Slipping through the gap: Modelling Akelius investment strategy in the Paris region

This paper presents a method for reverse engineering landlords’ local strategies, applied to Akelius, a global corporate landlord whose French housing portfolio has been reconstructed by cross-referencing open administrative datasets. The procedure combines a two-component count model identifying spatial investment choices with a fixed-effects model analysing rental pricing practices. Results show that Akelius market entry is structurally constrained by the availability of single-owner buildings and driven by recent price growth, while investment intensity concentrates in areas where housing prices are decoupled from household incomes, signalling strong appreciation expectations. Akelius ranks among the top 10% of most expensive rental managers in its areas of operation, quasi-systematically ‘gaming’ the rent control framework through rent supplements that justify rents exceeding legal caps. This case study illustrates how an investor emblematic of the second wave of financialisation has penetrated a market characterised by low corporate ownership and generally perceived as highly regulated.