The Houses Must Be White, and the Designs Preapproved. Everybody Wants In.

When Covid hit in 2020, Iain and Ronni Watson were planning a cruise in Greece with their friends David and Jackie Weill. So instead of heading to the Mediterranean, the Watsons ended up visiting the Weills at their new home in Alys Beach, a coastal planned community on the Florida Panhandle.

But the Watsons quickly discovered that Alys Beach had more in common with their intended destination than they thought. With its all-white, stucco homes and cobblestone streets, Alys Beach reminded them of the Greek Islands.

The Watsons were so besotted with the community that they made an offer on a five-bedroom home during the visit. By December, they had moved full-time from California to Alys Beach with their two daughters.

White walls and roofs are among the requirements that create the unusual aesthetic of Alys Beach, a 158-acre community on the Gulf of Mexico off Scenic Highway 30A. The look has proven popular with home buyers: Over the past several years, demand for homes there has increased and prices have ballooned, according to local real-estate agent Jonathan Spears with Compass. In the first quarter of 2023, the average sale price in Alys Beach was $5.74 million, up about 25% from $4.59 million during the same period of last year, he said.

“Most of the families that we’ve met here, 20 to 25 families, have bought in the last three years,” said Dr. Weill, 59, an organ-transplant specialist and author. He and his wife live primarily in New Orleans and spend about 170 days a year in Alys Beach.

When Alabama residents Elton B. Stephens and his wife, Alys Stephens, started vacationing on the Panhandle about 70 years ago, what is now Alys Beach was vacant land. At the time, the area had yet to become a popular vacation spot, according to their granddaughter, Alys Protzman. “I can only imagine what the roads must have been like,” she said. “Many people were not vacationing down there at that point.”

David Weill with Frannie and Lucy. PHOTO: JESSIE BARKSDALE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In the 1970s, Mr. Stephens purchased the land that would become Alys Beach through his company, the Birmingham-based conglomerate Ebsco Industries. The Stephens family held on to the land for decades as beach communities grew up around it. In the early 2000s, they felt the time was right to develop the land into a second-home community, Ms. Protzman said. They named it after her grandmother, Alys Stephens, who had died by the time construction commenced in 2004.

Ms. Protzman’s cousin, Jason Comer, spearheaded the project with urban planners Andrés Duany and Galina Tachieva of DPZ CoDesign. Mr. Duany had been part of a team in the 1990s that coined the term New Urbanism, which refers to the creation of mixed-use, walkable communities. DPZ CoDesign has been behind the design of several New Urbanist communities on the Panhandle, including Rosemary and Seaside.

Alys Beach has about 1,500 feet of shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico. PHOTO: JESSIE BARKSDALE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In designing Alys Beach, Mr. Duany said the goal was to create a community that was both walkable and private. To do this, many of the homes are built around individual courtyards, a design that was inspired by courtyard homes in Guatemala. They are also close together, some sharing party walls, which creates a cohesive sea of white along the community’s narrow streets. “With the conventional American house, you need a large lot to achieve privacy,” Mr. Duany said, “but the courtyard provides privacy in a relatively small lot.” This allows Alys to have a high density and enough people to support the restaurants and public life, he said.

Most people in the community walk or ride bicycles, said Dr. Weill. “We stay most of the summer there, and I can go a month without getting into the car,” he said.

Home designs in Alys Beach must be approved by Marieanne Khoury-Vogt and her husband Erik Vogt, the designated town architects, and other members of a review committee. At first, the style of the homes in the community was inspired by Bermudian architecture, according to Mr. Duany. But it has since evolved into an unusual blend that includes everything from Mediterranean to Moorish influences, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said. Alys Beach has a list of approved builders and architects that homeowners can choose from, although they can apply to use a different architect.

White is the colour of choice, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said, because it is timeless and reflects heat. (Elements such as doors, window surrounds, shutters and gates can be different colors, she said.) The absence of color pushes architects to give each house distinctive carvings and parapet walls, said Jeffrey Dungan, an architect who has been designing homes in Alys Beach for over a decade. Homes are also required to be masonry, although materials like wood, stone and metal can be used judiciously to introduce warmth and texture, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said.

There are also guidelines for vacation rentals in Alys Beach. In order for homeowners to rent out their homes, for example, they are required to have specific glasses, linens, and serveware: cotton-sateen blend Garnier-Thiebaut linens, and dinnerware and flatware from Fortessa. These items are purchased through the community’s vacation rental program.

Alabama-based real-estate agent Matt Curtis and his wife, Courtney Curtis, bought their four-bedroom, roughly 3,900-square-foot home in Alys Beach for about $6.4 million with the intention of spending a few weeks there with family, then renting it out the rest of the year. They spent about $5,170 to purchase the required linens, Mr. Curtis said, plus a $100 monthly replacement fee. No family photos can be displayed while a property is being rented, he said.

Residents say they appreciate the exclusivity and attention to detail. Before buying their home in Alys Beach, the Weills owned a house in nearby Rosemary, but wanted a quieter community. Over the years, some beaches on the Panhandle have gotten crowded and have a “spring-breakish flare” to them, said Dr. Weill. “I think the folks who developed Alys saw a demand for a more exclusive property that was quieter.”

The Weills sold their Rosemary home and paid $5.4 million in the summer of 2020 for a roughly 3,600-square-foot, three-story house in Alys Beach with a rooftop deck. The property is three doors away from the Gulf.

The Watsons paid $7.5 million for their Alys Beach home, which has an enclosed courtyard leading to the front door. Inside, the walls are white Venetian plaster, and large entertainment spaces sit adjacent to smaller, intimate rooms. “It’s spacious yet cozy,” said Ms. Watson, 58, a former nurse who also worked for several medical startups. Mr. Watson, 67, was a strategy consultant and investor before retiring.

Still, the Watsons have decided that the roughly 5,200-square-foot home is too big for them, and they are planning to downsize to a smaller Alys Beach home. They have listed their current house for $12.495 million, more than 60% above the 2020 purchase price.

Alys Beach is about 65% sold out and about 50% developed, according to the community’s in-house sales team. The team handles all new developer-owned property listings, which are released in phases.

When Mark and Wendy Patterson started looking for land in Alys Beach in 2020, there were only a few lots available. Demand in the market was “crazy,” said Mr. Patterson, 52, the chief of staff at a tech conglomerate. “It was a ‘you-need-to-buy-today-or-it-will-be-gone-tomorrow’ kind of thing,” he said. They paid about $1.5 million in July 2020 for a vacant lot, then built a roughly 4,300-square-foot house.

The building process was quite the undertaking due to the various requirements, the Pattersons said. Property owners building homes in Alys Beach must start construction within 30 months of their purchase, and they have 36 months to complete it, according to the sales team. So the Pattersons moved quickly, picking an architect from the pre approved list. It took them about nine months to get their plans approved and about two years to build the house.

The community is strict about elements visible from the outside, Mr. Patterson said, “but if you want to go crazy on the inside, you would probably have a lot more leeway there.” They chose a dark bluish-gray for their window trims and put balconies on the front of house. The Pattersons said they don’t mind the requirements, and in fact the community’s all-white color scheme was a feature that drew them there.

With the house completed, they split their time between Dallas and Alys Beach, Ms. Patterson said, and their daughters and son-in-law visit as often as they can.

The rental market in the community is also robust. The Curtises started renting out their home in August 2022 with nightly rates ranging from around $1,000 to $2,500 depending on the time of year. According to Mr. Curtis, demand has been strong, with the home already rented out for half of May and all of June.

There are likely several reasons for the recent uptick in demand for Alys Beach homes, according to Mr. Duany. A community takes decades to operate as intended, he said, and over the past several years, many of the plans for Alys Beach have come to fruition, with restaurants and boutique storefronts filling up commercial spaces. Moreover, Florida became a hot spot for out-of-state home buyers during the pandemic, according to Mr. Spears.

The closer you get to the Gulf in Alys Beach, the more competitive the market becomes. There are 20 Gulf-front homesites in the community, and only six that are still undeveloped and not yet available for purchase, according to Ms. Khoury-Vogt. In 2021, attorney Chasitie Walden, along with her parents and brother, purchased a beachfront lot for $12 million, according to Mr. Spears, who represented them. It was the most expensive single-family lot sale recorded along 30A, he said.

Ms. Walden, 48, who lives full-time in Kansas, said there was at least one other offer on the property. After her family purchased the lot, they received an unsolicited offer to buy it, which they declined.

Ms. Walden said she first visited Alys Beach with her family after reading about it in a magazine in 2013. Compared with the other beach communities in the area, they feel Alys has the most attractive amenities, such as its beach club, wellness centre and a nature preserve.

After Ms. Walden visited the community, she and her family bought a home in a nearby neighbourhood and waited for a lot big enough to come available in Alys Beach. Now, they are about two years away from completing construction of their home there.

Ms. Walden, who recently finished a three-year build in Kansas, said she “swore she’d never build again.” But for a beachfront home in Alys Beach, “it’s worth it.”

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.