For British Homeowners, No Newts Is Good Newts

EASTCOURT, England—The bane of Britain’s great and powerful is a couple of inches long, has warty skin and a bright orange underbelly—and the power to disrupt some of their most heartfelt ambitions.

Singer Ed Sheeran, King Charles and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson are among the many homeowners in Britain who have, at one time or another, been warned they might have to alter their building plans to accommodate the great crested newt.

Britain is a country where the public proudly regard themselves as animal lovers. There are no wolves, lynxes or bears left in the wild here. But it turns out parts of the island nation have one of the greatest concentrations of great crested newts in Europe.

The tiny amphibian has a protected status here because its population is shrinking. Purposely killing a crested newt or destroying its habitat can result in a six-month jail sentence and unlimited fine. So before anything is built, Britons must be sure the area is newt-free and no newt home is harmed, a process that can take months and cost thousands of pounds.

Johnson once railed against “newt counting” as a symbol of excessive red tape hampering Britain’s notoriously slow housing developers. But when his plan to build a swimming pool at his Oxfordshire manor was recently delayed because it might disturb newts that might be in his nearby moat, Johnson offered to roll out the red carpet. He pledged to build a special pond, or, as he called it, “a newtopia,” to house them. He declined to comment further.

If a newt is found in a pond near a construction site, mitigation measures must be taken before the first brick is laid. That can range from building a special “newt fence” to protect it from wandering into harm’s way to hand collecting newts to move them to an artificial wetland, a la Johnson’s planned pond.

The regulations have spawned numerous newt consultants, who charge a fee that starts at around £200 ($253) to make sure homeowners don’t run afoul of the law. Teams of trained sniffer dogs can be employed to comb ponds near construction sites to give the all-clear. There are specially constructed “newt tunnels” dug under several major British roads—often costing millions of pounds—that allow the animals to crawl around freely. They have to be over 6 feet wide; otherwise they get too chilly and the newts refuse to use them.

On a recent day, Freya, a lively 8-year-old springer spaniel, charged around a field here in southwestern England, lying prone whenever she sniffed a crested newt. Her handler, Nikki Glover, is an ecologist who works for Wessex Water, a utility that wants to install water pipes in the area in September. It needs a newt count before it embarks on plans to move them to a suitable habitat.

Soon after starting to sniff around, Freya tugs at her leash and dives into a thick bush of brambles. “There’s interest there,” Glover says, before yanking on a blue plastic glove, crouching into the undergrowth, and reaching into a small muddy crevice. Her hand emerges cradling a newt.

The British government champions kits that detect DNA in pond water that it says can cut the red tape and find crested newts when they congregate during their breeding season. Annoyingly it means the tests must be completed between March and July as that is the only time the newts get it on, an elaborate ceremony which can include the small male newt tail-whipping his larger partner. “There are seasonal constraints,” says John Wenman, who runs an ecological consulting firm in Berkshire.

The little amphibian plays an outsize role in British culture. “Eye of newt” is a key ingredient in the witches brew in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (although even those witches wouldn’t actually hurt a newt—the expression is a pseudonym for mustard seed). When British people get very drunk they say they are “pissed as a newt” (origins unclear but perhaps linked to young sailors who were called “newts”). Former London mayor Ken Livingstone made political hay by owning pet newts.

Recently, newts have suffered a public-relations setback, becoming a symbol for unnecessary bureaucracy in a country where getting permission to build anything is lengthy and expensive. Britain faces an acute housing shortage, and homes remain unaffordable for many families. “For many years now, the great crested newt has had to live with a bad name,” Natural England, a government agency tasked with protecting the environment, warned on a blog a few years back.

In 2018, a council in Nottingham tendered for a contract worth up to £40,000 to relocate some 40 newts from a construction zone. When developing the stadium for the 2012 London Olympics, newts on the site in east London were hand collected in special plastic bottles and moved elsewhere. In 2017 the U.K. government reported that a house builder once paid an average of £2,261.55, or more than $2,800, per relocated newt. “No newts is good newts,” said one headline in Building Magazine.

Actress Cate Blanchett had to acquire a special license after newt consultants concluded there was “average to excellent habitat suitability” for crested newts in nearby water. She is trying to install several solar panels at her house in Sussex. King Charles was warned about disturbing newts by a British amphibian lobby group when he recently proposed to build a gift shop at his residence at Highgrove. Crested newts briefly threatened a plan by Ed Sheeran to build a chapel on his property until he built an amphibian-proof fence to protect them.

Many newt consultants rely on low-tech methods such as “torching,” or shining flashlights at ponds during the night to count crested newts. Glover, the ecologist, swears by dogs.

To teach Freya to find newts, Glover turned to Louise Wilson, a veteran dog trainer in north Wales who cut her teeth using canines to search for improvised explosive devices and drugs.

When a sewage pipe cracked near Bristol recently, before Wessex Water could stop the effluent from flowing out it had to first make sure no crested newts would be harmed by the diggers turning up to do the repair. Glover and Freya appeared and within days had evacuated 86 newts. She estimates more traditional methods would have required a month of newt hunting.

“There is no other tool that would show you there is a newt in the burrow,” she says.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.