ABSTRACT
All through the nineteenth century and until World War II, to be wealthy, to be a man of property, to own real estate, did not mean that one owned a very large luxurious house or apartment in which one lived. For example, in Paris in 1897, many landlords, some of whom owned fifteen or more apartment buildings, rented their own living premises, either near their properties or in another neighbourhood, at a more prestigious address. The data I am presently gathering show that owner-occupancy at that time was as low as 1.8 per cent. Daumard (1987, 106-7, 110), although she does not quantify this phenomenon, does mention it: ‘Most Parisian bourgeois occupied a rented flat, even if they owned buildings in the capital…and they often moved.’* In all the European capitals of the time, the bourgeois invested in the real-estate market as they did in the stock market or other instruments. They saw housing as both a convenience that could be adapted to the household’s changing needs or means and as an investment. By the mid-nineteenth century, property had become a major form of investment, to the extent that half of all owners had no other employment. To own or to rent did not in itself mean anything; the significance was in what one owned or rented. Status was attached to an address-its size and attributes, the qualities and services it offered, the number of servants, and so on-not to the tenure. If a man could afford all these things, no matter how, he had to be wealthy.
