The flatshare apartment finds in the 2nd arrondissement a terrain few districts can match: open floors. The area built itself around business — the stock exchange moved into the Palais Brongniart at its inauguration on 4 November 1826, and the Sentier dressed France for a century — then the traders and wholesalers left one after the other, leaving behind whole storeys of volumes the housing market rarely produces: through-rooms, high ceilings, free plans. Converted into housing, these floors want occupants at their scale, and a group living together is exactly that.
Rents read on the Paris whole-unit scale — €1,800 through €3,200 a month before charges — with the 2nd sitting just below the centre's peaks: a former workshop costs less here than a 1st-arrondissement Haussmann for more square metres. The neighbouring apartments to share round out the picture: the 3rd arrondissement extends the Sentier towards the Marais, the 9th adds the Grands Boulevards and their revenue buildings.
Do you own a former workshop or an open floor in the centre? Say it plainly in your listing: an unusual home scares off the typical family but delights groups — every flatmate sees in it the big common room the standard market will never offer them. State the real surface, the ceiling height and the number of possible bedrooms: those three figures are what teams decide on, often within the day.
Frequently asked questions
What sets a Sentier open floor apart from a standard apartment?
The generosity of the volumes and the freedom of the plan: former workshops offer through-rooms and ceilings a bourgeois building reserves for its noble floor. For a flatshare apartment that means a true common room and equal bedrooms — the feature that spares a group endless negotiations over who gets what.
What is the 2nd like on weekdays for residents?
Intense by day — Sentier deliveries, Montorgueil terraces, offices everywhere — then the district drops a register in the evening without ever switching off: rue Montorgueil and rue Saint-Denis keep their addresses open late, and the Grands Boulevards sit five minutes away. Courtyard-side bedrooms remain the light sleeper's option, and double glazing does the rest.
What does each person pay for a shared open floor?
Three or four occupants bring each share well under a central studio, volumes included. Set it against the reference room: €744 each month on LocService, charges included — a Sentier flatshare apartment's per-head figure comes close to it, with thirty square metres of common room on top — and the comparison soon favours the open floor.
Does a former workshop really make a good shared home?
Yes, subject to two checks: insulation — the superb glass roofs are sometimes sieves — and the lease, which must state residential use and name every flatmate among the signatories. A well-insulated floor and a square contract, and the formula beats the standard apartment on every count.
Landlord of a big open floor: how do you choose between groups?
Look at the structure before the files: a group where each flatmate has a precise use for the place — who works from home, who cooks, who entertains — will inhabit your floor better than a sum of brilliant but vague profiles. The question "how will you split the space?" says more than a tax notice.
