In France, focusing on national birth origins often provokes problems and intense disquiet. What motives are behind such investigations ? What will this kind of case study be used for ? Once such misgivings are removed, the difficulty remains of obtaining relevant current data. This paper aims to make use of the BIEN database (Base d’informations économiques notariales) bought from the Parisian notary public board. Our objective is to propose a socio-geographical analysis of housing purchase transactions in the metropolitan region of Paris, Île-de-France, concerning non-French buyers. Do they live in every part of this metropolitan region ? Is it possible to describe any specific geographical distributions ? Updated regularly, the BIEN database allows those social transformation processes to be followed over a very short time in order to develop perspectives of what are termed “territorial kinetics” by describing key moments. Qualitative methods are not applied in this survey which makes it harder to reconstruct particular strategies leading to choice of residential locations and the social processes behind the distributions that appear. Nevertheless, we will try to suggest some clues to explain the findings.