“The wallpaper itself is £1,600 per roll now,” property developer Kam Babaee tells Diana Tran, broker for UK Sotheby’s International Realty, who reaches a finger out towards it. “Really, I would appreciate it if you didn’t touch it.”
Priced at £30 million, the redeveloped Mayfair mega-mansion was built with hand-selected London bricks and has been kitted out with every conceivable luxury, including four voice-activated ovens, £17,000 chandeliers and a glass lift that cost £460,000 to install.
“Hopefully, you’re going to find us a buyer with a nice, big fat chequebook,” Kam tells Tran.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she replies.
This kind of opulence can only mean one thing: Britain’s Most Expensive Houses is back with a second season.
Channel 4’s luxury property programme takes us behind the scenes with UK Sotheby’s International Realty, offering a glimpse into some of the world’s most exclusive homes and the deals behind them.
The first season attracted an average of 1.5 million viewers per episode, demonstrating our “innate curiosity” in the homes of the super-rich, as Lee Koffman of UK Sotheby’s International Realty puts it.
“People are interested in watching this,” agrees executive producer Jannine Waddell. “It’s that sense of escapism. It’s access to ultra-high net worth individuals – that 0.1 per cent. In a way, you watch and you think: what price tag is on that, and would I buy it?”
The first case in point is a Grade I-listed family home on the John Nash-designed Hanover Terrace, which overlooks Regent’s Park boating lake. It is priced at £29 million – a sum that it would take the average UK worker more than a thousand years to earn. Close ups of the cornicing and plush carpets abound and there are plenty of references to the ceiling height.
The 6,730 sq ft property is owned by John Griffin, a philanthropist and the founder of Addison Lee. It is, as Waddell puts it, a “proper London property on a super prime site – with a super prime price tag”, while Griffin is “a British success story”.
As Griffin is barely using the house these days, he’s decided to sell up – and Koffman is enlisted to find a buyer.
Since London’s luxury properties are increasingly attracting overseas buyers, Koffman recruits Feng Shui master Ning Cheng to make sure the house is appealing to an Asian market. Cheng suggests moving a vase of flowers from the corner of the room (a bad omen for a married client) and advises Koffman to replace the mirror facing the bed with an oil painting (mirrors disrupt sleep), before blessing the house.
When Catharine Che from the Asia office and her contact Sally Maier-Yip come to visit, the effort doesn’t go unnoticed. “Because it’s blessed, it does feel very comfortable and secure. It’s very important for Chinese ultra-high net worth individuals to feel safe,” Maier-Yip confirms. The water outside, said to bring fortune, helps too.
For UK Sotheby’s International Realty, featuring the property on the programme may not directly translate into property sales —the £32 million Heathfield House featured in the first series remains on the market— but it continues to boost traffic to their website.
“It’s good exposure for them – they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t,” says Waddell. “The programme is not Selling Sunset. It’s very different from that kind of show.”
There are certainly splashy properties to rival Selling Sunset in the series, including the Mayfair mega-mansion, a five-bedroom Knightsbridge apartment valued at £25 million and a £12 million listed home near the Houses of Parliament. Each episode features a house valued at more than £10 million, a lavish country home and a quirkier property.
In the first episode, the quirky slot falls to the Prospect Belle, a “tardis-like” houseboat in Wandsworth owned by Nicholas Bonham of Bonham’s auction house and his wife Sue. With over 3,000 sq ft of living space, five bedrooms, three bathrooms and a vast entertainment space, it is a “boat fit for royalty”. It is valued at £1.85 million.
An “open boat” event organised by agent Guy Bradshaw gives an insight into how buyers for these kinds of properties are found. As well as agency staff, buying agents and industry insiders, there are “people who might know people”, including socialite Emma whose phone book is “busting with billionaires” and Sai, the sales director of a financial consultancy.
Sai points out an obstacle big enough to deter most buyers: generally, banks will not lend on boats. But then again, they reason, clients looking for a £1.85 million “holiday boat” aren’t most buyers.
Some stories are as much about the properties as about the buyer-agent dynamic. Agent Constance Cunningham is selling her two friends’ canal side Shoreditch apartment, set in the former Gainsborough film studios.
First-time buyers Ollie and Phoebe bought their property five years ago for £850,000 and have been renting it out for the past three years for £3,000pcm. Now, though, they are looking to sell: they need a garden for their dog, Thyreus.
Crucially, Ollie and Phoebe want to make a profit. And Constance, eager to please her friends, wants to get them a “great stonking price”. She suggests launching at £1.1 million and repackages the property as a buy-to-let investment opportunity, which interests Ellie, an architect from Hong Kong. Will she seal the deal?
After the pandemic, interest rate rises and Liz Truss’ mini budget, the super prime property market of 2023 is a different beast to that in 2020, bringing a new set of challenges for buyer, seller and agent alike.
As Koffman puts it: “With emerging luxury trends and evolving buyer needs, the landscape of London’s super prime market undergoes perpetual transformation.”
The market may be different, but one thing remains the same: we’re still fascinated.
