When I first arrived in London, seven years ago, I used to enjoy stopping outside estate agents’ offices and browsing the listings in the window. Though they were almost always ludicrously out of reach, there was idle pleasure to be had in seeing what you could get for £5m v £10m, and debating with yourself the merits of a home spa v home cinema.
These days, however, I find it hard to indulge in fantasy real-estate without being reminded of London’s housing crisis, and where it has landed me and many others my age: shut out of home ownership. Now a flashy new reality TV series from Netflix is seeking to take us the other side of the glass with a view into on London’s “super-prime” property market.
Buying London is billed as the sort of transatlantic cousin of Selling Sunset, Netflix’s hugely successful reality series about selling high-end real estate in Los Angeles. Both shows combine “property porn” with workplace drama, amped up by pounding pop music and dramatic pull-zooms that make them a tough watch for anyone who has vertigo or is over 33 years old.
It would be easy to write off Buying London as mindless froth if its featured agents were trading in anything other than property. As it is, however, it leaves a sour taste, revealing to viewers not only the moneyed forces that are shaping the city for the worse, but also the uninspiring, self-interested individuals conspiring to help them. There’s old money v new money, institutional privilege v global reach, asset acquisition v day-to-day living. And the crisis in housing can often be felt hovering just off camera.
For a start, Buying London has to explain in episode one why the city’s “super- prime” properties are so poky, relative to those featured on Buying Beverly Hills or Selling Sunset. The historic division of land in London means “you surprisingly get very little for your money”, explains Daniel Daggers, Buying London’s featured boss, who claims that the city is more expensive per square foot than Los Angeles, Sydney and “practically every other city across the planet”. But for Daggers, that’s a drawcard, not a deterrent.
Having sold more than £5bn in property to the rich and famous, and always hungry for more, Daggers – or Mr Prime, as he calls himself – frequently compares himself to his fellow “super agent”, Daniel Craig. In fact, he is an eerily even split between David Brent and Kendall Roy. While I can’t recommend Buying London, it is a combination that must be seen to be believed.
“There’s no ‘i’ in team, but there is one ‘i’ in ‘super prime’ – and that’s me,” Daggers explains at one point, effortfully.
When not straining to present himself as the chilled-out entertainer of luxury real estate, Daggers positions his DDRE Global agency as a disruptive up-and-comer bravely taking on the stuffy, old-school Goliaths of the London market. By this, he seems to mean that his clients are mostly new money. Many are also based overseas – in South Africa, eastern Europe, Dubai.
Catering to this neglected market, and marketing properties on social media, is all that’s put forward to justify Daggers’ claims to be “revolutionising” London’s approach to high-end property. He scorns the traditional estate agent as “old-school money, went to the right universities … wearing jumpers around their shoulders”. But he undercuts his position, a few episodes later, by appearing at a mixer event styled precisely so.
Daggers has also hedged his bets by employing, alongside his many modelesque, brutally ambitious lady agents, Oli: a self-described “posho” with connections in high society and a “huge amount of suits”.
Many of the featured properties go to overseas buyers who have no intention of living there or even stopping by all that often. One eastern European family expresses interest in a three-bedroom townhouse in Belgravia, just for their daughter to use every now and then; it is on the market for just shy of £8m. On a work trip to Dubai, agent Reme views a £7.4m property on behalf of a buyer who “wants to diversify his portfolio a little bit”.
It’s this (plus all the pull-zooms) that makes Buying London queasy viewing, especially for Londoners, as the city is shaped by and for wealthy people at the expense of everyone else. The estimated total value of foreign-owned property in London is £55.2bn, including 5% of properties in inner London (and 9% of those in Westminster). As the mayor, Sadiq Khan, pointed out in 2022: “Properties [are] being left empty and unused at a time when many Londoners are struggling to afford a home to buy or rent.”
A ban on foreign ownership has been floated as one response to the capital’s housing crisis, following measures introduced in New Zealand and Canada. But, in the meantime, foreign investment is driving sales and buoying the market. Buying London might try its best to keep its lens trained on the luxury, but even DDRE’s agents aren’t oblivious to the bigger picture.
In Dubai, they view a £26m “mega-mansion” with an outdoor cinema (the screen suspended over the swimming pool), a games room and even a fully functional American diner. “It’s a lot to take in … when you think about what you can get in London for £20m,” says agent Rosi, raising a snicker from posho Oli: “A small studio in Mayfair, maybe.”
It’s only a relatable moment relative to the sheer preposterousness of the rest of the series. Buying London holds up a mirror to a small but wildly influential group of people shaping the city, and – for all the glossy post-production and careful editing – the picture is distasteful. Daggers and his team may have no difficulty selling houses, but they can’t be said to have read the room.
Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist
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