progressive, augmentation constante du revenu et du capital (Paris, 1880), 11.
ANMT, 65 AQ I 31: Charles Paulet and Etienne Oudin Bourse Immobilière: Projet de Création (Paris, 1899), 1, 2.
Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et de l’Industrie Parisienne, III 4.42 (1): J. Tchernoff, “La Spéculation illicite,” Revue pratique de législation et de jurisprudence du Tribunal de commerce de la Seine, 22 (November 15, 1919), 83–97, 91.
Law of April 1, 1926, art. 25. Paul Colin, Codes et lois pour la France, l’Algérie et les colonies: Supplément: mise au courant à la date du 15 août 1927 (Paris, 1928), 147.
Lucien Lagrave, “Faut-il, peut-on envisager la création d’un marché immobilier ?,” Revue de la propriété immobilière 5 (May 1932): 69.
Lucien Lagrave, “Les agents immobiliers,” Bulletin officiel de la Chambre syndicale des agents immobiliers de France 50 (October 1933); Lucien Lagrave, “Un problème qui se pose: Les agents immobiliers et le marché immobilier,” Bulletin officiel de la Chambre syndicale des agents immobiliers de France 60 (September-October 1935): 3–4. See also Lucien Lagrave, “Pour un marché immobilier,” Le Figaro, April 13, 1932
“Assemblée générale du 27 février 1933,” Bulletin officiel de la Chambre syndicale des agents immobiliers de France 47 (April 1933). For the US case, see Jeffrey M. Hornstein, A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-century American Middle Class (Durham, NC, 2005), chap. 3.
In this respect, the AMEPI also differs from one of the most popular modes of disseminating listing information to consumers currently available to French brokers, the website SeLoger.com. On the role of agents in the French market today, see Loïc Bonneval, Les agents immobiliers: Pour une sociologie des acteurs des marchés du logement (Lyon, 2011).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2012 The German Historical Institute
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yates, A.M. (2012). Making Metropolitan Markets: Information, Intermediaries, and Real Estate in Modern Paris. In: Berghoff, H., Scranton, P., Spiekermann, U. (eds) The Rise of Marketing and Market Research. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137071286_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137071286_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34388-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-07128-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)