For sale: history, with a view to raise money

The proceeds will be used to move bureaucrats into less expensive properties and help pay off national debt

France is selling dozens of historic properties in Paris and the provinces, using the proceeds to move government bureaucrats into less expensive properties and to help pay off the national debt.

So far it has unloaded dozens of chateaus, villas and “hôtels particuliers,” the stone mansions of Paris’s golden age. Foreigners, primarily American pension funds and private equity firms, are the biggest buyers so far. For all their Gallic pride, the French seem happy to have anyone take the properties off the hands of taxpayers.

“All the locations are great, and they are all beautiful pieces of real estate,” said Eric E. Sasson, European head of real estate for the Carlyle Group, the global private equity firm that has bought several properties.

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Soon on the block will be the Hôtel Majestic, once a huge luxury hotel in central Paris that Hitler seized for his military government headquarters in occupied France. France’s foreign ministry took over the building after the war and used it for diplomacy: The Paris peace accords ending the Vietnam War were signed in its chandeliered ballroom.

France is overburdened with its opulent patrimony. The state has more castles, manors and monumental buildings than it knows what to do with, and can hardly afford to maintain them properly. The country already spends $2.65 billion to $4 billion a year to maintain its properties.

The government, meanwhile, has embarked on a program to sell some of the buildings now used by its ministries. According to a 2006 government study, the state holds more than $50 billion worth of property, not including those buildings considered priceless, like Notre Dame. About $20 billion of the state-owned property is used for government offices. The Finance Ministry concedes that its valuation of the properties may be “slightly below the market.”

It has already sold buildings worth a total of more than $1.6 billion, including more than $800 million last year. Daniel Dubost, the finance ministry official overseeing the property sales, expects the program to continue at the current pace for years.

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“Eventually we’ll fall to a more normal rhythm,” he said in his office in the ministry’s modern and austere building in the unfashionable 12th Arrondissement on the edge of Paris. “But we’re not ready to stop the rhythm of at least 500 million euros a year.”

Most of the money from the sales reverts to the ministry that last had control of the property, but 15 percent of the proceeds flows to the state to help pay down France’s national debt. Some critics say that the government does not offer enough information or advertise widely enough to get the best price.

Not every one is happy with the sales. The French research center Institut Montaigne criticized the program last year in a report that said the state was selling “at the whim of the market, without a medium or long-term vision of the management of its patrimony.”

Opposition politicians worry how the money raised will be spent. “These are the family jewels and once they’re sold, they’re gone,” Jean-Louis Dumont, a Socialist parliament member, warned. “We must be rigorous in making sure the money raised is used effectively.”

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However, the buildings can not be used in just any manner. “They won’t have the right to destroy it, or paint it red, or build a tower in the garden,” said one official at the ministry of finance, who could not be named because of ministry rules. “But they can use it for a bordello as long as they obey zoning laws.”

CRAIG S. SMITH