Real Estate & Property Law
Denver Lawyer’s Retirement Job: Renovating Paris Apartments
Posted May 13, 2008, 07:10 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
A Denver lawyer has found an innovative way to keep busy during his "retirement" and, when his project is complete, vacation in a lovely Paris apartment with his wife at a cost of roughly $55 a night.
His unusual avocation: renovating Paris apartments for eventual sale, via American corporate ownership, on a fractional basis, to other investors, reports the New York Times.
Steve Navaro, 56, says he has made some money and enjoys the projects (he and his wife, Sue, are now on their third Paris apartment renovation), while effectively hedging his shrinking dollars with European real estate investments. However, the reason most should buy an interest in a property like this is for personal enjoyment of a luxurious vacation property, he says.
Fractional ownership is unusual in Europe, the Times reports, but the legal structure "is designed to avoid French bureaucracy and inheritance taxes that can total two-thirds of a property’s value. In Mr. Navaro’s case, he formed an American company, Paris Home Shares LLC, that is the primary shareholder of his French company, a Société Civile Immobilier. The arrangement means American law governs the operating agreement among owners—although, if an owner dies, the inheritance laws of that person’s home country prevail."
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