Pied-à-terre
small secondary residence used to avoid commuting
A pied-à-terre (French pronunciation: [pjet‿a tɛʁ]; plural: pieds-à-terre; French for "foot/feet on the ground") is a living unit, e.g., apartment or condominium, often located in a large city and not used as an individual's primary residence. The term implies use of the property as a temporary second residence, but not a holiday home, either for part of the year or part of the work week, usually by a rather wealthy person. If the owner's primary residence is nearby, the term also implies that the residence allows the owner to use their primary residence as a vacation home.
Pieds-à-terre attracted discussion during the 2010s in Paris and New York, where they are argued to cause a reduction in the overall housing supply. A tax on such units has been discussed since 2014.
Legislation of pieds-à-terre
New York
In 2014, The New York Times reported 57% of units on one three-block stretch of midtown Manhattan were vacant over half of the year. Many of the buildings mentioned border Central Park and have become known as Billionaires' Row. New York State Senator Liz Krueger, whose district includes Midtown, stated:
My district has some of the most expensive land values in the world—I'm ground zero for the issue of foreign buyers. I met with a developer who is building one of those billionaire buildings on 57th Street and he told me, "Don't worry, you won't need any more services, because the buyers won't be sending their kids to school here, there won't be traffic."
A 2019 bill in the New York State Assembly that would place a recurring tax on luxury pieds-à-terre was blocked after intense pressure from real estate developers and their lobbyists.
On Tax Day in 2026, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed a New York City pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth over $5 million, projected to bring in more than $500 million annually.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pied-à-terre” is small secondary residence used to avoid commuting. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pied-à-terre, small and secondary, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “small secondary residence used to avoid commuting” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q243775. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014, 2019 and 2026.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Pied-à-terre”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Pied-à-terre primary sources, Pied-à-terre archive and Pied-à-terre research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Pied-à-terre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.